Akira Maeda

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Born
1959 (66 years old)
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Osaka, Japan

Position
Wrestler

Status
Active

Ethnicity
Asian

Team Number

Height
1.92 m

Weight
115 kg

Outfitter

Kit
Wage Year

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No Cutout thumb

Archive

Full Body Render

Sport

Fighting

Team
RINGS Japan

2nd Team

League
RINGS

Creative Commons Artwork
No

Description

Akira Maeda (前田日明, Maeda Akira) is a Japanese Professional Wrestler and Mixed Martial Arts promoter, best known for his role in the Japanese shoot-style wrestling chronicle and posterior MMA boom. Formerly a Kyokushin Karate competitor, he debuted in 1978 for New Japan Pro-Wrestling and revealed as a promising rookie, traveling to England to wrestle there under the name of "Kwik-Kick-Lee", in storyline Bruce Lee's cousin. Eventually he left with Satoru Sayama, Nobuhiko Takada and other wrestlers to form Universal Wrestling Federation, pioneering the realistic shoot movement. However, he caused the fall of the promotion when shot on Sayama during a match due to an early disagreement. Upon their return to New Japan, he and Takada became the young leaders of a shoot invasion, gaining the IWGP Tag Team Championship with him and fellow shooter Osamu Kido. Maeda gained extreme amounts of popularity and was even considered to replace main star Antonio Inoki, but Inoki vetoed the idea and Maeda left again, not without shooting on another wrestler. After another failed incarnation of UWF, Maeda contacted Russian sambo fighters and Dutch kickboxers and created Fighting Network RINGS, a shoot-style company who derived into full MMA over time. Maeda is currently retired from competition and figures as the head of the resurrected RINGS and an amateur MMA company called The Outsider.

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