Toshiaki Kawada

Toshiaki Kawada (川田 利明, Kawada Toshiaki) (born December 8, 1963) is a Japanese retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his work in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), whom he worked for from his debut in 1982 up until 2008. In the promotion, he was a five-time Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, a nine-time World Tag Team Champion, three-time winner of the Real World Tag League and a two-time winner of the Champion Carnival. He was also recognized as the ace of the promotion from 2000 to 2005.

A years-long contemporary of Mitsuharu Misawa, they made their debut in AJPW together in the 1980s. Kawada became the understudy of Genichiro Tenryu, one of the top stars of the promotion at the time, and was so until 1990 when the Revolution stable disbanded in the event of the SWS exodus. From then on, he became one of their top rising stars alongside Misawa and Kenta Kobashi, and would be the founding members of the Super Generation Army (超世代軍, Chou Sedai-gun). In 1993, he broke away from the stable and joined Tsuruta-accomplice Akira Taue as a unit, coining themselves as the Holy Demon Army (聖鬼軍, Sei Ki Gun). Their rivalry with Misawa and Kobashi was a huge turning point for AJPW in the 1990s, and the individual rivalry between Kawada and Misawa was considered the defining storyline of the 1990s in AJPW and Japan all-together. That same year, he had been coined as a member of the Four Heavenly Kings (プロレスの四天王, Puroresu no shiten'nō) line-up, alongside Misawa, Kobashi, and Taue.

When Misawa ended his relationship with AJPW and formed Pro Wrestling Noah, Kawada stayed loyal to AJPW, and was then picked by Motoko Baba (the widow of Giant Baba, the company founder) to be the leading wrestler on the roster. He had the longest individual reign of any Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion in the 2000s, and was tied (with Kento Miyahara's fourth reign) for the most defenses of any individual reign with 10. In the midst of the division between AJPW and Noah, he made several appearances with other promotions, most notably New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where he competed for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at Wrestling World 2001 in the Tokyo Dome against Kensuke Sasaki. He became a freelancer in 2005, and made his first in-ring appearance for Noah at the Destiny 2005 pay-per-view, losing to Misawa. He also competed for Hustle, where he assumed many comedic roles.

He won his last world title, the ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship, in October 2009, defeating Masato Tanaka and losing it to Kohei Sato the next year. After the death of Misawa in June 2009 in a freak ring accident, Kawada slowed down his role as a pro wrestler, and had his final match on August 15, 2010 during the G1 Climax XX tournament, unbeknownst to the majority of his contemporaries and fans. After his final match, he began to collaborate more with his contemporaries outside the ring, including Kobashi and Taue (the surviving Heavenly Kings), Jushin Liger, Katsuhiko Nakajima, and student Taichi.

Known by fans and his contemporaries as "Dangerous K" (デンジャラス K, Denjarasu kei) for his extremely stiff wrestling style and martial arts strikes, he is widely considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. His matches against Mitsuharu Misawa, Jun Akiyama, Akira Taue, and Kenta Kobashi in the 1990s are argued by many fans and experts in the industry as some of the greatest professional wrestling matches of all time. He also has the distinction of having competed in 21 matches that were given a 5-star rating by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, and three Tokyo Sports Best Bout awards, which too brought him the distinction of being nicknamed the "Best Match Machine" (名勝負製造機, Mei shōbu seizō-ki).