Atsushi Onita

All Japan Pro Wrestling and retirement (1974–1985)

He was the first true graduate of the All Japan Pro Wrestling dojo (Jumbo Tsuruta had debuted first, but he had trained in Amarillo, Texas, with Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk). In his early days he teamed with dojo classmate Masanobu Fuchi, who debuted only a few weeks after him. He was known as a loyal ring attendant to Giant Baba, who had accepted him into the dojo despite not having graduated from high school. In the late '70s and the early '80s, he and Fuchi toured Memphis, Tennessee, winning the AWA Southern tag team title three times.

When the junior heavyweight boom started in Japan under Tatsumi Fujinami and the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, Onita was picked as the ace of AJPW's makeshift junior heavyweight division. Baba was able to get Chavo Guerrero, Sr., who had been an early rival of Fujinami, over to AJPW's side, and Guerrero brought the NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship with him, effectively establishing it as AJPW's junior heavyweight cornerstone. Onita and Guerrero's subsequent feud over the title spanned three promotions (AJPW, Jim Crockett Promotions and Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre), and, while not as spectacular as New Japan Pro Wrestling's junior division, provided solid alternate wrestling to AJPW fans. On January 3, 1985, he had to retire due to accumulated injuries, after a failed comeback attempt, which ended after his last match on December 2, 1984, against Mighty Inoue. He would be replaced by Masanobu Fuchi as the new junior heavyweight ace of AJPW.

Return and Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (1988–1998)

After over three years recuperating from his injuries, Onita returned to the ring in December 1988 for Pioneer Senshi, and a year later, created his own promotion, Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW), basing it around death matches he had seen during his earlier stay in Memphis. His first "death match" was against martial artist Masashi Aoyagi, which he won. Over the next few years, until 1995, he had several death matches for FMW's heavyweight title, the World Martial Arts/Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship, defending it against former AJPW comrade Tarzan Goto, as well as The Sheik, Terry Funk, Mr. Pogo and even boxer Leon Spinks. Also during this period, he starred in the movie Dan Gan (Japanese for "bullet"), which would later be adopted as the nickname for Onita's pupil, Masato Tanaka. His last defense, in May 1995, saw him defeating Hayabusa, who succeeded him as the promotion's ace. Around that time, he occasionally wrestled as The Great Nita, a Muta-style gimmick. In August 1999, The Great Nita and the Great Muta would finally battle each other in a much-publicized "No Rope, Barbed Wire, Barricade Electric Land Mine, Double Hell Death match".

After a sabbatical (getting his high school diploma, as he had dropped out of high school when he was 16), Onita returned to the ring in December 1996. In 1997, he became the leader of the NWO-like stable ZEN, by which he attempted to return FMW to its old death match ideology. Already, however, Shoichi Arai and Hiromichi "Kodo" Fuyuki were toning down the death match content, which led Onita to leave FMW altogether in November 1998 and promote his own ventures.

Freelancing (1998–present)

He used the promotional names "USO" (all caps version of the Japanese word for "lie"), "Jado" ("evil ways"; not to be confused with the wrestler of the same name), "Onita Pro" and "Project X."

He challenged Riki Choshu to a barbed wire deathmatch in 2000: Choshu accepted and came out of retirement to wrestle him.

In 2001 he returned to AJPW for one night only, at the Tokyo Dome, to team with Terry Funk against Abdullah the Butcher and Giant Kimala. Whereas AJPW fans had already known Funk and Abdullah's willingness to brawl, Onita also played a huge part in the match, and his team emerged victorious.

In 2002, following FMW's closure Onita appeared briefly in WEW, run by Hiromichi Fuyuki. The storyline saw Onita blaming Fuyuki's "Entertainment Pro Wrestling" business strategy and supposed embezzlement of money for causing FMW to close, and appeared to be paving the road to an eventual match between Onita and Fuyuki before Fuyuki abruptly announced his retirement due to cancer that would eventually claim his life in March 2003.

Onita attempted to resurrect the FMW name with another promotion (called Onita FMW since he did not own the rights to the FMW name), but the promotion would fold after only three months. Onita would retire once again on September 23, 2003, losing a death match to The Great Sasuke, but this would not last long. Onita fought yet another retirement match on March 26, 2005, being pinned by Genichiro Tenryu. This also would be disregarded, as he would come out of retirement in May 2008 and would begin promoting his own cards again in July.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s Onita kept on bringing Death Matches, (though mostly six-man affairs with Ichiro Yaguchi as one of his frequent partners), to promotions such as Osaka Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Zero1 and Pro Wrestling NOAH. In December 12, 2014 he returned to AJPW to team with Fuchi and defeat the promotion's current junior standard bearers, Último Dragón and Yoshinobu Kanemaru.

In April 2015, FMW was again resurrected with Onita as its central wrestler.

On July 11, 2016, Onita announced the foundation of a new promotion named Fire Puroresu, which was set to hold its first show on August 26. On July 24, Onita fractured his right arm in a match, where he lost the Bakuha-ō Championship to Masakatsu Funaki, putting his participation in Fire Puroresu's inaugural event at risk.

On November 27, 2016, Onita returned to All Japan, where he and fellow first class graduate Masanobu Fuchi defeated Atsushi Aoki and Hikaru Sato to become the 100th All Asia Tag Team Champions. Two days later, Onita announced he was planning to retire from professional wrestling at a special event at Kawasaki Stadium in October 2017.

On May 10, 2017, Onita announced his retirement tour, which concludes with his final match on October 31, 2017. Onita claimed that this, his seventh retirement, will be his "true" retirement. On June 20, Onita and Fuchi lost the All Asia Tag Team Championship back to Aoki and Sato. Onita's retirement tour also took him to the United States, where he worked for Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) on August 5. Prior to his actual retirement, Onita retired the Great Nita character on August 27.

Political career

Though he originally dropped out of high school, Onita returned to finish his education when he was in his late thirties. In 2001 he won the 19th House of Councilors election as a representative of the Liberal Democratic Party, following Antonio Inoki and Hiroshi Hase to a seat in the Japanese Diet. One of his first major acts in office was to launch a post-9/11 humanitarian mission to Afghanistan, where he performed professional wrestling matches in crudely constructed rings made of sticks and rope, to benefit the children. This was all documented on film.

Like fellow professional wrestler, Scott Steiner, Onita has also claimed to have broken Wilt Chamberlain's record of sleeping with 20,000 women. Coincidentally, his exit from politics was forced by a sex scandal in which he was alleged to have used government accommodations to host a threesome with a pornographic film actress and a female employee of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation. After retirement from politics, he lent his name and image to a Nintendo DS game, Atsushi Onita's Political Quiz.

In wrestling

Championships and accomplishments

Video games