Sad news out of Japan as Hideki Hosaka, known for his run in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW), passed away on August 2 after battling cancer since 2019. Hosaka was an amateur wrestler in high school before training with Submission Arts Wrestling and competing for W*ING. Like many from his era, Hosaka mixed some MMA with professional wrestling.
Hosaka didn’t settle down until 1994, he went from W*ING to Pro Wrestling Crusaders, to Rings, and finally landed in FMW in 1994. FMW is where he would have the most success of his career as he was the third person to hold the Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship, and later was part of the first team to ever hold the WEW Hardcore Tag Team Championship alongside Mammoth Sasaki. He and Sasaki would hold the titles three times before FMW’s closure in 2002
Following the closure of FMW Hosaka began competing regularly for All Japan Pro Wrestling and had a run with ZERO1 but a knee injury in 2004 cut off his momentum and he spent the rest of the 00s without a clear home and was essentially semi-retired.
In the 2010s he had a revival as he began to work for FREEDOMS regularly and returned to ZERO1, an attempted FMW revival (not to be confused with FMW-E) in the mid-10s saw him win the FMW World Street Fight Six Man Tag Team Championship, first with Atsushi Onita and Masato Tanaka, and then with Onita and Sean Guinness
Hideki Hosaka had his last match in 2019 for Big Japan Pro-Wrestling, it was an 8-man street fight tornado anywhere scramble bunkhouse deathmatch, which seems like a fairly fitting match to go out on for a former FMW roster member. It was the day after this BJW match that Hosaka first fell ill and in September of 2019 he was hospitalized, it was found that his stage 4 colorectal cancer had spread to his liver. It was this disease that took his life in August 2021.
We at Last Word on Pro Wrestling would like to send our condolences to the friends, family, and fans of Hideki Hosaka.
#保坂秀樹
愛弟子でありタッグパートナーであり
俺のために一生懸命頑張ってくれた男
1ヶ月前に話したのが最後になってしまった
言葉が見つからない pic.twitter.com/TbunheYO96— 大仁田厚 Atsushi Onita (@onitafire123) August 2, 2021
ご冥福をお祈り致します。 https://t.co/xtxsCLWWZI
— 木髙イサミ (@isami_777) August 2, 2021
謹んで御冥福をお祈り致します。 https://t.co/6U5slcVHCR
— 関本大介 (@sekimotodaisuke) August 2, 2021
今日も1日お疲れ様でした
保坂秀樹さんの訃報が入って来ました。嘘でしょ？最後の試合になってしまった2年前の大阪で谷口体調どうって気にかけて頂いたりめちゃくちゃ優しい先輩でした。お互い体調だけは気を付けましょうって言ったのが最後になってしまいました
保坂さんゆっくり休んで下さい
合掌— たにぐちゆういち(だいにほんぷろれす) (@taniguchiyuihi) August 2, 2021
https://twitter.com/i/status/1422174066862133254
