Minoru Tanaka

Minoru Tanaka (田中稔), also known by the ring names Heat (ヒート) and the mononymous Minoru (稔), is a Japanese professional wrestler, shoot wrestler and mixed martial artist.

He is currently signed to Gleat, predominantly performing in its G Prowrestling and Lidet UWF divisions; he also serves as Gleat's UWF Rules Technical Officer.

The Kanemoto-Tanaka combination was reminiscent of the old Akira Maeda-Nobuhiko Takada combination in 1987.

In October, Tanaka won the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship - thus becoming the first man to hold both junior titles at the same time.

In late 1995, Tanaka and everyone else in the promotion abandoned Fujiwara and formed their own promotion, Battlarts, led by Yuki Ishikawa.

Despite being a simulated shoot style professional wrestling promotion, Battlarts, like its predecessor, often cooperated with other federations and styles, such as Fighting Network Rings (where he competed in some legitimate shoot fights), Kingdom, Michinoku Pro and Big Japan Pro Wrestling.

Tanaka's first championship, the UWA World Middleweight Championship (originally based in Mexico and introduced in Japan through Universal Lucha Libre and Michinoku), came in 1996.

He later won Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling's Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship (which was outsourced to Battlarts after Hiromichi Fuyuki abolished all previous FMW titles and replaced them with WEW titles).

Tanaka made his New Japan Pro-Wrestling debut on April 10, 1999, and would proceed to take part in Best of the Super Juniors in block B. Tanaka would reappear for New Japan in late 1999 to early 2000 before he joined the New Japan roster as a full-time competitor.

His natural talent enabled him to immediately rise in the junior heavyweight ranks and win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship in July with Koji Kanemoto, who used a similar but more ground-oriented style.

In March 2001, Tanaka and Kanemoto lost their titles to El Samurai and Jushin Thunder Liger, in June he lost in the finals of 2001's Best of the Super Juniors to Liger and in July he lost his singles title.

Even with all these losses, Tanaka finished 2001 strong, winning the G1 Jr. Six Man Tag Team Tournament Masahito Kakihara and Masayuki Naruse.

For a second time in his career, Tanaka held both junior titles, defeating Masahito Kakihara for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion and defeating Gedo and Jado with Jushin Thunder Liger for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

After Koji Kanemoto defeated Tanaka in 2002's Best of the Super Juniors, Kanemoto defeated Tanaka once again for his IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, and a month later lost his tag team championship to Tsuyoshi Kikuchi and Yoshinobu Kanemaru.

In late 2002 Tanaka began wearing a mask and calling himself "HEAT" (ヒート) in reference to the Game Boy Advance video game Toukon Heat.

In only his second match under the persona, Tanaka faced on Kanemoto in an attempt to regain the title but failed.

Like the game, the HEAT character often floundered in his early years with the only positive being his victory of the Naeba Cup Tag Tournament alongside Manabu Nakanishi.

Heat finally began to pick up steam in 2003, and defeated Jado in December to become a three-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.

In September 2004, Heat returned to his birth name and reunited with Kanemoto to challenge Gedo and Jado for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

Before the match could end, however, Minoru turned on Kanemoto and helped Gedo and Jado win, turning heel and joining CTU in the process.

Heat's true success came after turning heel, though he competed as both Heat and simply Minoru Tanaka after joining CTU.

After losing to Tiger Mask in the semi-final of the 2004 Best of the Super Juniors, he found his new rival and defeated Tiger Mask.

Their rivalry continued over the year and culminated at Toukon Festival: Wrestling World where Heat lost his IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship to Tiger Mask.

After this loss, he officially dropped the mask and began wrestling as Minoru Tanaka once again until dropping his surname, calling himself Minoru (稔) (Minoru).

He also competed as Masked CTU-J sporadically from this point forward.

Known as "The Special One", Tanaka first gained prominence in Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi (PWFG) and Fighting Investigation Team Battlarts (Battlarts) before moving on to New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), where he became a four time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion, a five time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion and the winner of the 2006 Best of the Super Juniors tournament.

After leaving NJPW, he joined All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he found continued success in the junior heavyweight and tag team ranks upon winning the World Junior Heavyweight Championship once and the All Asia Tag Team Championship twice.

On May 14, Minoru teamed up with new CTU recruit Hirooki Goto and defeated Koji Kanemoto and Wataru Inoue to become a three-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion and would lose them to El Samurai and Ryusuke Taguchi in early 2006.

In 2006, Minoru joined the American Total Nonstop Action Wrestling promotion as a member of Team Japan (consisting of Hirooki Goto, Jushin Thunder Liger, Black Tiger and Minoru), one of the four teams competing in the TNA 2006 World X-Cup Tournament.

He debuted in TNA on April 23, 2006, at Lockdown, where he teamed with Hirooki Goto against Team USA members Sonjay Dutt, Jay Lethal and Alex Shelley.

Team Japan defeated USA when Black Tiger pinned Lethal.

On the April 27 episode of Impact!, Goto and Minoru lost to Dutt and Shelley, giving a first round victory and two points to Team USA.

Following his stint in TNA, Minoru managed to find success upon returning to Japan, as he won the 2006 Best of the Super Juniors after defeating Tiger Mask in the finals.

Minoru lost his chance at the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship in October, but would be granted another one at "Battle Xmas! Catch the Victory", where he defeated Koji Kanemoto for the title, making him a four-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.

He would hold the title until he was defeated by Ryusuke Taguchi.

After this loss, CTU would take a turn for the worse and eventually disbanded on August 8 where all members would wrestle under their Masked CTU personas.

From 2013 to 2016, Tanaka worked for Wrestle-1.

He also performed for Pro Wrestling Noah (Noah), where he held the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship twice and is a former GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion, making him the second man (after Naomichi Marufuji) to hold all three major Japanese junior heavyweight singles titles as well as the only man to hold all five major junior heavyweight titles in Japan (counting the aforementioned tag team prizes).

Minoru Tanaka was originally a shootboxer.

He started his career as a wrestler in Fujiwara Gumi, trained by its owner, Yoshiaki Fujiwara.