Trivia / Akira Maeda

• Dear Negative Reader: Maeda was famously enemies with Eiji Yamada, chief editor of the Full Contact Karate magazine, who liked to criticize RINGS, the Seidokaikan dojo and the U-system in general for being "fake". They supposedly had an incident in a Kyokushin tournament in 1994 in which Maeda chased him to the women's toilet of the stadium and they brawled a bit inside. Yamada would even claim to have escaped unscathed thanks to his own karate abilities, which Maeda replied that then he wouldn't mind to repeat such a feat in a ring, but Yamada wisely didn't answer.
• Follow the Leader: Aside from pioneering in shoot wrestling and MMA, Maeda was the first in promoting and bringing Sambo (specifically combat sambo as sport sambo was already a growing sport due to Victor Koga) and Kickboxing to their late huge popularity in Japan, and his fighting network helped to spread the MMA around the world, including countries in which the concept itself was virtually unknown. Finally, he was the one who inspired Kazuyoshi Ishii to create the kickboxing promotion K-1 and provided him with kickboxers from RINGS whom he could not (or perhaps did not want) pay anymore.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • The main one, aside from Riki Choshu, was with Satoru Sayama. Their enmity started in 1985, when Maeda shot on Sayama during a match (or so Sayama claimed) and caused the fall of the original UWF. They continued badmouthing each other during years until 2006, when they were reunited in an interview by Hisao Maki and acknowledged (rather grudgingly, but with sincerity) each other's accomplishments. Currently, they seem to have regained respect for each other.
  • Maeda also had enmity for Masakatsu Funaki, who badmouthed him for causing the closure of Newborn UWF in 1990. They reconciled in 2005 during the Big Mouth Loud project.
  • Yoji Anjo was another enemy of his. In 1994, Akira was arrested for claiming he was going to kill Anjo out of rage for a failed working agreement, and two years later, he backfisted Yoji in the face for disagreeing with him during a televised debate. Not surprisingly, some time later Anjo retaliated by knocking Maeda out cold with a sucker punch during an interview in the Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC 23 event.
  • He also had another in Yuko Miyato. In a 1994 magazine interview, Maeda said something to the effect of that if he fought Miyato, he'd beat him 200 times out of 200 and that if he caught him on the street he'd prove it and made some remarks about Miyato's family, which apparently resulted in some kind of civil action filed by Miyato and UWFI against Maeda. Though Maeda later made a public apology to Miyato, saying he was very sorry for his threats in the interview.
  • There was a years long bad blood between Maeda and Pancrase's Kazuo "Yoshiki" Takahashi. It started when some Pancrase officers told Fuji TV that RINGS was a worked pro wrestling company, and even although it was mostly true at the time, Maeda took offense and claimed to the press that he was going to destroy Pancrase. Takahashi rapidly challenged Akira to a fight, but Maeda refused, instead wanting to face the higher ranked Minoru Suzuki. The affair didn't stop, because Maeda and him had a brawl in the Tokyo Dome parking at PRIDE 1 that had to be broken up by Yoshihisa Yamamoto, and Yoshiki later went to congratulate Yoji Anjo for his infamous aggression on Maeda at the UFC Japan. It took eight years and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka's intercession to get Maeda and Takahashi in good terms again.
  • Maeda attacked Pancrase chairman Masami Ozaki (a non-fighter) at a hotel when he thought Ozaki was trying to convince RINGS member Jeremy Horn to jump to Pancrase. Ozaki later sued Akira for assault and won the trial, although according to Horn (who even testified for Maeda) Masami exaggerated greatly the incident in order to screw Maeda.
  • In what started as Romance on the Set, Maeda briefly dated and even trained Chigusa Nagayo, which ended in them falling out after they ended up in a physical altercation between each other due to rumors that Nagayo was sleeping around behind his back (and possibly being jealous of her popularity as some believe), which led him to confront her about them while drinking at a bar.
• Real Song Theme Tune: His most well known theme is "Captured" by Camel.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Akira could have kept his job at New Japan, even after kicking Riki Choshu, if he had just agreed to go on a later trip to Mexico to learn the theatrical style of lucha libre.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Maeda, before he became part of the Original UWF, he actually wanted to going to Mexico for the experience and was scheduled to do so, it only didn't happen because his mother was hospitalized for an injury.
  • He was sent offers to join the at the time newly formed SWS promotion, but he turned it down as he was the still with Newborn UWF and didn't want to do any other style. Failing that the SWS heads sent him another offer to do a cross promotion event at the Tokyo Dome which would feature him against Genichiro Tenryu as the main event, which he turned down flat.
  • There were rumors during UWF Newborn that he was trying to setup a different styles fight against George Foreman for a show at the Tokyo Dome, but it didn't happen. He apparently tried again in RINGS, and Foreman even recorded a bizarre promo to settle up the match, but again it didn’t happen.
  • Maeda challenged Masakatsu Funaki, Minoru Suzuki and Nobuhiko Takada to get into a supermatch with him in RINGS in January 1994, but nobody accepted.
  • After the previous challenge, he was invited back by UWF-i, Takada's promotion, to compete in their world tournament. Maeda actually accepted, but he demanded to bring an entire bunch of RINGS wrestlers to compete in the league and to book the first rounds in one of his own events. Takada and Yuko Miyato rejected it and made the last offer of allowing Maeda or Chris Dolman in their tournament, and by this point the negotiations ended.
  • Maeda put a lot of effort into trying to get a match against Rickson Gracie, even going to the extent of offering to create a promotion from zero to be a neutral ground, but Rickson declined every time.
  • Masaaki Satake was considered for his final opponent if Maeda couldn't get Aleksander Karelin.
  • Maeda was approached by the promoters of World Fighting Federation (the one-time 1997 show, not the more recent promotion) to fight Gokor Chivichyan in the main event, but he was not interested so they instead used some guy named Bill Maeda and billed him as Mr. Maeda.
  • According to Dave Meltzer, in 2017 Maeda was in talks with Bellator about getting some fighters for a new promotion, which must have fallen through as nothing came off it.