Shinsuke Nakamura

Shinsuke Nakamura has been married to Harumi Maekawa since September 2007.

Nakamura loves children and has appeared in a kid’s advertisement and also Pharell William’s music video for the song ‘Happy’.

Nakamura has also published his autobiography which came out in May 2014 titled ‘King of Strong Style’.

Shinsuke Nakamura was born on 24th February 1980 in Kyoto, Japan as an average kid in an average family. Like most Japanese families, he led a much disciplined life since his early days but not for long. As he entered school, his shyness and physical weakness became a laughing stock for his schoolmates and he got bullied quite a lot. For the same, he was shamed by his siblings to not be able to stand up and fight for himself.

Nakamura was a huge fan of anime and was inclined towards art, liked to draw SG Gundam, the popular series characters and never quite considered a career in wrestling. But getting bullied in school had to stop and this led him to start training himself to become stronger in order to be able to protect himself. And during this time, his love for wrestling blossomed and he even bought a little book called ‘How to be a Pro Wrestler’ when he was in junior high.

He played basketball in school and also trained himself in karate and jiu-jitsu and when he found out that it was something that interested him greatly, he started looking forward to a career in Martial arts and idolized Jackie Chan. He even acted in school plays taking inspiration from Jackie Chan films and went on with dreaming about moving to China once the school was over.

Everything changed when he joined his school’s amateur wrestling team and within a year, he became its captain and in 1998, he won the JOC cup earning the first spot. After that, it was all him and fighting and he trained himself for MMA, kickboxing, wrestling, body building and the first success came his way in September 2001, when he got selected for the New Japan Pro Wrestling and he never looked back after that.

His techniques were unmatchable, so were his speed and strength and these combined qualities, added with a boyish charm and flamboyance quickly made him a loved fighter in the NJPW. In his first year at the promotion, he earned the title of ‘Super Rookie’ just after a first few fights.

In his first ever pro MMA fight, he faced Daniel Gracie in December 2002 and lost, which turned out to be a massive blow for Nakamura. But he made a solid comeback in his second fight against the opponent Jan Nortje in early 2003 and later in the same year, he defeated Shane Eitner ‘

The biggest fight of his career was the next one, where he was pitted against the reigning IWGP Heavyweight champion Hiroyoshi Tenzan in December 2003. Nakamura was 23 then and after a very intensely memorable fight, he defeated his opponent and became the youngest ever IWGP Heavyweight champion.

In mid-2004, he got a chance to win one more title in form of the NWF Heavyweight championship against Yoshihiro Takayama and successfully unified his championship but that fight was hard on his body and he got injured. The injury forced him to submit his title and when he returned to the ring all fit and fine, he got the chance to win it back against Bob Sapp, but was unsuccessful.

In December 2004, Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated Kensuke Sasaki and Minoru Suzuki to win the IWGP tag team championship, and defeated the title quite a few times before losing it a year later to a tag team called ‘Cho-Ten’.