Akira Tozawa
Akira Tozawa (戸澤 陽, Tozawa Akira, born July 22, 1985) is a Japanese professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand. He is a former WWE 24/7 Champion, with 11 reigns, and a former NXT Cruiserweight Champion.
Prior to working for the WWE, he had a twelve-year run in Dragon Gate where he is a former Open the Brave Gate, Open the Twin Gate, Open the Triangle Gate and Open the Owarai Gate champion and the winner of the 2011 and 2012 Summer Adventure Tag League. He is also known for his year-long excursion to the United States, during which he performed for promotions such as Chikara, Dragon Gate USA, and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla.
Tozawa was the third graduate of the Dragon Gate dojo to debut.[6] After debuting, he underwent a 10 match trial series, but lost all 10 matches and was banished back to the dojo.[6]
Tozawa returned in October 2005, teaming with fellow rookie Yuki Ono. He then teamed with Vangelis, a wrestler with a Nazi stripper gimmick. Kenichiro Arai intervened, much to Tozawa’s resentment. When Tozawa defeated Naruki Doi during the Brave Gate League, Arai offered him a spot in the M2K stable. Tozawa, however, refused and stated his intention to run a stable of his own, creating a stable called Tozawa-juku.[6] Even though Tozawa-juku bore his name, he was not necessarily the leader. Because of his backstage reputation as a troublemaker at the time, he was regularly held off of shows, progressed little, and was far beneath his stablemates Taku Iwasa, Kenichiro Arai, and even fellow troublemaker Ono in rank.[6]
When Ono experienced newfound popularity and rank courtesy of a massive amount of weight gain, Tozawa began to bulk up as well, and he and Ono formed the Metabolic Brothers tag team within Tozawa-juku. They discarded the gakuran pants worn by the unit and wore silver tights and boots. However, injuries to Ono held the team back from any major success.[6]
On July 11, 2008, after having teamed with Ono for a little over half a year, he appeared on a show with his gakuran pants on and announced that, in light of the success that new stablemates Shinobu and El Generico had brought to the unit (as well as constant pestering from Iwasa and Arai), he was going on a diet. After a diet trial series, where he actually had success, he brashly challenged Open the Triangle Gate Champions Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fujii, and Magnitude Kishiwada to a title match against him, Iwasa & Arai on November 16. The trio agreed, but on the condition that Tozawa-juku would have to disband if his team lost. His team lost the match, bringing about the end of the unit, and he and his stablemates were given a graduation ceremony.[6]
He and Iwasa began to team with Shingo Takagi in the weeks that followed, and then on December 19, he appealed to Shingo to form a new unit with him and Iwasa. Shingo agreed to it. On January 11, 2009, Dragon Kid joined up with him and the others, and Shingo gave the unit the name of Kamikaze.[6] Tozawa participated in the Battle of Tokyo Tournament two weeks later, and made it to the finals before losing to Kagetora. Highlights of this time period were an Open the Brave Gate Championship challenge in 2009 against Cima and a “Loser is Banished to Dark Matches” match on May 5, 2010, against Kamikaze stablemate Cyber Kong, which he lost.[7] After losing to Kong, Tozawa left Japan for an extended tour of the United States beginning in May 2010.
