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Atsushi Onita

Atsushi Onita (大仁田厚 Ōnita Atsushi) (Born October 25, 1957) is a Japanese former politician and retired professional wrestler best known for his work in FMW. He is credited with importing, as well as innovating, the death match style of professional wrestling (which was largely popular and rooted in Puerto Rico) to Japan.

Wrestling career

He was the first true graduate of the All Japan Pro Wrestling dojo (Jumbo Tsuruta had debuted first, but he had trained in Amarillo, Texas, with Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk). In his early days he teamed with dojo classmate Masanobu Fuchi, who debuted only a few weeks after him. He was known as a loyal ring attendant to Giant Baba, who had accepted him into the dojo despite not having graduated from high school. In the late '70s and the early '80s, he and Fuchi toured Memphis, Tennessee, winning the AWA Southern tag team title three times.

When the junior heavyweight boom started in Japan under Tatsumi Fujinami and Tiger Mask Satoru Sayama, Onita was picked as the ace of AJPW's makeshift junior heavyweight division. Baba was able to get Chavo Guerrero, who had been an early rival of Fujinami, over to AJPW's side, and Guerrero brought the NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship with him, effectively establishing it as AJPW's junior heavyweight cornerstone. Onita and Guerrero's subsequent feud over the title spanned three promotions (AJPW, Jim Crockett Promotions and Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre), and, while not as spectacular as New Japan Pro Wrestling's junior division, provided solid alternate wrestling to AJPW fans. In 1985 he had to retire due to accumulated injuries. By then he had already been replaced as the junior ace by the new version of Tiger Mask, Mitsuharu Misawa.

He returned in 1989 on an independent card, and pretty soon created his own promotion, FMW, basing it around death matches he had seen during his earlier stay in Memphis. His first "death match" was against martial artist Masashi Aoyagi, which he won. Over the next few years, until 1995, he had several death matches for FMW's heavyweight title, the World Martial Arts/Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship, defending it against former AJPW comrade Tarzan Goto, as well as the Sheik, Terry Funk, Mr. Pogo and even boxer Leon Spinks. Also during this period, he starred in the movie Dan Gan (Japanese for "bullet"), which would later be adopted as the nickname for Onita's pupil, Masato Tanaka. His last defense, in May 1995, saw him defeating Hayabusa, who succeeded him as the promotion's ace. Around that time, he occasionally wrestled as The Great Nita, a Muta-style gimmick. In 1999, The Great Nita and the Great Muta would finally battle each other in a much-publicized "No Rope, Barbed Wire, Barricade Electric Land Mind, Double Hell Death match".

After a sabbatical, Onita returned to the ring in 1997 as the leader of nWo-like stable ZEN, by which he attempted to return FMW to its old death match ideology. Already, however, Shoichi Arai and Hiromichi "Kodo" Fuyuki were toning down the death match content, which lead Onita to leave FMW altogether and promote his own ventures. He used the promotional names "USO" (all caps version of the Japanese word for "lie"), "Jado" ("evil ways"; not to be confused with the wrestler of the same name), "Onita Pro" and "Project X."

In 2001 he returned to AJPW for one night only, at the Tokyo Dome, to team with Terry Funk against Abdullah the Butcher and Giant Kimala. Whereas AJPW fans had already known Funk and Abdullah's willingness to brawl, Onita also played a huge part in the match, and his team emerged victorious. In 2002, following FMW's closure (he appeared in the last card to address the crowd, despite the promotion no longer being associated with him or his promotional ideology), Onita appeared briefly in WEW, run by Hiromichi Fuyuki. The storyline saw Onita blaming Fuyuki's "Entertainment Pro Wrestling" business strategy for causing FMW to close, and appeared to be paving the road to an eventual match between Onita and Fuyuki before Fuyuki abruptly announced his retirement due to cancer that would eventually claim his life in March 2003. Onita attempted to resurrect the FMW name with another promotion (called Onita FMW since he did not own the rights to the FMW name), but the promotion would fold after only three months. Onita would retire once again on September 23, 2003, losing a death match to The Great Sasuke, but this would not last long. Onita fought yet another retirement match on March 26, 2005, being pinned by Genichiro Tenryu. This also would be disregarded, as he would come out of retirement in May 2008 and would begin promoting his own cards again in July.

In Politics

Though he originally dropped out of high school, Onita returned to finish his Education when he was in his 40's. In 2001 he won the 19th House of Councilors election as a representative of the Liberal Democratic Party, following Antonio Inoki and Hiroshi Hase to a seat in the Japanese Diet. One of his first major acts in office was to launch a post-9/11 humanitarian mission to Afghanistan, where he performed professional wrestling matches in crudely constructed rings made of sticks and rope, to benefit the children. This was all documented on film. Like fellow professional wrestler, Scott Steiner, Onita is also rumored to have broken Wilt Chamberlain's record of sleeping with 20,000 women. Ironically, his exit from politics was forced by a recent sex scandal in which he was alleged to have used government accommodations to host a threesome with an AV actress and a female employee of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation. Now as a recently retired politician, he has his own game for Nintendo DS, Atsushi Onita's Political Quiz.