Maeda was suspended immediately for the unprofessional act. New Japan was willing to bring him back if he agreed to several stipulations, including six months of having to wrestle in Mexico (doing Lucha Libre or American style would be the ultimate insult because of everything he had said) as well as put Choshu over clean in a singles match because in its own bizarre way the incident had hurt Choshu's reputation with the fans. Instead, Maeda got backers, and in 1988, the second UWF was formed. While the first UWF was only a success in Tokyo, Maeda's name had grown from the two years of New Japan TV, and mainstream fans understood the style better from its television exposure. Not unlike Vince McMahon, and Rikidozan before him, the man who perpetrated the unprofessional and cowardly act benefitted by their business growing to greater heights than anyone could imagine. Maeda, in the eyes of many fans, was the guy so hardcore he wanted to fight for real and New Japan fired him for it, and now he was going to have his own company where the pro wrestlers fought for real.
It immediately become the hottest wrestling promotion in the world, selling out every show in minutes behind Maeda, who was voted 1988 Wrestler of the Year, still the only wrestler in history not in one of the big four historical promotions of this generation (NWA/WCW, WWF, All Japan or New Japan) to win the award. The peak was on November 29, 1989, when Maeda became the first wrestler ever to sellout the Tokyo Dome, drawing the largest gate in wrestling history up to that point ($2.9 million) for his match with European judo champion Willie Wilhelm. But due to mismanagement with finances, that company folded barely one year later, leading to the three top stars, Maeda, Takada and Fujiwara, going their separate ways. And all having a hand in changing pro wrestling forever.
Fujiwara formed Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, which had the least success of the three, but ended up leading to the most revolutionary move of all, when the group's three top younger stars, Wayne Shamrock (who later became famous as Ken Shamrock), Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki quit, largely frustrated at the aging Fujiwara's refusal to pass the torch to them. In 1993, they formed Pancrase, the first attempt at doing legitimate pro wrestling matches. Takada formed UWFI, which was hot as hell for several years, but collapsed rather quickly for a number of reasons, part of which was Takada's never facing Rickson Gracie after the incident where Gracie destroyed Anjo in a dojo fight. But Takada's fame from that period led not only to the hottest feud up to that point in pro wrestling history with the New Japan vs. UWFI feud and Takada's string of record breaking houses against the New Japan stars in 1995-96. Years later, when the Takada-Rickson Gracie matches finally took place, it put Pride on the map.
Maeda went his own way, figuratively turning his back on pro wrestling, by teaming with WOWOW to do an offshoot of the UWF, only claiming it to not be pro wrestling, even though it was, and claiming it to be a new sport they were going to invent called RINGS. His first goal was to avoid all ties with pro wrestling, by not using any North Americans or Mexicans, even if they had experience with only so-called (worked) shoot promotions. His talent instead came from contacts that gave him access to Eastern European Olympic athletes, Russian sambo champions and big real fighters, street fighters and bouncers from Holland. The idea was not to use anyone with a taint of pro wrestling in them, a doctrine they didn't always follow. Many of his hardcore followers were mad, when years later, Maeda brought in Fujiwara to be his opponent on a big show, but it ended up being a major financial success. A modern day James Naismith was his new goal.
Because Maeda was such a big mainstream name and draw, RINGS, which opened in May 1991 was drawing huge crowds for monthly shows to see Maeda face largely unknown fighters. The shows were built around Maeda as the big draw, and a famous karate fighter named Masaaki Satake, an aging Holland Sambo legend named Chris Dolman and his stable of fierce Amsterdam street fighters and bouncers, most notably dikk Vrij, Maeda's first major opponent, and Hanse Nyman. One of his leading promoters was a Seido Kaikan karate studio owner named Kazuyoshi Ishii, who learned about the promotion of pro wrestling, brought it to the martial arts world, and two years later, created K-1 with Satake as his first major drawing card. The original Battle Dimension tournament in 1992, a worked format which led to the popularity of similar tournaments in the shoot world, featured future K-1 stars Satake and Nobuaki Kikuta doing worked pro wrestling matches. In a first round match on October 29, 1992, Maeda beat a reputed sambo champion from Russia named Volk Han. Han would go on to become his greatest in-ring rival, one of the most popular foreigners athletes of the decade in Japan and the 90's great innovator in submission and worked shoot wrestling.
RINGS would often do shoot matches on the undercard, although that wasn't revolutionary because UWF had done some shoots as well, although never with any of the big names. The ultimate Maeda irony was that his dream was to create a sport, not pro wrestling organization, where they would fight for real under pro wrestling rules. RINGS started with points for knockdowns and rope breaks, and with no closed fist punching. As UFC style fighting gained popularity, rope breaks and points were eliminated and finally, fighters started wearing gloves and punching was legalized. The only difference RINGS maintained to the end as compared to a Pride, Pancrase or UFC, was no closed fist punching or knees on the ground, leading to more of an emphasis on submission technique as opposed to brawling and ground-and-pound. With more frequent stand-ups, it created a cleaner and faster-paced and less brutal looking sport. But it was also one less marketable, particularly in countries that had seen UFC or Vale Tudo first like the United States. In the end, Maeda temporarily did achieve his goal. But he himself had to retire to do so, because he himself was never willing to risk his reputation in a shoot.
Maeda and Han largely carried the promotion through its most successful box office period through 1996. After Yamamoto, who had been a jobber up to that point, went 21:00 in his first shoot match ever, against none other than Rickson Gracie, he started getting pushed as the guy who would replace Maeda on top. But it was a struggle, as Maeda's bad knees forced several operations, and business was always weak during his time off using Yamamoto on top. Finally, when Tamura, already something of a big star as Takada's No. 2 star in UWFI, who started with the original UWF as a teenager and was injured in his first match by Maeda, refused to participate in the New Japan vs. UWFI feud, he chose RINGS above Pancrase and was an immediate big hit. Tamura largely carried the main events in 1996, and even though he was just 185-pounds, his ability to make worked matches look real and combine pro wrestling psychology with shoot tactics made him an in ring phenomenon. Some would say he was the best performer in the entire business, and he became an immediate drawing card as every wrestler who jumps promotions with a name should be when handled correctly. With Maeda out, Tamura and Han saved the 1996-97 tournament and had a classic final match on January 22, 1997 before 11,800 fans at Budokan Hall with Han winning. Maeda, whose knees and conditioning had gotten so bad by this point he was a shell of his former self, knew retirement was near. He put Tamura over by submission in the semifinals of the 1997-98 tournament and Tamura, in spectacular fashion, won the tournament to become officially the group's No. 1 star.
But despite Tamura's skill and charisma, the promotion was never the same after Maeda retired on July 20, 1998 on what up to that point was the group's biggest show in its history, selling out the Yokohama Arena with 17,000 fans. When Maeda retired, the promotion started doing more and more shooting matches, to where it became 50% of most cards. This led to a few exciting pro wrestling matches mixed in with slower and duller shoots involving a lot of heavyweight Olympic style wrestlers with little experience in either striking or submissions, a recipe that led to falling gates, although the loss of Maeda was probably more important to the popularity going down. Another match of huge impact was when unheralded kickboxer Valentijn Overeem from Holland, who had waxed undercard fighter Wataru Sakata in a shoot match on a RINGS show in Holland, was brought over for a shoot match to get eaten up by the more skilled Tamura. While Overeem had Tamura by 30 pounds, Tamura had beaten people like that in the past, usually in the blink of an eye, because he was an expert for real at submissions. Even though it was only three years ago, it was a generation ago from a fighting standpoint, as the overall skill level of fighters hadn't evened out enough to where a weight disadvantage like that couldn't be overcome by greater skill. However, Overeem showed up with submission knowledge that nobody expected, and the unknown totally embarrassed Tamura, injuring him in the process, and badly hurting his rep. Ironically in Tamura, they had the real deal, as he proved with shoot wins over the likes of Renzo Gracie (Renzo's first ever professional loss), UFC champs like Maurice Smith, Pat Miletich and Dave Menne, as well as UFC stars like Elvis Sinosic and Jeremy Horn. He even had a 30:00 draw with Frank Shamrock which remains the only blemish on Shamrock's record in the last six years and to this day Shamrock says Tamura was the best kicker he was ever in the ring with. But Tamura's drawing power was never the same after the first Overeem match, even when he managed to get revenge via submission in a worked match a year later. The frequent shoot matches after the change in format led to him being overworked and broke his body down. After Tamura won the RINGS world heavyweight title, at 185 pounds, in a worked match against 320-pound Bitszadze Tariel (the one RINGS major star who was totally exposed when they went to shoots), he took a horrible beating when he lost the title as a shoot to Yvel, who had him by probably 35 pounds. Tamura could have won the match as he could take Yvel down at will, but due to the frequent stand-ups ordered by the ref, took terrible punishment as he couldn't hang with him standing. He was never the same in the ring, and after a series of losses, quit the promotion in May, which signalled publicly that the end was likely near.
From a notoriety standpoint, the company's biggest event ever was on February 21, 1999, when Maeda came out of retirement for the first and only pro wrestling match of Alexander Karelin. Karelin, who, with more than 250 consecutive wins in Greco-roman wrestling dating back 12 years and three Olympic gold medals, was considered by many to be the single greatest wrestler who ever lived. A ripped to shreds 296-pound Karelin beat Maeda is a very believable looking (so believable that to this day within the amateur wrestling world, Maeda's getting a submission rope break point on Karelin in the match was used as evidence that even the mighty Karelin could have been beaten in UFC) pro wrestling match. Karelin won via points, and gave Maeda quite a beating even though it was worked, before 17,048 paying $2,479,000 at Yokohama Arena--the largest gate ever for a pro wrestling match in an arena setting. While Karelin was the most famous, he was hardly the only Olympic level competitor brought to RINGS to do what amounted to pro wrestling matches. In fact, more Olympic athletes worked for RINGS likely than any pro wrestling promotion in history. The list includes Hank Numan (1980 bronze medal in judo for Holland), Dan Henderson (1992 and 1996 U.S. Olympic wrestler), Kiril Barbuto (Bulgarian 1992 Olympic wrestler), David Khakhalesshvili (Georgian judo player who beat Naoya Ogawa to win the 1992 superheavyweight gold medal), Pieter Smit (1992 Holland judo), Svilen Russinov (Bulgarian boxer who was 1992 bronze medalist), Zaza Tkeschelaschvili (1996 Georgia freestyle wrestler who became something of a cult favorite as Grom Zaza), Zaza Turminadze (1996 Bulgarian freestyle wrestler), Gogitidze Bakrouri (1996 Bulgarian Greco-roman wrestler) and Georgi Kandalaki (Bulgarian boxer).
In 1999, Maeda changed the annual tournament, and thus the promotion itself, to an all-shoot format, with an outstanding tournament won by Henderson. But by this time the company was being picked apart by Pride, which immediately raided Henderson. It also raided Yvel right after he won the world heavyweight title from Tamura.
Things had come full circle for the group, which in 1998 promoted some of the best pro wrestling matches in the world, when on February 24, 2001 at Sumo Hall in its final hurrah, before a near sellout of 10,260, it promoted perhaps the best shoot tournament ever in terms of excitement and easily the most underrated show of the year. Future UFC champ Menne had an incredible match with pro wrestler Hiromitsu Kanehara. Past the age of 40, the groups' most famous foreign star ever, Han, in a shoot format, lost via decision to Nogueira, and he turned out to be the most competitive of any opponent Nogueira faced all year, which showed that Han's reputation as a shooter that he brought to RINGS in the early 90s was legitimate. Nogueira later beat Kanehara and Overeem (who had tapped out UFC heavyweight champ Randy Couture in the semifinals in 56 seconds) to win the tournament. But Nogueira and Overeem were then snatched up by Pride.
Finally recognizing the mistakes they made by putting Tamura in with much bigger guys, who he was almost always competitive with but his body was breaking down, they created a 198-pound division for Tamura to win, but by this time his injuries were such that he wasn't even competitive with top guys of his own size. Instead, Ricardo Arona won the tournament, and immediately thereafter, was the next to jump to Pride.
And the tour is too long in general, losing serious steam 
Sho and Shingo have been the highlights. I can't fukking stand Ospreay at this stage, stop with the posing off stuff you dweeb.
I put in some videos too
This is the first time in like....15 years I recall any hype for it. What's the watch list, I might try to watch a few matches before bed because if I don't start before the G1 I'm definitely never watching any of these matches
