Minoru Tanaka (wrestler)

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For a Japanese mathematician , see Minoru Tanaka (mathematician).
For a Japanese actor, see Minoru Tanaka (actor).

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Minoru Tanaka
Statistics
Ring name(s)	Minoru Tanaka HEAT Minoru Tanaka The Orange Prince
Billed height	175 cm (5 ft 9 in)
Billed weight	90 kg (198 lb)
Born	November 29, 1972 (1972-11-29) (age 35) Komaki, Aichi
Debut	January 24, 1994 vs Mark Ashford (Mark Starr)

Minoru Tanaka (田中稔, Tanaka Minoru) is a Japanese professional wrestler.

[edit] Career

Minoru Tanaka was originally a shootboxer. He started his career as a wrestler in Fujiwara Gumi, trained by its owner, Yoshiaki Fujiwara. In late 1995 Tanaka and everyone else in the promotion abandoned Fujiwara and formed their own promotion, BattlARTS, led by Yuki Ishikawa. Despite being a simulated shoot style professional wrestling promotion, BattlARTS, like its predecessor, often cooperated with other federations and styles, such as RINGS, Kingdom, Michinoku Pro and Big Japan Pro Wrestling. Tanaka's first championship, the UWA World middleweight title (originally based in Mexico and introduced in Japan through Universal Lucha Libre and Michinoku), came in 1996. He later won FMW's Independent junior heavyweight title (which was outsourced to Battlarts after Hiromichi Fuyuki abolished all previous FMW titles and replaced them with WEW titles).

In 2000 Tanaka joined New Japan Pro Wrestling. His natural talent enabled him to immediately rise in the junior heavyweight ranks and win the IWGP junior tag team title in July with Koji Kanemoto, who used a similar but more ground-oriented style. The Kanemoto-Tanaka combination was reminiscent of the old Akira Maeda-Nobuhiko Takada combination in 1987. In October, Tanaka won the IWGP junior heavyweight title - thus becoming the first man to hold both junior titles at the same time.

In 2002 Tanaka began wearing a mask and calling himself "HEAT" (ヒート) after the GBA video game Toukon Heat. Like the game, the HEAT character often floundered, and could only attain success after turning heel and joining Jushin Liger's new faction, Control Terrorism Unit (C.T.U.) Earlier in the year he married recently-retired female wrestler Yumi Fukawa.

In 2005, after losing his third IWGP junior heavyweight title to new rival Tiger Mask IV, HEAT unmasked but dropped his surname and began calling himself simply Minoru (稔). With new CTU recruit Hirooki Goto he won the IWGP junior tag team titles for a third time.

In 2006, Minoru joined the American Total Nonstop Action Wrestling promotion as a member of Team Japan (consisting of Hirooki Goto, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Black Tiger IV and Minoru), one of the four teams competing in the TNA 2006 World X-Cup Tournament. He debuted in TNA on April 23, 2006 at TNA Lockdown 2006, where he teamed with Black Tiger and Hirooki Goto against Team USA members Sonjay Dutt, Jay Lethal and Alex Shelley. Team Japan defeated USA when Black Tiger pinned Lethal. On the April 27, 2006 episode of TNA iMPACT!, Goto and Minoru lost to Dutt and Shelley, giving a first round victory and two points to Team USA.

Later that year, Tanaka won the Best of the Super Junior XIII tournament, defeating Tiger Mask IV in the final.

In WRESTLE LAND, Minoru and Tanaka are separate, rival characters.

On December 24, 2006, Minoru defeated old partner and rival Kanemoto to become IWGP Junior Heavyweight champion for the fourth time.

In late 2007, Minoru joined the stable Shinsuke Nakamura's stable RISE. And he has recently added a Moonsault to his movelist. He is considered to be the most superior Armbar user in Puroresu, as Kendo Kashin rarely appears anymore.