Fascinating stories about Nobuhiko Takada and UWFi

It's already past 1 AM in Korea, so I will probably sleep soon.

Anyone who reads this post, leave some comments to give me energy to continue.

<2> Imperial Warrior' Big Van Vader

After Vader's response to Takada, Miyako and Anjo, two real mastermind of UWF-I,
offered the most lucrative short term contract at the time to Vader.


Not too long after, Miyako managed to announce publicly that they acquired Vader,
who was WCW world heavyweight champion at the time.



It became a huge news in Japan instantly.

To understand how big deal it was in Japan at the time, you need to know Japanese people's mindset on Vader.

Vader was also a great wrestler in USA who had a fascinating career in WCW, but he was even more than a great wrestler in Japan.
Vader was a special project of NJPW, who wanted to create a new huge foreign star after losing Andre The Giant permanently.

Andre was a legendarily huge draw in Japan, so making a successor of him was a very difficult work.

Naturally, NJPW prepared this project very carefully. They made a name for this new wrestler as 'Big Van Vader'
Because NJPW wanted to build a huge star as big as Andre The Giant, they tried to search for obvious star material.

At first, NJPW tried to hire former bodybuilder, WCCW's Jim Hellwig
He was a handsome wrestler with tremendous physique and masculine look.

You might heard his name already.



Yes. He is best known as The ultimate warrior in WWF. Warrior's look and charisma captivated NJPW staff's eyes,
but they figured out that Warrior is dreadful in ring work. Which means he is basically useless on NJPW ring.

Japan have always had much higher standard in ring work, and still is.
For instance, wrestlers like Dusty Rhodes never got over in Japan.

Because Dusty is a wrestler who strongly rely on his mic work and charisma rather than in ring works.
But as you know, charisma and mic work never really translated well into other language.

This rule applied to impressive look too.



For example, Giant baba once tried to build AJPW version of Andre The Giant.
He scouted the whole world and managed to find a taller wrestler than Andre.

That's how he found Parkistan's Raja Lion. Raja was clearly bigger than Andre.
While Andre was around 211cm for real, Raja was bigger than 218cm.

But Raja had a problem. He barely moved in the ring, and even kept falling by trying to kick.

Baba had a huge plan on Raja and he supposed to make Raja look like a gold in the ring,
after seeing Raja moves in the ring, Baba nixed the plan instantly and submitted him for real to end the match.



Ok, I gotta admit that was too extreme example lol.
But my point is, to get over as a foreign wrestler in Japan, good in ring work is mandatory.

Warrior was not qualified for NJPW in that aspect.



NJPW's next choice was AWA's Leon White. NJPW knew about Leon White much more than Jim Hellwig(The Warrior),
Because NJPW's wrestler Masa Saito worked in AWA as a regular member. (He even became a world champion of the promotion later.)

Masa Saito recommended Leon White to NJPW and said Leon is a pure diamond.

After they brought Leon White as 'Big Van Vader',
he had a debut match with none other than Antonio Inoki, and squashed Inoki quickly.

Inoki was not just a typical pro wrestling main eventer.
He was an mainstream icon, he also had the strong reputation as the best fighter in the world in Japan.

His fight against Ali is very famous, but he also defeated former world heavyweight boxing champions Leon Spinks,
fought with world's best heavyweight karate fighter Willie Williams who earned nickname 'Bear Hunter' for fighting a wild bear with bare hands,
and managed to earn victories against world's best judo fighters, such as olympic gold medalist Shota Chochisvili and Willem Ruska.  

Considering Inoki's public image to Japaense people, Vader squashing Inoki was beyond a shocking incident.
Japanese people hated Inoki's quick loss, they literally had a riot in the venue.

At first Japanese people hated Vader for real, but Vader was so great worker
who had every aspect that Japanese would fall in love with.

Vader proved his talents and managed to become a huge draw and indestructible castle for Japanese native wrestlers.

Any Japanese wrestlers who wanted to be a new top leading star of the company, had to defeat Vader.
After Vader earned his success in WCW, Japanese people accepted Vader as an icon of strength and power, toughness.



I can even show you a proof. The left plush is called 'Andreda Giant Panda (which pronounces as Andre The Giant Panda)'
basically a plush parody wrestler of Andre The Giant. Andreda defeated almost everyone in the indy scene,
but his first loss was suffered from none other than 'Big Man Vader', a parody plush wrestler of Vader.

Both Andre and Vader still lives in Japanese's mind as icons, and no many foreign wrestler could achieve this goal except those two.

Not only that, but year 1993 was when Vader had his highest fame in Japan.
He earned WCW title and became invincible heel champion, Japanese fans started to admire
and take their home grown talent (Even though Vader was a foreigner, he was still grown in Japan) as proud.

And then UWF-I brought Vader as a challenger to Takada.
It was natural for Japanese fans to go nuts about this.



Vader started to beat some of UWF-I's best native stars, like Tatsuo Nakano and Kazuo Yamazaki and
even Kiyoshi Tamura, who was known as the obvious successor of Takada at the time.

Finally, only Takada was left in UWF-I's corner. Takada declared that he will accept a challenge of Vader.

At first, Miyato tried to book Tokyo dome and announce that UWF-I became the third major pro wrestling promotion next to NJPW and AJPW.
But early 1990s in Japan was known for the prime era of Tokyo Dome concert. It already had the full schedule despite it was an off season for baseball.

So Miyato and Anjo chose Meiji Jingu Stadium instead. Jingu stadium, the home field of Tokyo Yakult Swallows.

After the news that Takada will face Vader for the Pro wrestling world championship,
people started to buy tickets so fastly, and over 46000 tickets were sold.



WCW world heavyweight champion Vader, and World pro wrestling champion Takada,
came to the ring after their magnificent entrace. And then They started to stare each other......

To be continued.....

Do you like the story so far? 🥰

<3> Miyato's grand plan

The event had the unique 'big match' atmosphere. You could see how much people anticipated at this match.
Audience reacted even by very small action. Lou Thesz came out before the match and talked about the true meaning of this match.
He mentioned his historic NWA title match with Rikidozan and the match between Takada and Vader will determine the true champion of the sports.

After Thesz's speech, two wrestlers had magnificent entrance. You can see the entrance in this video.



watch from 5:05 to 8:05.

The concept of match was very intuitive and easy to understand. Vader was a true monster that outpowers Takada easily.
In the other hand, Takada was an elite level well-skilled fighter who can tame the beast.

It was like a RPG videogame, a journey for a hero to overcome the mightiness of a boss.

Takada threw very sharp kicks in legs and body, Vader fought back with slugging.

In grappling, Vader tried to submit Takada with much strength
but Takada managed to escape with much more skilled grappling.

In the climax, Vader gave devastating falling power slam to Takada and Takada got knocked out.
Takada managed to get up before the 10 count, (UWFi had the 10 count system instead of 3 count pinfall system)
Vader delivered another destructive falling power slam to Takada. Takada seemed completely knocked out,
but he barely got up before 10 counts just like Rocky movies.

Vader tried to finish Takada in ground but he couldn't submit Takada,
Instead Takada escaped from the ground and fired up, started to throw sharp soccer kicks at Vader.

When Vader fell to the ground, Takada quickly caught Vader's arm and connected to cross arm breaker.
Vader tried to resist, but Takada pulled Vader's arm strongly and Vader had no chance but tapping out.



Takada defeated the reigning WCW world heavyweight champion,
and became the undisputed world heavyweight champion of the world.

It was the moment that UWFi hit it's peak and flourished as the third best promotion in Japanese pro wrestling world.

But Miyato, the true brain of UWFi, didn't try to satisfy as a good third brand in Japan.
He wanted to surpass NJPW and prove that UWFi's pro wrestling is the most superior of them all.

He was a genius that always see bigger pictures that nobody is able to foresee.
Miyato decided to use UWFi's sky high fame at the time.

He thought it was the best time to build a legitimate promotional war between UWFi and NJPW.

He went to NJPW's office and tried to make a deal with Riki Choshu, who was the creative head of NJPW.
Miyato's suggestion was having a dream match between top leading stars.



Specifically, UWFi's Takada who was the Pro wrestling world heavyweight champion and Masahiro Chono, NWA world heavyweight champion.

The deal was close to make, but each sides had something disagree about details. Both sides wanted to protect their stars,
and NJPW wanted to make this deal under the water until the contract is signed. But Miyato wanted to earn more attention from fans
and give heat to his promotion. Miyato revealed that UWFi is preparing a promotional war with NJPW.

Riki Choshu got enraged about Miyato's disclosure and the plan was nixed. Miyato once again, decided to use this situation.
He announced publicly that NJPW was afraid to fight with UWFi and withdrew from the negotiation.

This created a perception that NJPW, top leading promotion of Japan(probably the world at the time) is scared of UWFi's legitimate shooters.

Even though the promotional war didn't happen, Miyato's plan was succeeded enough.
But Miyato didn't try to stop at this. He even came up with better idea.



It was none other than '1 million dollar' tournament. Miyato announced that UWFi will have tournament battle, which the winner would receive 1 million dollar.

Miyato sent invitation to all of existing Japanese top leading stars. Shinya Hashimoto of NJPW,
Mitsuharu Misawa of AJPW, Genichiro Tenryu of WAR, Masakatsu Funaki of Pancrase, Akira Maeda of RINGS.

Of course, all of them turned the invitation down. But one guy, Akira Maeda accepted the invitation.



Akira Maeda, the wrestler who was the best draw in Japanese wrestling world in late 80s.
Not only that, he was the guy who put Takada into a shadow of eternal No.2 position.

Now things became exact opposite. Takada became the best draw in Japanese pro wrestling world, Maeda missed almost all of year 1993,
and his fame was nothing compared to his prime. Takada, once the good No. 2 guy but never able to surpass Maeda's presence,
now became an undisputed pro wrestling champion. Maeda was the challenger.

If this battle became a reality, it was very easy to fill Tokyo dome out for sure.

The long time dream match, 'Black haired Robespierre', 'The Revolutionist' Akira Maeda VS 'The world's best' Nobuhiko Takada, was about to become a reality.

To be continued.....