NNew Japan Pro Wrestling

Akira Maeda in action for the WWF in 1984

  • November 19, 2025


Akira Maeda in action for the WWF in 1984



by KneeHighMischief

3 comments

  1. Maeda had been wrestling for nearly six years at this point. He’d just departed NJPW along with Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Nobuhiko Takada, Satoru Sayama (the original Tiger Mask) & Kazuo Yamazaki to form the Universal Wrestling Federation. UWF President Hisashi Shinma (& the man who discovered Maeda) arranged a working relationship between them & the WWF.

    Maeda debuted for the WWF at a house show in White Plains, New York on 3/13/84 defeating Charlie Fulton. He would have twelve matches over the next eleven days. Sometimes he would pull double duty by appearing in a battle royal on the same show he wrestled in a singles match on.

    A lot of these matches were him opening the show & he only picked up a few wins. On 3/25/84 he faced Pierre Lefebvre for the vacant WWF International Title at Madison Square Garden. Madea won the match & was crowned new champion but the belt was only vacant in the WWF

    NJPW wrestler Tatsumi Fujinami was the title holder at the time & the WWF still had a working relationship with them as well. He was actively defending the belt in Japan & not the US. NJPW didn’t recognize Maeda’s win for obvious reasons.

    After Maeda won he returned to Japan for UWF’s inaugural show on 4/11/84. He took the belt with him & it morphed into the UWF Heavyweight Championship. UWF ran five shows with their launch & then he headed back to the US.

    This trip was slightly longer at nearly a month. Maeda’s match against Steele was one of the rare TV appearances he made. He wrestled his final WWF match on 5/28/84 in Wayne, New Jersey losing to Tiger Chung Lee (Kim Duk) in the opening match. It would also be his last career match in the US as well.

  2. People wouldn’t believe WWE had a relationship with njpw which it wasn’t bad but they stopped working together after WrestleMania 6 or 7 cause they hosted a event in the Tokyo dome with njpw and ajpw as well so it must have been 91 they stop working together cause WCW Started working with them later that year

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