Nobuhiko Takada

Despite these considerations, Takada was able to hold a limited amount of in-ring competence late on his career. As described by Jack Slack from Fightland: "It would be easy to remember Nobuhiko Takada as some kind of bum. [...] But this might be doing a disservice to what Takada was able to accomplish in the ring despite inexperience, age and a lack of athletic prowess. For one thing, in legitimate fights Takada was able to scramble up from beneath Mark Kerr, take down Igor Vovchanchyn, and indeed take the latter's notoriously powerful punches." Pundits also acknowledge his effort to continue an unsuccessful fighting career in order to support the MMA promotion he had helped to found, lending PRIDE his own popularity as a pro wrestler until it had established its place, even through fixed fights when it was needed. In his book The MMA Encyclopedia, Jonathan Snowden wrote about Takada: "He lost all [the fights], but it never seemed to faze him. He’d be back again and again, realizing that even though the fights were hopeless, the promotion needed his presence on the card to sell tickets."

In 2015, Takada returned to mainstream MMA when he signed on as a spokesperson and matchmaker for the Rizin Fighting Federation, Takada works alongside Nobuyuki Sakakibara and other former Pride employees.

After retiring, Takada ran his mixed martial arts training facility, Takada Dojo, where he helped train fighters. He also stayed on in a management role at PRIDE and its parents company Dream Stage Entertainment until PRIDE's purchase by Zuffa in 2007.

Takada returned to the ring in 2006 as The Esperanza (reference to the nickname of his early days), a supernatural wrestling cyborg created by Generalissimo Takada. The Esperanza made short work of his opponent TAJIRI and pinned him with Nobuhiko's trademark kick to the head. At HustleMania 2006, he defeated Razor Ramon HG in what was billed as (kayfabe) HG's retirement match, pinning him and giving him his own finisher, the 69 Driver, which caused "erectile dysfunction" to HG. The Esperanza was outlined as invincible until Hustlemania 2007, when he was surprisingly defeated by Wataru Sakata thanks to the magical aid of Sakata's wife Eiko Koike. The Esperanza's last match was at HUSTLE Aid 2009, when he was finally beaten by Magnum Tokyo. The same night, Generalissimo Takada shockingly announced his retirement, revealing that his true goal was leaving an eternal mark in the pro wrestling, which he had accomplished thanks to HUSTLE. He appointed the reluctant TOKYO as the new director and shook hands with the HUSTLE Army members. However, a character named King RIKI intruded and challenged him, which led to a supernatural duel in which RIKI reflected Takada's attacks and mortally wounded the Generalissimo. The dying Takada then disappeared, declaring that HUSTLE would live forever. After that, the Monster Army was disbanded.

Takada later turned to mixed martial arts (MMA) where, despite his controversial match fixing ventures and lack of competitive success, he was credited with the existence and development of global MMA promotion PRIDE Fighting Championships, in which he worked as an executive after his retirement from active competition until its closure. He also founded and starred at the sports entertainment professional wrestling promotion HUSTLE from 2004 to 2008, and currently works as an executive for Rizin Fighting Federation.

In 2004, Takada was made the president of the HUSTLE promotion in Japan, created by a coproduction between Dream Stage Entertainment and Pro Wrestling ZERO-ONE. He firstly appeared in a press conference previous to the first HUSTLE event along with fellow DSE directive Nobuyuki Sakakibara, who badmouthed the professional wrestling on behalf of the mixed martial arts. This caused the fury of Naoya Ogawa, who flipped the table and confronted them. To solve things, the event featured a battle between Ogawa's pro wrestling loyalists and Takada's MMA allies, who were called Takada Monster Army. The night ended with Ogawa being pinned by Monster Army member Bill Goldberg thanks to a foreign interference, giving the first victory to Takada. The next event, Takada expanded his army and showed himself as Generalissimo Takada, a Yasunori Kato-esque character dressed in military outfit and gifted with supernatural powers. Generalissimo Takada presented himself not as Nobuhiko Takada, but an old friend of his, and proceeded to send his enforcers to beat up Naoya before his match against Matt Ghaffari. This marked the new view of HUSTLE, in which Takada and his evil forces battled Ogawa and his HUSTLE Army stable.

Takada competed in the PRIDE Grand Prix 2000 Opening Round, where he was pitted against his second opponent in the Gracie family, Rickson's brother Royce, who returned from a hiatus after his career in Ultimate Fighting Championship. Initiated the match, the gi-clad Royce immediately clinched Takada and pulled guard, but action stopped right there, as none of the fighters followed with any action. For the rest of the 15 minute match, Takada lied on Gracie's guard, keeping a lo posture and controlling his collar grips, while Royce held him there, occasionally hitting heel kicks to the kidneys and trying gi chokes. After the end of the bout, decision was given to Royce. Takada visibly limped to his corner, which was later explained as Takada having fought the bout with a heel injury.

Takada's debut against Gracie happened as stipulated on October 11, 1997 at PRIDE 1. After circling around Gracie for some time, a wary Takada was able to stop the first takedown attempt by grabbing the ring ropes, but after the restart, Rickson scored a double leg takedown and moved to mount position over him. Although the Japanese tried to hold him down from the bottom, Gracie eventually captured his arm and executed an armbar for the win at the 2:32 mark. While the matchup was a huge economic success, which ensured new PRIDE events in the future, Takada's remarkedly poor performance resulted in a comparable disappointment for Japanese audiences, drawing very negative comments and marking the beginning of the end of Takada as a main eventer. He was likened to a war criminal to Japan by specialized press.

In December 1996, the UWFI folded after the UWFI-WAR feud. It gave birth to Kingdom Pro Wrestling, but Takada only participated in one of its events, in an exhibition against Ryushi Kimiyama. He soon left pro wrestling for mixed martial arts.

In 1995, Takada returned to NJPW as the key figure in the landmark New Japan vs. UWFI program. On October 9, 1995, Takada's match against IWGP Champion, Keiji Mutoh, drew 67,000 fans to the Tokyo Dome, drawing the largest crowd and gate in Japanese wrestling history at the time. Three months later, Takada defeated Mutoh in a rematch, before 64,000 fans, to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, becoming the only wrestler to hold all three major New Japan titles at the time (the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship was not created until 1998, and since then other wrestlers who came close to winning all four titles were Wataru Inoue, who never held the Heavyweight Championship; Kenny Omega, who never held the Tag Team Championship, and Tetsuya Naito, who never held the Junior Heavyweight Championship). Takada dropped the title to Shinya Hashimoto on April 29, 1996, drawing a crowd of 65,000 and a gate of $5.7 million. When it was all said and done, the New Japan vs. UWFi was the biggest moneymaking feud in Japanese professional wrestling history.

The fight was negatively received by the crowd, who had even uncharacteristically booeed Takada in its course. It drew comparisons to Ken Shamrock's "The Dance in Detroit" bout against Dan Severn in April 1995 UFC and particularly to Shamrock's own bout against Royce Gracie at the same year.

Takada's final match was against his former student Kiyoshi Tamura. There was both story and controversy between them, as Tamura had challenged Takada several times without an answer, and then walked out of UWF International in 1995 to work for rival RINGS. Tamura was also reluctant to fight at the event due to sharing card with Kenichi Yamamoto, another Takada understudy he had a personal enmity with. However, the match took place without more troubles.

Takada entered the world of mixed martial arts when he joined the recently founded KRS PRIDE, an event created to host a fight between him and Brazilian jiu-jitsu master Rickson Gracie. The bout had been highly anticiped since Gracie had defeated the UWF-i wrestler Yoji Anjo in 1994, as Takada was still expected to face Rickson in order to restore his late promotion's reputation. However, although he had been believed to be a strong legitimate wrestler by the Japanese audiences for most of his career, Takada was actually not a trained fighter. He had no experience or background in combat sports or martial arts, and after a grueling 17 years professional wrestling career he was already too away from his physical prime to cultivate his fighting skills. According to Bas Rutten, Takada had been submitted by Brazilian jiu-jitsu white belt practitioners while in a training trip to the Beverly Hills Jiu-Jitsu Club, which deemed him unfit to compete. His placement in the main event scene would also force him to fight only high-level opponents, which included several of the greatest fighters of his generation, like Igor Vovchanchyn, Mark Kerr and Mirko Filipović.

Takada had also feuds with Gary Albright and Super Vader. In 1992, Takada was awarded an old NWA World Heavyweight title belt by Lou Thesz, after defeating Albright, and was proclaimed the "Pro-Wrestling World Heavyweight Champion". He defended the title until Thesz withdrew the belt in 1995, losing the title once to Super Vader. The high point of his reign came on December 5, 1993, when he defeated Super Vader before 46,168 fans at Tokyo's Meiji-Jingu Stadium.

As champion, Takada was involved in another different style fight with Koji Kitao, a karate stylist and former grand sumo champion known for his career scandals. Having defeated Yamazaki, Kitao was pitted against Takada at the October 23, 1992 UWFi event. However, discussions over the outcome of the match were difficult, leading to an agreement of a draw. During the match, Takada shot on Kitao, throwing a roundhouse kick which legitimately knocked him out. Like the Berbick situation, it served as a boost for Takada in the eyes of the audience.

Takada debuted in UWF Newborn in an exhibition match with rookie Shigeo Nakano, but he soon ascended the ranking to become the promotion's top wrestler second only to Akira Maeda, who he nonetheless defeated by TKO in their very second match. The promotion's run was highly successful, and they broke records on the professional wrestling/shootfighting event U-COSMOS, where he defeated Greco-Roman wrestling champion Duane Koslowski, twin brother of Olympic medalist Dennis Koslowski, in a worked different style fight. After the event, Takada was almost unbeaten in singles matches until the promotion's closure in December 1990.

In March 1987, Nobuhiko amplied the feud to a tag team one when Maeda and him defeated Koshinaka and Keiji Mutoh to capture the vacant IWGP Tag Team Championship. They retained it for months, until they lost it to colleagues Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Kazuo Yamazaki. Takada spent the rest of the year in tag team fights, excepting a tenure in the Top of The Super Junior I and two challenges for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title before Kuniaki Kobayashi and Hiroshi Hase. In March 1988, Takada left NJPW along with Maeda and most of the original UWF wrestlers to form the second incarnation of the Universal Wrestling Federation called Newborn UWF.

Takada's first matches in Universal Wrestling Federation were as a NJPW representative, but he soon joined full-time. He started with a successful singles run, defeating foreign wrestlers and having higher matches with Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Akira Maeda. On 20 January 1985 he would get an important victory over Super Tiger by referee stoppage, in which already the beginning of the shoot-style practised in the promotion. The tenure was short, however, as UWF folded shortly after, and Takada and other wrestlers returned to NJPW.

In August 1983, Takada accompanied Inoki to Canada for a special appearance in Stampede Wrestling, and he ended replacing the retiring Tiger Mask in the event, having his first worldwide match, defeating Athol Foley. It granted an ascension in the rankings for Takada, and he was made part of the 1984 WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship league, facing Bret Hart, Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith, among others. His staying in NJPW lasted until April 1984, when started working in Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) by Fujiwara's invitation, and in June he was officially part of the new promotion.

After training in the New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) dojo under Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Takada made his professional wrestling debut in 1981 against Norio Honaga. As accustomed to puroresu neophytes, Takada spent his first year as a jobber, though scoring occasional victories against other rookies.Among them, he feuded with Kazuo Yamazaki, and their matches were so well received that TV Asahi included one of them as part of the NJPW show, something unheard at the time. Takada was appointed Antonio Inoki's personal assistant. He was also Hulk Hogan's assistant for his Japanese tours. Also during that time, Takada was nicknamed Seishun no Esperanza ("Youth Esperanza"), due to his gutsy and hopeful rookie antics.

Immediately after his affair with Backlund, Takada was put in a different style fight against boxing champion Trevor Berbick, in a reminiscence of Antonio Inoki's match with Muhammad Ali in 1976. The nature of the bout as a worked match or a shoot fight is unknown, but what transpired in the bout was again not the planned course. Early in the match, after receiving some low kicks from Takada to his left leg, Berbick immediately protested, apparently believing that kicking under the waist was illegal. Though the referee seemed to clear the situation, it happened again and Berbick protested every time Takada landed a low kick; at the end, when Takada scored a head kick, the boxer abandoned the ring and walked out of the arena. According to UWFi trainer Pat McCarthy, "no rules were ever changed. [Berbick] just never wanted to listen." Anyway, the win increased Takada's popularity.

Nobuhiko Takada (Japanese: 高田伸彦 , ring name: 高田 延彦) (born April 12, 1962) is a Japanese former mixed martial artist, retired professional wrestler and actor. He competed in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) and Union of Wrestling Forces International (UWFI) in the 1980s and 1990s, becoming one of the highest figures of the "shoot-style" movement.