Minoru Tanaka

, also known by the ring names and the mononymous , is a Japanese professional wrestler, shoot wrestler and mixed martial artist. He is currently signed to Gleat, predominantly performing in its G Prowrestling and Lidet UWF divisions; he also serves as Gleat's UWF Rules Technical Officer. Known as "The Special One", Tanaka first gained prominence in Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi (PWFG) and Fighting Investigation Team Battlarts (Battlarts) before moving on to New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), where he became a four time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion, a five time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion and the winner of the 2006 Best of the Super Juniors tournament. After leaving NJPW, he joined All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he found continued success in the junior heavyweight and tag team ranks upon winning the World Junior Heavyweight Championship once and the All Asia Tag Team Championship twice. From 2013 to 2016, Tanaka worked for Wrestle-1. He also performed for Pro Wrestling Noah (Noah), where he held the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship twice and is a former GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion, making him the second man (after Naomichi Marufuji) to hold all three major Japanese junior heavyweight singles titles as well as the only man to hold all five major junior heavyweight titles in Japan (counting the aforementioned tag team prizes). Professional wrestling career Early years 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 Fighting Network Rings (where he competed in some legitimate shoot fights), Kingdom, Michinoku Pro and Big Japan Pro Wrestling. Tanaka's first championship, the UWA World Middleweight Championship (originally based in Mexico and introduced in Japan through Universal Lucha Libre and Michinoku), came in 1996. He later won Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling's Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship (which was outsourced to Battlarts after Hiromichi Fuyuki abolished all previous FMW titles and replaced them with WEW titles).