Masato Tanaka history...

[RoaringElbow25]

I am mostly an American wrestling fan and have been watching WWF my whole life, Lately ive been getting into the best of ECW DVD's and on their first one Masato Tanaka had one helluva ECW Title match against the Awsome one and I've been tracing Masato Tanaka since. Last I herd he was in FMW but Im not sure... Can anyone tell me where I can find the Dangan now and anything about his past in wrestling I would be very appreciative.

[eijiezaki24]

isn't he on a tour for All Japan right now?

[Das]

Well, I don't know much, but a little is better than nothing. From what i can piece together from the FMW tapes that are in english, Tanaka was the second most popular star in FMW, behind Hayabusa. He helped fight off the "Funk-Masters", a group of wrestlers from America that included Terry Funk, Mike Awesome, Cactus Jack, The Head Hunters (from Puerto Rico), and Mr. Pogo (from Japan). He also feuded with W*ING Kanemura for the FMW belt, but they put aside their feud to deal with the "Funk-Masters". Move wise, he uses a spinning elbow (the roaring elbow), the tornado DDT, and a front flipping jawbreaker (Diamond Dust) as his finishers. He had quite a few matches with Awesome, and he always seemed to single out Awesome during Tag matches that they both were in, so that is wht their ECW matches looked so good.

That's about all I know, since I haven't really seen all that much of the FMW, but it's a start.

I think Dangan means "Bullet"

[lCS 39]

he's also Atsushi Onita's protege if i'm not mistaken.

[RoaringElbow25]

yeah Joey Styles said Dangan means Bullet and If I may say so myself the Roaring Elbow is the best of his 3 finishers...if my backyard wrestling fed was still around I would gladly make that my finisher, along w/ the sharpshooter. what an arsenal eh?

[Tradewynd]

Currently Tanaka is a freelancer, meaning he will work for anyone on a night-by-night or tour-by-tour basis. He has been working for All Japan recently, and has even been in the main event of a few shows if I'm not mistaken(they're smaller shows, but hey, it's still a main event He also just did an angle where he stole the NWA World Title from Shinya Hashimoto because Hashimoto wouldn't give him a shot at the title and he has been dodging top contenders for the title(Tanaka did a promo about this at an All Japan show, also pointed out that one of his opponents was a top contender. Hashimoto recently cancelled a title defense in America against Dan Severn, who for GP, held the NWA Title for a little over 4 years from 95-99, and was even announced as the NWA World Champion at multiple UFC events. UFC recognizing pro wrestling titles, who'da thunk it?). With FMW coming back under Onita's wing I would think he would end up doing a few shows there in the near future. I also heard that the WWA wanted to bring him in for their Revolution PPV.

As far as what he had done in FMW, I'll give you a little explanation on the whole Funk Masters of Wrestling angle. Funk worked a tour for Onita and they had a handshake agreement as far as how much Terry was supposed to make for the tour. When pay day came around Onita decided not to pay him what they had agreed on since it wasn't in writing. Funk not happy. Since Terry doesn't believe in burning bridges on his next tour(which had everything in writing in advance) Terry was going to "prove" that his FMW(Funk Masters of Wrestling) was greater than Onita's, fueding with the top stars of the time(Hayabusa, Tanaka, etc.). By that time Onita was "retired" so Funk went out to destroy his dream of FMW and fueded with the promotion's top stars during the course of the angle. I'm not sure if Onita came out of retirement in time for them to have a match at the end of the fued, I don't have very many FMW tapes.

Tanaka had a long fued with Gladiator(Mike Awesome) in FMW and the two always put on top notch matches. They had traded the Brass Knuckles Championship(FMW's first top title, not be confused with the World Entertainment Wrestling Title that really showed how far FMW had fallen). By the time they went to ECW they worked together for a good 2-3 years and those matches had become routine at that point.

Tanaka tried his hand at promoting also not too long ago, if I'm not mistaken it was called Complete Players. Haven't seen or heard much about the show so I can't comment on it. If I'm not mistaken the main event was Tanaka, Gedo and Jado against Shinjiro Ohtani, Hoshikawa and I want to say Sato. Could be wrong on Sato. Onita and Dick Togo(of Kaientai fame) were also on the show.

Also, I'm not sure which of the Tokyopop DVDs it was on, but the match where Tanaka gets one of his bigger chest scars is on one of them. Ow.

[Das]

Jeez....You know a lot more than i do.

Onita did come out of retirement on alt least one occasion. He was in a six man tag match with Tanaka, and Kanemura vs. Funk, Awesome and Cactus Jack. Kanemura scored the pinfall over Awesome.

As for the chest scar, I think the maych your talking about is Hayabusa and Tanaka vs. Funk and Pogo. It was one of those Double Hell Exploding ring deals. Tanaka goes for the roaring elbow, but Pogo ducks and Tanaka hits the barbed wire chest first. I'm not sure if this is what your talking about, but the end of this match is about as surreal looking as a wrestling match can get. (There was plenty of yellow ash all over the ring by the end)

[Tradewynd]

Yeah, that 6 man match you're talking about was the first match he was back. I'm not sure if that was during the Funk Masters angle or not, my Japanese isn't that good and I'm not sure when the angle came to an end.

On the chest scar, that sounds like the match I'm talking about. It's slightly clipped and not shown to its full brutality on the Tokyopop DVD(due to careful selection of different camera shots at oppotune times), but since the Tokyopop version of it doesn't give me a headache, it's the one I usually watch Man, I love puro, and I'll admit I'm a sucker for good garbage(there's an oxymoron), but eventually those tracking lines and jumpy screens are just too much. Thanks a lot Feinstein.

Incredibly enough, thinking about the Complete Players show took me to eBay and I just won a copy of it. What are the odds, huh? I'm not sure if it's hard to find or not, but the copy I picked up is the only one I've seen around. If anybody wants to get a copy of it out of curiosity(or if you know the show's good) drop me an email or PM. I've got the complete card if anyone is curious, and the main event was Tanaka/Gedo/Jado vs. Ohtani/Hoshikawa/Sato.

[lCS 39]

The match you two are talking about is from the FMW 5/5/96 Kawasaki Stadium show Hayabusa/Tanaka vs Funk/Pogo headlined that card in A Exploding Ring Barbed wire Double Hell Death Match.

Those chest scars have to had hurt Tanaka, after all he bladed it himself, I own the original japanese commercial copy and i'm not to sure if the tokyopop versions shows that but watch carefully after he does the jumping into the barbed wire spot LOL it's pretty obvious...nothing like garbage sleeze at it's best eh?

Onita did come out of retirement on alt least one occasion. He was in a six man tag match with Tanaka, and Kanemura vs. Funk, Awesome and Cactus Jack. Kanemura scored the pinfall over Awesome.

yup he certainly did, not to mention he came out of retirement to form FMW in the first place, but anyway the whole coming out of retirment bits is how Onita originally got the Mr. Liar nickname.

[Das]

Now that I think about it, it is kind of funny that Onita would have a feud with Funk. After all, don't they have at least 600 retirements between them?

[lCS 39]

LOL! you're right...Funk vs Onita 2002 loser retires for real stipulations heh.

[Das]

Loser has his legs cut off so he CAN'T WRESTLE ANYMORE!!!!

(but of course that won't stop them)