Search Results - Tetsuya Naito

Tetsuya Naito

is a Japanese professional wrestler. He is working as a freelancer. He is best known for his 21-year run in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) from 2004 to 2025, and is largely regarded as one of the best and most popular wrestlers in the company's history, where he was a five-time world champion.

Naito began training for a professional wrestling career in 2000, initially under Animal Hamaguchi before joining NJPW in 2004, where he underwent further training and progressively rose to main event status. Although NJPW aimed to establish him as a top star by 2014, his clean cut babyface persona caused significant fan backlash, leading his planned main event match at Wrestle Kingdom, NJPW's biggest event, to be demoted to the mid-card. This, and a stay in the Mexican stable ''Los Ingobernables'' through NJPW's partnership with Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), would lead Naito to reinvent himself as an antihero leading his own stable, ''Los Ingobernables de Japon''. Despite its vilainous tendencies, this new gimmick immediately led him to new heights of popularity, and he would won the company's top prize, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, thrice, and its direct successor, the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, twice, while finally main-eventing Wrestle Kingdom five separate times.

In NJPW, Naito is also the winner of the 2013, 2017 and 2023 editions of the G1 Climax, NJPW's premier singles tournament, and of the 2016 New Japan Cup. Other accomplishments include being the first person to hold the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships at the same time, a feat he accomplished twice, and being together with partner Yujiro Takahashi as No Limit the first team to have held both the company's heavyweight and junior heavyweight tag titles. He was awarded ''Tokyo Sports''s MVP Award, the publication's highest honor, in 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2023. Provided by Wikipedia