Pro Wrestling ARK ~The Naizen Uboshita Diaries

[naizen45]

0 ~introduction

Hello my name is Naizen Uboshita, I’ve been a wrestling fan ever since my father took me to my first show when I was eleven years old. it was PGHW’s Night of HONOUR in 2009. The main event was PRIDE Koiso vs. Yoshimi Mushashibo. Mushashibo was on a legendary title reign, he won the Glory Crown at Night of HONOUR 2006 and was holding it almost exactly for three years at this night. A dominant champion on his 3rd title reign hailed as the best professional wrestler in the world vs. PRIDE Koiso who was the same age as Mushashibo but was known for falling short in the important moments, having never won the Glory Crown before. You have to understand that my father is a man who is really hard to impress but when his favorite wrestler PRIDE Koiso beat Mushashibo and celebrated with the Glory Crown in his hands barely being able to stand, tears ran over my father’s cheeks. To this day this is my favourite match of all time.

 

Unlike most young wrestling fans I never wanted to be a wrestler, I always wanted to have my own promotion, book the matches and create the stories around it. With sixteen I got my first job as a ringside photographer for WLW and I loved it. I wanted to learn from the people there and work my way up. I feel like I learned a lot about the wrestling business and made some cool connections to some interesting people. The fast paced style was so different to the more slower and tradional style of PGHW and the flashy and flamboyant characters excited the fans in every arena we’ve been to. Sadly in 2018 a scancal hit the company exposing to everybody that the yakuza were involved in WLW which let to the company being closed for an entire year. Without any income they decided to slim down their staff and they let go off a bunch of people, including me. Even though I understood their decision, I was devastated. So there I was 20 years old without a job and without any idea where to go next.

 

I got a job at my father’s company as a shipbuilder and I absolutely hated it. I had dreams of creating wonderful stories and moments that would bring emotions to thousands of fans watching just like me and my dad at my first wrestling show, but instead I was wasting my life away at this job I didn’t care for. I needed the money and dragged myself through it. My father knew I hated it and that this just wasn’t for me but I was still trying to give my best and he respected that. I was applying to every wrestling promotion in Japan to every position I could think of. „In need of a photographer, announcer, referee, janitor?“ No they all rejected me, PGHW, EXODUS 2010, BCG, SAISHO, 5SSW. I even applied to BHOTWG even though I was a PGHW-fanboy and absolutely disliked them.

 

I decided to do it on my own and started to save every yen I made working for my father’s company, which honestly wasn’t too much. I mean it was good money, but not I’m-going-to-start-my-own-wrestling-company type of money. I only rented out a small apartment and tried to live as frugal as possible and at the end of 2019 I had about ¥200.000 together which would be round about $1.300. My father saw me saving the money and one day he came to with an envelope and told me to reach for my dreams. At first I declined taking it, as I don’t want to lose my father’s money if it doesn’t work out, but than he told me that I should take it and see it as a loan. He told me that I was done building ships for him and I should finally build my own ship and start my own voyage. I took it and promised to pay it all back one day.

 

I now had ¥1.5 million which would be equivalent to about $10.000. A lot of money but not much if you are trying to build a wrestling promotion. I had to be smart with it. Don’t sign any expensive washed wrestlers but rather create my own stars.

 

For that I knew I needed a partner, someone who not only knows wrestling but also the wrestling industry. From my early days in WLW just when I started out, I remember having conversations with one of the wrestlers about our shared dream of starting our own company. He loved to pass on knowledge to the younger guys and this might be exactly what is needed here. The only problem was he retired in 2014 and I never saw him without a mask on and had no idea about his real identity. I was calling every number I still had from my time in WLW, asking anybody if they can connect me with him, just to find out I wasn’t the only one who had no idea who this guy was. They all were clueless, nobody seems to have seen this guys since he retired six years ago. I was almost giving up looking for other options or even doing it on my own until suddenly in the middle of the night someone was knocking on my door...

 

OOC:

So this is my first time writing a diary. My plan is to span this diary over a couple of in-game years so I won’t get into too much detail with the shows, it will be more storybased just like the first part. It’s basically just a dramatized version of what’s going on in my savegame. I would love to do more long term story telling and build up my own stars and stories but that might take some time to get going. I’ve already written the first six parts but I probably need to figure out formatting and what graphics I want to use before posting them a couple of days apart.

 

A quick question in the end if you are interested, I would love to read your guesses...

Which former masked WLW wrestler is Naizen Uboshita looking for?

[naizen45]

reserved

 

[naizen45]

 

Units:

FANTASÍA

Edo Phoenix IV (leader), Astro, Beetle Kimura, Akihiro Hisato, Nakayama

 

Dominance:

Motoyuki Miyake (leader), Eikichi Itou, Jotaro Tanaka, Goro Hatamoto, Shuga Amano

 

Champions:

WORLD of the ARK

Edo Phoenix IV (1st champion)

 

BOND of the ARK

The Night Terrors (Babau & Moroi) (2nd Champion Team)

former champions:

Space Cadets (Commander Kawagishi & Yuta Isono) (2 defences)

 

 

Edited 18 minutes ago by naizen45

[siah463]

First name that comes to mind for Naizen is Dark Eagle, one of the best to ever do it he'd be a great person to have alongside you to run a company.

[naizen45]

1 ~building the ark

 

I opened the door and there he was, the former World Level Universal Champion in a suit and tie and of course his mask on. I couldn’t believe it.

Dark Eagle

„I’ve heard you were looking for me?“

 

He seemed to have heard that I was trying to reach out for him and decided it was a good idea to just knock at my door in the middle of the night. If I wasn’t so happy to finally have found him, I would probably be really scared.

 

We sat down and I made coffee for both of us. I told him what I had in mind and how I envisioned to establish a completely new wrestling promotion without much money. Told him about wanting to mix the new and exciting fast paced style and wrestlers of WLW with the fighting spirit of PGHW. Eagle and I talked the whole night about my plan. The things we need to do and especially the things we should try to avoid. We came up with some rules or more guidelines for our company.

 

1. Believing in our talents

Eagle and I both agreed that this is the only way to be successful. We don’t have the money to sign every big free agent. We need to make our own stars and this might take some time.

 

2. Ignore the Young Lion system

I already said I’m a huge PGHW fan, but what works for them doesn’t have to work for us. We can’t wait for our young talents to hone their skills a couple years and than go on excursion for another two to three years. If I have to wait five years before being able to push a young talent, this promotion might not exist anymore. If there is a 19 year old kid who is better than everybody, we have to make good use of him

 

3. Don’t poach from the other Japanese promotions

We want to build our own identity. If we have maybe BCG’s Razan Okamoto as our champion and maybe WLW’s Masa Kurata as a challenger, we are not helping ourselves with that. We would also have a hard time paying for the appearances of those two. Having the occasional WLW or EX2010 talent on our show is fine, but we don’t want any outside talent to hold any of our titles.

 

Dark Eagle and I were pretty much on the same page. I’m really glad at how this nightly interruption turned out. The sun was already going up when we finished our little „meeting“ and Dark Eagle assured me that we would do this together and create something special.

 

This all so surreal to me, having a business meeting with a former World Level Universal champion in my living room in the middle of the night to start my own wrestling promotion. I had to double check that I wasn’t just dreaming all of this.

 

While Dark Eagle was trying to organize a venue we could use for our shows, I was already envisioning our starting roster and dreaming about were those guys could bring us eventually.

Edo Phoenix IV

He worked for Hinote Dojo until it was closed and than moved to Mexico to really perfect his craft. Returned to Japan in 2017 but had trouble finding a steady place. He is exactly what I want in a wrestler for our promotion. A very talented worker with a great look and an exciting fast paced style.

Eikichi Itou

A hard-hitting muscular heavyweight, he will be important for the other guys to play off of. Still only 25 years old, so a lot of room to grow.

Stealth Z

A great and flashy worker, had a couple of matches for EX2010 but couldn’t capitalize on it. Took his character from a popular anime, hope we are not getting cease and desists. Probably won’t be a big star for us, but can play a solid role and is still only 29 years old.

Yuta Isono

Calls himself „MegaStar“, and he is someone who maybe one day can be just exactly that. He is still very green but already has the confidence and cockiness of a star, Eagle loves him, told me that he can be a major player for us if we’re patient with him as he is only 21. I trust Eagle’s opinion and hope he is right. Atleast he seems to have some marketing potential as he got his finisher the Isono Face Melter trending on the internet.

 

 

Other than than that we went through unsigned dojo graduates and signed some guys we liked. All very green and for now nothing to write home about. We did make some deals with people from SAISHO and EX2010 to give our roster a little bit of structure. We signed The Diamond Dogs ( Jimmy Stratosphere & Motty Kuroda), the Night Terrors (Babau & Moroi) and Motoyuki Miyake all from SAISHO and also Jotaro Tanaka and Dial K for Kotani from EX2010.

 

So we had the vision and our roster together but we still hadn’t decided on a name yet. I remembered what my father told me that day. I had to build my own ship and start my own voyage. When WLW fired me and my dream was faling apart it was like a great flood was entering my world. And now Dark Eagle and I were building the ark to save our dreams from dying. There is the name.

Pro Wrestling

ARK

 

[naizen45]

On 2/24/2024 at 2:58 AM, siah463 said:

First name that comes to mind for Naizen is Dark Eagle, one of the best to ever do it he'd be a great person to have alongside you to run a company.

You guessed it right! One part in and I'm already getting predictable. Maybe it was more obvious than I thought...

[sonny912]

8 hours ago, naizen45 said:

1 ~building the ark

 

I opened the door and there he was, the former World Level Universal Champion in a suit and tie and of course his mask on. I couldn’t believe it.

Dark Eagle

„I’ve heard you were looking for me?“

 

He seemed to have heard that I was trying to reach out for him and decided it was a good idea to just knock at my door in the middle of the night. If I wasn’t so happy to finally have found him, I would probably be really scared.

 

We sat down and I made coffee for both of us. I told him what I had in mind and how I envisioned to establish a completely new wrestling promotion without much money. Told him about wanting to mix the new and exciting fast paced style and wrestlers of WLW with the fighting spirit of PGHW. Eagle and I talked the whole night about my plan. The things we need to do and especially the things we should try to avoid. We came up with some rules or more guidelines for our company.

 

1. Believing in our talents

Eagle and I both agreed that this is the only way to be successful. We don’t have the money to sign every big free agent. We need to make our own stars and this might take some time.

 

2. Ignore the Young Lion system

I already said I’m a huge PGHW fan, but what works for them doesn’t have to work for us. We can’t wait for our young talents to hone their skills a couple years and than go on excursion for another two to three years. If I have to wait five years before being able to push a young talent, this promotion might not exist anymore. If there is a 19 year old kid who is better than everybody, we have to make good use of him

 

3. Don’t poach from the other Japanese promotions

We want to build our own identity. If we have maybe BCG’s Razan Okamoto as our champion and maybe WLW’s Masa Kurata as a challenger, we are not helping ourselves with that. We would also have a hard time paying for the appearances of those two. Having the occasional WLW or EX2010 talent on our show is fine, but we don’t want any outside talent to hold any of our titles.

 

Dark Eagle and I were pretty much on the same page. I’m really glad at how this nightly interruption turned out. The sun was already going up when we finished our little „meeting“ and Dark Eagle assured me that we would do this together and create something special.

 

This all so surreal to me, having a business meeting with a former World Level Universal champion in my living room in the middle of the night to start my own wrestling promotion. I had to double check that I wasn’t just dreaming all of this.

 

While Dark Eagle was trying to organize a venue we could use for our shows, I was already envisioning our starting roster and dreaming about were those guys could bring us eventually.

Edo Phoenix IV

He worked for Hinote Dojo until it was closed and than moved to Mexico to really perfect his craft. Returned to Japan in 2017 but had trouble finding a steady place. He is exactly what I want in a wrestler for our promotion. A very talented worker with a great look and an exciting fast paced style.

Eikichi Itou

A hard-hitting muscular heavyweight, he will be important for the other guys to play off of. Still only 25 years old, so a lot of room to grow.

Stealth Z

A great and flashy worker, had a couple of matches for EX2010 but couldn’t capitalize on it. Took his character from a popular anime, hope we are not getting cease and desists. Probably won’t be a big star for us, but can play a solid role and is still only 29 years old.

Yuta Isono

Calls himself „MegaStar“, and he is someone who maybe one day can be just exactly that. He is still very green but already has the confidence and cockiness of a star, Eagle loves him, told me that he can be a major player for us if we’re patient with him as he is only 21. I trust Eagle’s opinion and hope he is right. Atleast he seems to have some marketing potential as he got his finisher the Isono Face Melter trending on the internet.

 

 

Other than than that we went through unsigned dojo graduates and signed some guys we liked. All very green and for now nothing to write home about. We did make some deals with people from SAISHO and EX2010 to give our roster a little bit of structure. We signed The Diamond Dogs ( Jimmy Stratosphere & Motty Kuroda), the Night Terrors (Babau & Moroi) and Motoyuki Miyake all from SAISHO and also Jotaro Tanaka and Dial K for Kotani from EX2010.

 

So we had the vision and our roster together but we still hadn’t decided on a name yet. I remembered what my father told me that day. I had to build my own ship and start my own voyage. When WLW fired me and my dream was faling apart it was like a great flood was entering my world. And now Dark Eagle and I were building the ark to save our dreams from dying. There is the name.

Pro Wrestling

ARK

 

I figured this promotion was gonna be the NOAH of thr cverse just by the name.

[naizen45]

3 hours ago, sonny912 said:

I figured this promotion was gonna be the NOAH of thr cverse just by the name.

It's really only the name and maybe the green colorway in the logo that is inspired by them.

Other than that I don't think there will be much similarities. NOAH took a lot of the established stars from AJPW, which is exactly what Im trying to avoid. I'm also stsrting out much much smaller in size.

[neslo024]

I'm excited for this. I love a good puro dynasty. Once you have some money for foreign workers there are plenty of unemployed workers that will fit your style in Mexico.

[naizen45]

6 minutes ago, neslo024 said:

I'm excited for this. I love a good puro dynasty. Once you have some money for foreign workers there are plenty of unemployed workers that will fit your style in Mexico.

I'm glad you like it. I can tell you one unemployed mexican worker is already presented in the next part.

[sonny912]

2 hours ago, naizen45 said:

It's really only the name and maybe the green colorway in the logo that is inspired by them.

Other than that I don't think there will be much similarities. NOAH took a lot of the established stars from AJPW, which is exactly what Im trying to avoid. I'm also stsrting out much much smaller in size.

Took implies that they were all hired away like Bischoff taking guys like Guerrero, malenko, Benoit, Jericho, mysterio and Psychosis from ecw, NOAH  was a mass exodus of ajpw's entire roster outside of a handful of holdouts cause they all hated the way baba's wife wanted to run the company.

[naizen45]

6 hours ago, sonny912 said:

Took implies that they were all hired away like Bischoff taking guys like Guerrero, malenko, Benoit, Jericho, mysterio and Psychosis from ecw, NOAH  was a mass exodus of ajpw's entire roster outside of a handful of holdouts cause they all hated the way baba's wife wanted to run the company.

Oh I know about the exodus, I might have used the wrong words to explain what I mean. I wasnt really talking about the way they got them, but more the fact they had stars like for example Misawa when starting out fresh.

[naizen45]

2 ~humble beginnings

 

We finally got our first shows rolling and to be honest… they were pretty terrible. We had a lot of young guys who were just missing the experience needed to be serviceable wrestlers. Botched moves, awkwardly oversold moves, involuntary funny moments – we had it all. But I guess it’s all part of the growing and learning proccess, right?

 

We had a pretty good deal with the owners of the Gunma Hall, so that we could use them for all of our shows and could kind of call that our home venue. The Gunma Hall could hold up to 300 people, but we were already happy with a hundred people in attendance.

 

 

The good thing was, we were still getting more viewers from show to show. Even though it wasn’t the most profitable decision, we were mostly booking multi-men matches for our first few shows. We wanted to hide our young and inexperienced workers a bit behind the talents we loaned from SAISHO and EX2010.

 

One of the few bright spots was one of our young guys Yuta Isono. Blonde dyed hair and the unnecessary huge sunglasses he wore when entering the ring were his trademark. Probably every other Japanese wrestling company would have put him in black pants and told him to shave his hair, because he was still considered a young lion. But not us, his sneering arrogant attitude mixed with his great looks made him look like a star. In ring, performance wise he was one of the better young guys but still not good. I really hope that maybe with a couple matches under his belt and enough time to develop, he can be a star for us one day. He is exactly the type of talent that I want us to find and develop.

 

Yuta Isono

 

The other noteworthy wrestler was Edo Phoenix IV. He has had a pretty interesting story before signing with us. The first Edo Phoenix was a pretty innovative and popular high flyer in the 70s and 80s. While Edo Phoenix II and III didn’t have the greatest careers, Edo Phoenix IV is doing his best to live up to the first incarnation of his character, trying everything to reach the top of the wrestling world. He wrestled three years in Mexico to learn the lucha libre style, which fits quite well to our style. At the first shows he was head and shoulders above everyone else. He has high ambitions and I wouldn’t count on him staying very long with us, but for now he is the best we have and we are glad to have him.

 

Edo Phoenix IV

 

One day, Phoenix was introducing someone else to Dark Eagle and me. The young man couldn’t speak Japanese and had a quiet demeanor surrounding him. Phoenix told us he goes by the name of Astro and only speaks Spanish. Phoenix and Astro met when Phoenix was on excursion in Mexico a couple years ago and Astro was a 15 year old who ran away from home wanting to be a wrestler. Edo Phoenix took him under his wing. Still only 19 years old he decided it’s best for him to follow his mentor to Japan as he was having a hard time finding opportunities in Mexico. Phoenix was letting him live at his place, helping him to find footing in Japan.

 

Astro

 

We welcomed this addition, as we are very much in need of young talent that could maybe one day develop into stars for us. Dark Eagle was actually the head of recruitment, he had so much wrestling knowledge, saw so many young guys become stars that we wanted to use that for us.

 

A couple shows in, it was clear to Dark Eagle and me that we had to give our talents something to strive for...

 

[naizen45]

3 ~the title tournament

 

We finally wanted to crown our first champion. Even though I love the format of PGHW’s Elite Series and I would love to have a similar tournament for Pro Wrestling ARK one day, we decided to have a singles elimination tournament. With that you had to win every match to be crowned as the champion. We decided on 8 people to be the participants for the tournament and spread the tournament over 3 shows. It probably would have been smarter to have the semi-finals and finals on one day because it would have saved us some money, but for some reason I don’t remember, we didn’t do that. On the first day we started with the quarterfinals. Yuta Isono could move on to the next round by beating Shuga Amano, a young wrestler who had graduated from the Tokyo Wrestling Dojo about a year ago. The match was terrible but it’s fine, as both are still very green. Motoyuki Miyake defeated Astro, Stealth Z defeated Goto Hatamoto and Edo Phoenix defeated Eikichi Itou in the main event to move on to the next round.

 

Itou vs. Phoenix was well deserved as a main event and clearly the best match of the night. Itou’s muscular frame worked very well as a counter part to Phoenix’ lucha libre style. Phoenix actually seemed like he would struggle to get the probably heaviest guy on our roster up for his finisher the Phoenix Plex, but the moment was actually even better when he finally did manage to keep him up for his finish and than kept him down for the three count.

 

At the next show in the first semifinal Motoyuki Miyake from SAISHO met Yuta Isono. Isono started the match off great, having a bit of an advantage over his opponent. It wasn’t until Isono was leaning more into his cocky and arrogant antics when the tides were turning and Miyake was getting the upper hand. Miyake’s no-nonsense style made pretty quick process of the overconfident young boy Yuta Isono. He wore Isono down with some hard hitting kicks to the chest and was looking to finish the match with a Northern Lights Suplex but Isono kicked out just before the ref could count to three. Miyake’s Knockout Kick gave Isono the final blow and established Motoyuki Miyake as our first finalist.

 

Motoyuki Miyake

In the other semifinal Stealth Z was facing Edo Phoenix IV. In a fantastic fast paced bout Edo Phoenix would end up as the winner as he could put Z down with a Phoenix Plex. At the end of the match Phoenix announced that he wouldn’t let an outsider from another company hold the main title of the ARK. He promised to win against Miyake and hopes to celebrate his title win with as many fans as possible. A thought was flashing through my head „holding the title?“… Oh no we completely forgot to get a title!

 

I know it sounds ridiculous but through planning this whole tournament together with only Dark Eagle, we both completely forgot that we needed a title for our soon-to-be champion. To get a really cool custom made belt we needed money and some time, we had neither. So we were looking for some other opportunities as the tournament final was in just one day. Eagle told me he had a replica of an older World Level Universal championship belt that he got when he won the real one in 2004 against Haru Kurofuji the current head booker of WLW. He than went on to tell some stories about his first and only World Level Universal title reign, including losing it against Koki Ishibashi who was the head booker of WLW around the time they had the yakuza scandal, where Ishibashi was heavily involved with. I usually loved hearing Eagle’s stories about his active wrestling career but I had to stop him, as we had to find a solution to our problem. We couln’t use an old WLW belt and just stick something over it, right? I remembered there was some sort of second hand wrestling shop right around the Gunma Hall, where we held our shows. I thought maybe if I’m lucky they have some sort of generic title belt for us.

 

The day of the tournament final arrived and while we had a pretty unspectacular under card with most of our young guys battling it out in multi men matches, the atmosphere changed when Motoyuki Miyake and Edo Phoenix IV stepped into the ring. They started slowly feeling each other out, both competitors being careful not to make a mistake. This played right into this big match feeling that I really wanted to have for this match. After the slow beginning Phoenix was getting a bit of an upper hand. Miyake couldn’t hold up with Phoenix’ fast pace and it took a while for him to find the right answers to that. It wasn’t until Miyake started focusing on taking out Phoenix’ legs when Miyake came back into the match. A couple of Miyake’s stiff kicks really took the wind out of Phoenix’s sails and slowed him down drastically. Miyake than went on to take the fight to the ground, where he was clearly superior to Edo Phoenix. Miyake was dominating Phoenix on the ground, doing a lot of damage to Phoenix’ legs. Miyake showed to the fans in attendance that he is not only feared for his hard hitting kicks but also a dangerous tap out artist. After a couple leg lock versions he put Phoenix in a Figure 4 Leg Lock and it really looked like this could end the match as Phoenix was really close to tapping out but him reaching the ropes saved his title dreams.

 

Phoenix now was the one who got back into the match, with the way Miyake was working on his legs it was hard for him to go back to his usual style, so he decided that only his finisher the Phoenix Plex could lead him to victory. Miyake could prevent it for now, always fighting out of the Phoenix Plex just before Phoenix could lift him up and hit it. Miyake was now trying to finish the match too with his Knockout Kick but Phoenix dodged it and put Miyake down with a German Suplex right before finally hitting his Phoenix Plex. He pinned him succesfully and was crowned as the first WORLD of the ARK champion! The champ was struggling to walk after all the damage that had been done to his legs, but that wouldn’t stop him from celebrating with this new completely generic looking title belt that I had just bought before the show in the small wrestling shop right around the Gunma Hall!

 

WORLD of the ARK

[naizen45]

4 ~new faces

 

After Phoenix’ coronation we had some new exciting signings. The first one was Akihiro Hisato the 18 year old son of The Great Hisato, former BHOTWG Junior Heavyweight champion and four time World Level Universal champion. To our luck and surprise he didn’t sign with WLW, even though his father had a backstage role and was very much respected by everyone in the company. Akihiro somehow failed the tryouts for the Project Arkham School, WLW’s dojo. His story was that his father wanted to play hard on him and told him that he is not good enough yet even though he was clearly one of the best of the participants. He was told to try again next year, he he didn’t want to wait and decided to prove it to not only his father but also WLW. I’m not sure if this is the truth but either way I love when somebody wrestles with a chip on his shoulder, so we are happy to have him, even though he still might be WLW bound sooner or later.

 

We put him in a tag team with Beetle Kimura a protege of The Great Hisato. We thought it was kind of poetic putting the protege in a team with his mentor’s son. They worked pretty good together and Hisato’s name definitely helped him to win a couple fans for him.

 

Akihiro Hisato & Beetle Kimura

 

As an avid reader of japanese wrestling mags I stumbled upon an article with the title „The Return of the Monster“. They were talking about James Diaz the son of „The Monster“ Raymond Diaz who is the only gaijin to ever win the PGHW Elite Series. James Diaz was making his first steps in the wrestling world and we contacted him through social media. He told us he would indeed be down to do some bookings in Japan but as he is based in the states, we would have to pay for his travel expenses. That’s totally fair but sadly we didn’t have the money for that. James let us know that he is in Japan from time to time with his dad to visit some of his dad’s old friends and would be down to wrestle for us when he is there. Obviously not optimal but better than missing out on him completely.

James Diaz

 

In other news Commander Kawagishi, one of EX2010‘s stars, was said to be quitting the company completely and leaving immediately. Pretty shocking as he was considered as one of their cornerstones and was expected to be one of their major draws for the next years, considering he is just 29 years old. We thought that either WLW or BHOTWG would make an offer for him but they didn’t seem to care about him so we offered him to be part of our roster and he accepted.

 

Commander Kawagishi

 

Kawagishi settled in pretty well and formed a tag team with Yuta Isono which came out wonderfully as they had great chemistry when teaming together. They called themselves „Space Cadets“ as Kawagishi is a huge science fiction fan and Isono’s head is always above the clouds. The second part might be my own interpretation of the name to be honest. But he also proved that when the Space Cadets had a tag match against Edo Phoenix IV and his protege Astro and won with Isono pinning Astro after an Isono Face Melter (a Codebreaker). Isono challenged Edo Phoenix IV for a title match at our next event, but Phoenix told him Isono will get his match if he beats Astro in a singles match first.

 

So at the next show Isono was facing Astro in a singles match… and they bombed completely. Both were just not ready to hold a match on their own and we learned that the hard way. After round about 20 minutes Yuta Isono ended the awkward bout with his Isono Face Melter and than went on to challenge Edo Phoenix for his title for the next event just like they have said.

 

Even though he just had a catastrophic perfomance we of course couldn’t pull back and Isono was facing Edo Phoenix at the next event. And it was better as expected, Phoenix is a phenomenal worker who could probably have a decent match even with me as an opponent. Isono was better too, he probably just needs someone to elevate his performance a bit and Edo Phoenix was just the right guy for that. I’m sure one day will be Yuta Isono’s time to hold a title in the air but this night was not the time. It was a pretty easy defence for Edo Phoenix IV who could put Isono down after only 16 minutes with his Phoenix Plex. Isono’s arrogance was turning into a bit of frustration, he looked like the kid who always got what he wanted but now couldn’t get the thing he wanted the most. His friend and tag team partner Commander Kawagishi who was supporting him on the ringside the whole match, was bringing him to the back, while Phoenix was celebrating. Astro, Beetle Kimura and Akihiro Hisato were joining Phoenix in his celebrations all four of them were regular partners in multi men matches. Phoenix grabbed a mic and announced that they were forming a unit that will be feared by anyone who steps into the ring of the ARK. They called themselves FANTASÍA.

 

[naizen45]

 

5 ~the ace summit 2020

 

Some months went by and Edo Phoenix IV could successfully defend his title in some great matches against Eikichi Itou and than Stealth Z, which brought more and more people to the seats. Dark Eagle and I decided that we needed to have a big show in November and wanted to build up a big challenger for Phoenix. We thought the best way to do this is through a tournament win and so my dream to have a tournament like the Elite Series was about to be fulfilled. Of course we were not able to go as many days with as many participants as them but we made our own little version of it. We had two blocks with 4 people each and winners of the block would meet in the final. We called it the Ace Summit and the winner would be promised the main event of our big show in November, which would of course be for the WORLD of the ARK title.

 

BLOCK A

Eikichi Itou

Commander Kawagishi

Motoyuki Miyake

Stealth Z

 

BLOCK B

Edo Phoenix IV (Champion)

Akihiro Hisato

Shuga Amano

Jotaro Tanaka

 

As you might have noticed no Astro nor Yuta Isono, as we only wanted to have our best performers for this one. Akihiro Hisato proved himself and seemed more than ready even though he was still only 18. I also would love to have James Diaz in it, who had his debut a couple shows ago and really showed up big time. Sadly he wasn’t in Japan around the time of the tournament and so he wasn’t available for us.

 

Kawagishi was running through BLOCK A, winning every one of his three matches. Miyake gave him the hardest fight, stretching his limbs in every possible way he could think of. In the end Kawagishi prevailed and advanced to to the final.

 

BLOCK B was in for a couple surprises. Phoenix won his matches against Shuga Amano and Akihiro Hisato easily. Especially the young Hisato had a great match vs. Phoenix but in the end Phoenix was just a bit too much for him. In the final match of BLOCK B Phoenix faced up with Jotaro Tanaka who has also won his first two matches, to determine who was going to meet Kawagishi in the final. In a match were Phoenix was very close to winning, Tanaka caught him in a moment of surprise and could score a flash pinfall win over the champion, which was actually the first singles loss for Edo Phoenix IV. Tanaka could advance to the final of our first Ace Summit.

 

In a great bout Commander Kawagishi had the upper hand against Jotaro Tanaka. Their match actually was pretty similiar to the match were Phoenix won the title against Motoyuki Miyake. Tanaka who is a pretty similar type of wrestler to his friend Motoyuki Miyake, was focusing on taking the pace out of the match as he just couldn’t keep up with the speed of Commander Kawagishi, but in the end Kawagishi prevailed and put Tanaka down with his Diamond Dust which is basically a spinning Falcon Arrow. Kawagishi celebrated in the ring with his friend Yuta Isono who supported him from ringside, while Jotara Tanaka was brought to the back by Motoyuki Miyake. confetti was falling down as Dark Eagle presented the big Ace Summit trophy to the first winner of the tournament Commander Kawagishi. In the celebration there was a slightly awkward moment where the crowd could really sense Yuta Isono’s envy of Kawagishi’s big win, but he pulled himself together quickly and raised his friend’s arm in the air.

 

Kawagishi than went on to direct some words at his upcoming opponent and WORLD of the ARK champion Edo Phoenix IV, telling him that he will take the title from him as he will not survive his Diamond Dust finisher.

 

Even though the wrestling was getting better and better, financially we didn’t do too well with this tournament. We actually made a huge loss through it, our popularity just wasn’t high enough to do more than one show a month and for this tournament we just did four shows. I hope next year our situation is better as i wouldn’t want to do without a big annual tournament.

 

For now we were focusing on our big November show. We decided to call it ARK Wrestling COLOSSEUM, I don’t know if that even makes any sense but most of our fans don’t even know English that good, so we didn’t care too much.

 

Q: Who will be the winner of the first Wrestling COLOSSEUM main event?

 

Main Event

60 minutes time limit

WORLD of the ARK championship match

Edo Phoenix IV © vs. Commander Kawagishi

[naizen45]

6 ~welcome to the colosseum

 

The day had finally arrived and the whole roster including me and Dark Eagle couldn’t be more excited for this day. I honestly couldn’t sleep I was too excited for our main event. I mean Kawagishi and Edo Phoenix didn’t have a singles match against each other yet, they only faced each other in tag matches, so what if they have bad chemistry and completely disappoint? Should we have booked a singles match between them to test the waters? I didn’t know but these thoughts were too late anyway. I was just hoping for the best outcome, I mean those two were our best in-ring performers so they should do just fine right? I really felt like this was the show that would be important for our future direction, we couldn’t miss on this one.

 

We were starting to prepare for the show and normally I help a lot with everything, trying to do as much as I can, as I want our wrestlers to be as rested as possible before their matches. My good friend Koin Momotani, who was refereeing our matches since the first show told me to sit down and relax, as my nervousness prevented me from really being helpful. I mean it’s alright for him, it’s only a nice paycheck on the side for him, as he is a marine biologist for his day job. If ARK goes down, he will just go back to watching Pacific Manta Rays mate, like nothing happened. But he was right, my nervousness wasn’t helping

 

 

The seats began to fill in the Gunma Hall, there were round about 250 people there to see our wrestlers.

 

 

Astro vs. Yuta Isono

In the opening match Yuta Isono and Astro had a rematch. It wasn’t as bad as their first match but it was still not good. The idea behind it was that it was kind of a „preheater“ for the main event as Isono is affiliated with Commander Kawagishi and Astro is the protege of Edo Phoenix IV. Eagle and I also see those two guys as the future of ARK and want them to build a little bit of chemistry. Isono won the match after showing his Isono Face Melter.

 

Second match was a tag team showcase match. Four tag teams fighting against each other. We were thinking about establishing a tag team title soon and wanted to give our teams a little spotlight. The Night Terrors (Babau & Moroi) won against the teams of Akihiro Hisato & Beetle Kimura, Cloaked in Shadows (Shadow Ichimori & Prowler Igarashi) and Taiji Chajima & Wataru Kikumoto in a very chaotic match.

 

Next up was a multi men tag match. Motoyuki Miyake was assembling a team of hard hitting no-nonsense stoic badasses in Jotaro Tanaka, Eikichi Itou, Shuga Amano and Goro Hatamoto. They were calling themselves „Dominance“ and were kind of a counter movement to the flashy and loud characters we had other than them. A few weeks ago James Diaz was wishing to join them but was told that there wasn’t a place for a part timer like him, because Diaz was still only working for us occasionally whenever he happened to be in Japan. So he wanted to show them in a match at our biggest show that he is worthy of joining them and assembled a team of his own to match up against them. Ryobe Uno, Ritsu Ibata, Noritaka Imakura and Takuro Awatari joined him to make the 5 vs. 5 match complete. Tanaka could win the match for Dominance by submitting Ritsu Ibata. James Diaz had a great showing and almost won the match for his team but his effort wasn’t enough. Miyake showed him his respect by reaching out for a handshake after the match. This story didn’t seem finished yet.

 

Goro Hatamoto, Jotaro Tanaka, Motoyuki Miyake, Eikichi Itou, Shuga Amano

 

Main Event

Commander Kawagishi vs. Edo Phoenix IV

It was finally time for the main event as Kawagishi and then Edo Phoenix IV made their entrances. Edo Phoenix presented a new ring gear and colorway for his mask, coming in a white-gold look - fitting for a champion. After the bell rang it turned really quiet, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Excitement was in the air, my nervousness went away in this moment I stopped being a wrestling promoter and started being just a fan again, even if it’s just for this match. Kawagishi and Phoenix really showed up big time. Fast paced action, always trying to be a step ahead from your opponent mixed with a strong fighting spirit. Twenty minutes into the match after a Dragon Suplex that almost brought Kawagishi the title, Phoenix rolled outside of the ring to get a rest. It wasn’t long until Kawagishi jumped with a Tope Atomico right after him and brought both of them to the ground with his daring maneuver. He than gave Phoenix a DDT to the hard floor in the Gunma Hall. Kawagishi put Phoenix back in the ring and pinned him, but Phoenix could kick out. Kawagishi wants to finish the match but Phoenix could always slip out of the Diamond Dust until he finally delivers a Phoenix Plex out of nowhere to Kawagishi. The move that would guarantee a win for Phoenix in every match in the ARK he had up until this point. Phoenix was to weak to go for the direct cover and might’ve taken a bit too long to finally cover the challenger, as Kawagishi could kick out just before referee Momotani could count to three. The first one to kick out of the Phoenix Plex!

 

After laying side to side for a while, they both got to their knees and started trading elbows to the face. Both didn’t have much left in the tank and were running on pure adrenaline. Finally Phoenix got up and bodyslammed Kawagishi down just before climbing the turnbuckle with his last energy. He started to show us something we haven’t seen before from him. He turned his back to Kawagishi lying on the ground and than jumped with a very athletic maneuver down to him. A move he would later call the Phoenix Splash. Kawagishi finally stayed down and Phoenix leaves ARK Wrestling COLOSSEUM as the champ.

 

Dark Eagle had a surprise for the retaining champion and brought a briefcase to the ring. He opened it and revealed the new championship belt to Phoenix. This time it even had our name on it and it looked good around Phoenix’ waist.

 

 

Through Phoenix’ celebration Jotaro Tanaka came to the ring and challenged Phoenix to a title match at ARK Final Quest the last show of the year for us. In the Ace Summit Tanaka could score a flash pinfall win over Phoenix to advance to the finals where he lost against Kawagishi. Still, successfully pinning the champion earns the right to challenge for the title which Tanaka now just did.

 

[Wrestling Machine]

Hey man! What's ARK product? 😉 Also, it seems very junior heavyweight-oriented, am I right? 

[naizen45]

6 hours ago, Wrestling Machine said:

Hey man! What's ARK product? 😉 Also, it seems very junior heavyweight-oriented, am I right? 

Hey! Yeah you are right the focus is definitely on junior heavyweights with a couple heavyweights mixed in (James Diaz, Eikichi Itou for example). 

In my head it's mostly New Japan's junior heavyweight division with a bit of inspiration from Stardom (all the masked wrestlers, the factions, trusting very young people to be future stars)

In the game the product I'm currently using (I'm a bit ahead in my savegame)  is "LuchaResu", as I thought it would be the most fitting. I had a different product at first because I didn't put too much thoughts into it, but had to change it after getting a really bad rating when booking a draw ( I think it was "Wrestling as a sport" or something similar)

[naizen45]

7 ~end of the year 2020

 

Our first year as a promotion was slowly coming to an end. In our last show of the year called ARK Final Quest, Edo Phoenix IV could successfully defend the title once again this time against Dominance’s Jotara Tanaka. It wasn’t as great as his defense against Kawagishi, but none the less a good match for us to end the year.

 

Edo Phoenix IV & Jotaro Tanaka

 

The Space Cadets, Commander Kawagishi and Yuta Isono were really making waves as a tag team, as they were not only winning their matches, but also doing it in great fashion. Kawagishi bounced back really fast after his loss to Edo Phoenix, but he really had to hold back his young tag team partner Yuta Isono from time to time, who seemed to go a lot over the top with his bouts of arrogance.

Commander Kawagishi & Yuta Isono, the Space Cadets

 

 

Some exciting news for me were when the annual end-of-the-year issue of the Nippon Sports Magazine was sold. As as avid reader of the magazine I was really excited when I saw Pro Wrestling ARK being acknowledged by them for the first time. They were rating shows and matches by a rating from 0 to 100, they didn’t do this for every of our shows of course. But they did rate the whole of Wrestling COLOSSEUM, Phoenix title defenses and also some of the Ace Summit matches. They rated Wrestling COLOSSEUM a 59 with the main event of Kawagishi vs. Phoenix being rated as a 71, which was also our highest rated match of the year. Our second best match was Phoenix’ defense against Jotaro Tanaka at Final Quest (rated 68) and Kawagishi’s win over Motoyuki Miyake (rated 60) to advance to the Ace Summit Finals completed the top three.

 

The highest rated match in all of Japanese promotions was PGHW’s Masaru Ugaki vs. Kozue Kawashima at Night of Glory with an almost perfect rating of 99. The match wasn’t even for the title as Ugaki would win against Kawashima to secure himself a shot at the title.

 

Emerald Angel was crowned as the top performer, by having an average match rating of 82 for the whole of 2020, his highest being a tag team match with Sensational Dragon as his partner facing off against Elemental III and MYSTIC Dragon at BHOTWG Quest of the Heart with a 97 rating. The aforementioned Quest of the Heart was also the show of the year with a rating of 94.

 

The joshi promotion 5 Star Supreme Wrestling had a great year, earning themselves the Most Improved Company of the Year award and also the Best Young Wrestler award for Rina Kasahara. Honorable mentions for this award were Daigo Goya and Yuri Yoshihara who both were PGHW guys on excursion at TCW and both had really great matches with Wolf Hawkins. Goya even had a whole feud with him, even though it was pretty one sided, they had an 88 rated match together.

 

So our first year as a wrestling company came to an end and Eagle and I were pretty satisfied with how things went. We thought we had a good core of wrestlers with Edo Phoenix and his FANTASÍA, the Space Cadets (Kawagishi & Isono) and the whole Dominance faction. I really believed that all this guys had an even brighter future.

 

Dark Eagle & Naizen Uboshita

 

[naizen45]

8 ~tag team tournament

 

Another year, another tournament! The plan was to crown our first tag team champions at our 1st Anniversary Show in February. The Space Cadets consisting of Yuta Isono & Commander Kawagishi could not be stopped and won the tournament and the title in a good match against Akihiro Hisato & Beetle Kimura. We had some sport of press area where we would do little press conferences which we would upload after the shows. Kawagishi praised his young partner Yuta Isono but also warned him to not let the success get to his head.

In their first defense they went up against Shuga Amano & Goro Hatamoto representing Dominance. They didn’t have much trouble picking up the win, with Yuta Isono pinning Hatamoto after giving him a Isono Face Melter. We saw Hatamoto and Amano as a huge part of our tag team division, as they both had their first real matches in Pro Wrestling ARK and seemed pretty loyal to us. But with both in their early twenties they still had some time to grow. Isono rubbed that in their face when he posed with his foot on Hatamoto’s chest after pinning him successfully. Kawagishi pulled his friend and tag team partner away from Hatamoto and an angry Amano who wasn’t happy about Isono’s behavior.

 

Kawagishi & Isono - the Space Cadets

 

Edo Phoenix IV defended his title once again, this time against one half of the Diamond Dogs Motty Kuroda. It was already his 7^th defense and his reign was about to scratch the one year mark, while it didn’t seem like it was coming to an end soon.

 

Edo Phoenix IV

 

In other news Hiroyasu Gakusha left BHOTWG. The former GCG star was unhappy with his booking as other than his highly rated match against Matthew Keith he wasn’t given much to do. It was highly speculated that Gakusha would be joining his mentor Yoshifusa Maeda in BCG or BHOTWG’s big rivals PGHW. Many people were surprised when he showed up at Pro Wrestling SAISHO instead. Of course we tried our luck with him but he would turn us down telling us we were too small for him.

 

Hiroyasu Gakusha

To get our popularity going a bit, we also decided to organize shows where fans didn’t have to pay for tickets. We called them FREE 4 ALL and mostly used our more inexperienced and cheap workers for that. We did one FREE 4 ALL show every month. It did work really well and helped us to get more fans in the seats even for shows where they had to pay

 

Another promising young wrestler started to make his first steps in ARK in the first quarter of 2021. An 18 year old Japanese kid trained at the Tokyo Wrestling Dojo who went by only his last name as his ring name – Nakayama. This guy was very talented and really impressed everybody already at his first matches. He stood out with nice long hair and black and yellow face paint. I honestly knew he was a bit crazy when he suggested to me that it would be a cool spot if somebody power-bombed him through a table – in his debut, on a FREE 4 ALL show, in the opener. I told him that I really like his energy, but we might save a spot like that for later. Edo Phoenix IV was already keeping an eye on him, wanting to recruit him for FANTASÍA.

 

Nakayama

 

[naizen45]

9 ~ a new world

 

At ARK A NEW WORLD the Space Cadets were up to defend their tag team titles against the Night Terrors Babau and Moroi. What for a long time seemed like an easy defense for the Space Cadets turned into trouble when Isono was once again much more into the posing and hyping up the crowd aspect. Isono was so much into it that he was completely unaware that Babau and Moroi were already plotting behind his back, while Kawagishi was laying outside. Moroi and Babau used Isono’s unawareness to their advantage and put him in their tag team finisher the Sleep Paralysis to get the win and the BOND of the ARK titles. Isono was heavily regretting his mistake and apologizing to Kawagishi, who was disappointed but tried to raise Isono’s spirit up.

 

Babau & Moroi - The Night Terrors

 

 

The young guy Nakayama had more great performances, especially for a guy his age, he looked fearless out there. He wasn’t scared of anyone or anything. He started following the calls from FANTASÍA leader Edo Phoenix IV and started teaming with them regularly. Phoenix saw a lot of similarities between him and Astro, as they both were daredevils who gave everything in the ring but still had a lot to learn. Phoenix wanted him to join FANTASÍA permanently but Nakayama was hesitant, as he didn’t got along too well with the other two young guys in Astro and Akihiro Hisato.

 

Soon Nakayama would decide to join them permanently, because he wanted to learn from the best and he thought Edo Phoenix was just exactly that. Akihiro Hisato and especially Astro didn’t enjoy that decision at all. Phoenix was proposing to Astro to team with Nakayama and go for the tag team titles together, but his idea wasn’t received very well by them.

 

Nakayama - the newest member of FANTASÍA

 

James Diaz told us he was moving to Japan permanently. He didn’t get us as many opportunities in the states as he had wished, so he decided to commit to the ARK. This changed our plans for the future drastically as Dark Eagle and I thought that James Diaz had a big future and could be the next big thing in Japan, especially now with his commitment to us.

 

James Diaz

 

In other exciting news WLW changed their head booker. Haru Kurofuji decided to stop down as he felt a bit burned out with his double duty as booker and active wrestler. The legendary Haruki Kudo took over… Yes the same Haruki Kudo that bankrupted GCG with his disastrous run as CEO and head booker for them. We will see how things turn out, but a lot of people from WLW were in doubt.

 

The Ace Summit 2021 was right around the corner and we already announced the blocks beforehand. Other than Nakayama, who just recently debuted the only real surprise was Konrad Makinen. No one knew what to expect from him, he never wrestled in Japan before. Dark Eagle saw videos of the Swedes matches in Europe and thought he would be a great addition. It was a huge risk to put him in a our biggest tournament but I really trusted Dark Eagle with his opinion on talents.

 

BLOCK A

Edo Phoenix IV (WORLD of the ARK)

 

Akihiro Hisato

 

Yuta Isono

 

Moroi (SAISHO) (BOND of the ARK)

 

Babau (SAISHO) (BOND of the ARK)

 

Konrad Makinen (UEW)

 

BLOCK B

Motoyuki Miyake

 

Commander Kawagishi

 

James Diaz

 

Nakayama

 

Jotaro Tanaka

 

Astro

 

Q:

Who will win BLOCK A?

 

Who will win BLOCK B?

 

Who will win the Ace Summit 2021?

 

Edited 26 minutes ago by naizen45