{"id":8446,"date":"2017-10-10T14:15:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T18:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=8446"},"modified":"2017-10-10T14:15:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T18:15:14","slug":"minoru-tanaka-wwe-performance-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2017\/10\/10\/minoru-tanaka-wwe-performance-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Legend Guest Trainer at WWE Performance Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Wrestling Inc.<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/wrestlinginc.com\/wi\/news\/2017\/1009\/632944\/japanese-wrestling-legend-at-the-wwe-pc\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has reported <\/a>that former NJPW and All-Japan legend <strong>Minoru Tanaka<\/strong> was at the WWE Performance Center last week in a guest trainer capacity. The 44-year old shooter taught several classes throughout the week, and also found some time to have a shoot fight against PC recruit <strong>Adrian Jaoude<\/strong>, a former Olympic wrestler for Brazil in the 2016 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8450\" src=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"357\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka2.jpg 259w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka2-218x300.jpg 218w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Minoru Tanaka made his wrestling debut in 1994, starting off in shoot style wrestling promotions like <strong>Fujiwara Gumi<\/strong>, <strong>BattleArts<\/strong> and <strong>Frontier Martial arts-Wrestling (FMW)<\/strong>. In 1999, he headed to <strong>NJPW<\/strong> where he dominated the IWGP Junior Heavyweight division for a decade, capturing the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship on four separate occasions, and winning the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team titles five times, twice with current WWE Superstar <strong>Finn Balor<\/strong>. The Super Juniors tournament winner in 2006, he left NJPW in 2009.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"2006.06.18  BEST OF THE SUPER Jr. FINAL MINORU vs TIGER MASK\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mHshyFzTd44?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8452\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8452\" style=\"width: 346px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-8452\" src=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"346\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka8.jpg 450w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka8-208x300.jpg 208w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/minorutanaka8-291x420.jpg 291w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8452\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: NJPW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Following his departure from NJPW, Tanaka headed to rival <strong>All-Japan<\/strong>, where he competed for the next three years, capturing the World Junior Heavyweight title and adding two All-Asia Tag Team titles with former NJPW partner <strong>Koji Kanemoto<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RF5Xk04hvD0<\/p>\n<p>He left All-Japan in 2013, heading to <strong>Wrestle-1<\/strong>, once again proving his junior division dominance with winning the Wrestle-1 Cruiser Division championship, before departing the company last summer. He continues to wrestle as a freelance in Japan and internationally.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8449\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8449\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-8449\" src=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/10\/DLSE7oVUQAAedbO-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8449\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tanaka, 2017 (Photo: twitter.com\/64cc4b840646433)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wrestling Inc. has reported that former NJPW and All-Japan legend Minoru Tanaka was at the WWE Performance Center last week in a guest trainer capacity. The 44-year old shooter taught several classes throughout the week, and also found some time to have a shoot fight against PC recruit Adrian Jaoude, a former Olympic wrestler for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":8453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13],"tags":[1269,1578,188,116,798],"class_list":["post-8446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","tag-all-japan","tag-minoru-tanaka","tag-njpw","tag-nxt","tag-wwe-performance-center"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}