Mitsuharu Misawa

Mitsuharu Misawa (三沢 光晴, Misawa Mitsuharu, June 18, 1962 – June 13, 2009) was a Japanese professional wrestler and promoter. He is primarily known for spending 18 years with All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and subsequently leading the 2000 All Japan Pro Wrestling mass exodus, which culminated in him forming Pro Wrestling Noah.

In the early 1990s, Misawa gained fame alongside friend and tag team partner Kenta Kobashi, as well as rivals Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue, who came to be nicknamed AJPW's Four Heavenly Kings (プロレスの四天王, Puroresu no shiten'nō). Their matches developed the ōdō (王道, "King's Road") style of puroresu, and received significant critical acclaim. Despite never working in the United States during the 1990s, Misawa had a significant stylistic influence upon independent wrestling through the popularity of his work among tape-traders as wide-reaching as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Debuting in 1981, Misawa became the second wrestler to assume the Tiger Mask persona in 1984, which he maintained until the end of the decade. After the departure of Genichiro Tenryu and his exodus, Misawa unmasked mid-match in May 1990 and began a rivalry with company ace Jumbo Tsuruta. At the behest of company president Giant Baba, Misawa would lead a team of young talents known as the Super Generation Army, which saw many different variants throughout the 1990s. Following Misawa's victory over Tsuruta on June 8, 1990, AJPW sold out every Tokyo event they held into early 1996, and as Tsuruta receded from the main event due to hepatitis, Misawa was cemented as AJPW's new ace. He won the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship from Stan Hansen in August 1992 and held it for the longest reign in its history.

Misawa remained atop AJPW throughout the 1990s. Following the death of Giant Baba in 1999, Misawa inherited his position, but conflicts with Baba's widow and majority shareholder Motoko led to his removal in May 2000. Misawa then led a mass exodus of the promotion's talent to form Pro Wrestling Noah, which was successful in the first half of the decade; as business declined and top star Kobashi left in 2006 for cancer treatment, Misawa continued to work a full-time schedule despite mounting injuries for the company's survival. He sought to mentor the three young talents Naomichi Marufuji, Takashi Sugiura, and Go Shiozaki to be flagbearers for the promotion in spite of his age. On June 13, 2009, during a tag team match in Hiroshima with Shiozaki against Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith, Misawa died after a botched backdrop suplex from Saito, and his death was attributed to the numerous injuries he had accrued for years before his death.

Misawa is regarded by some as the greatest professional wrestler of all time, though the physical demands and consequences of the style in which he worked and the circumstances of his death have made his legacy (or at least that of ōdō) somewhat problematic. Misawa was an eight-time world champion, having won the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship five times and the GHC Heavyweight Championship (which he was the inaugural holder of) three times. He was also an eight-time world tag team champion. Fifty-three of the sixty-nine events at the Nippon Budokan that Misawa headlined were sellouts, a drawing record that has been compared to Bruno Sammartino's run at Madison Square Garden.

Misawa was named Wrestler of the Year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter on three occasions (1995, 1997 and 1999), and at the time of his death held the record for most WON five star matches, with 25, including one as Tiger Mask. Several of his matches have been dubbed some of the greatest of all time, including his match with Kawada on June 3, 1994, his match with Kenta Kobashi on March 1, 2003, and his and Kobashi's tag team match against Kawada and Taue (the Holy Demon Army) on June 9, 1995.