Nobuhiko Oshima (born November 15, 1977) is a
Japanese Professional Wrestler, better known by his ring name
CIMA. He entered professional wrestling riding a dream in
Último Dragón's lucharesu circuit
Toryumon, where he graduated in the very first class along with future allies and enemies. Here Oshima allied himself with Don Fujii,
SUWA and
TARU to form Crazy MAX, a villainous stable of punks, and he became himself its main star: a handsome, hyper young rebel from Osaka, now known as CIMA. After their return to Japan from training in Mexico, Crazy MAX ravaged Toryumon and gave years of nightmares to babyface wrestlers like
Magnum TOKYO and his friends, as well as great battles against other baddie groups like
Masaaki Mochizuki's M2K and Milano Collection A.T.'s Italian Connection. Having become himself a heroic figure out of sheer popularity, CIMA's career as the face of the promotion had just started, even although the latter broke away from Último Dragón to become
Dragon Gate and Crazy MAX itself was lost in the shuffle. CIMA reinvented himself with the stable Blood Generation and gave DG a new flavor tilting towards American indy style, which became its trademark since and made countless connections among indy wrestlers around the globe. This lasted until 2018, when CIMA shocked the world announcing he would leave behind his beloved Dragon Gate to raise a wrestling promotion in China. Not much later, he would sign up with
All Elite Wrestling, but the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel complications caused him to leave it.
"The Tropes of Evil":
- The Ace: Handsome, a great talker and a magnificent wrestler. Out of all the Toryumon aces, he has been the most successful and long-lasting, with Mochizuki and pretty much none other coming behind.
- All Asians Know Martial Arts: He used stiff kicks while in WCW, and he was put in a match against Ernest Miller because the promotion's resident karateka had to clash against a real Japanese. Otherwise subverted, as he was not billed as a martial arts expert. Ironically, CIMA has some Sumo Wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts training in real life.
- Anti-Hero: His initial persona at his beginnings in Crazy MAX was a young talent with an attitude problem who led a gang of miscellaneous rebels. Even after their Heel–Face Turn, his character changed very little, and it had to wait years to became a more clean cut hero (and even then, he retains part of his old bratty self).
- Arch-Enemy: Magnum TOKYO, Masaaki Mochizuki and Milano Collection A.T.
- Big Bad: Was the final villain of Toryumon Japan, at least for the time he was a villain. He tends to play this role every time he turns heel again.
- Big Brother Mentor: To many young wrestlers, the first being Jun Ogawauchi and Shingo Takagi.
- Big Good: He takes this role whenever he is a babyface and there is no other veteran ace like Mochizuki to dispute him the job. If there is, CIMA tends to play The Hero instead, or an older version.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Used to be a good example when his Crazy MAX gang debuted, helped by the fact that CIMA was the youngest of the three, the only high-flyer and the most young-looking by a wide margin.
- The Cameo: Had some early appearances in World Championship Wrestling as Shiima Nobunaga.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Has a surprisingly high number of moments of this, as he typically has a mad amount of energy, tends to dress in fabulous entrance attires and uses weird expressions when excited. He, Fujii and Stalker Ichikawa have had a lot of fun through the years.
- Complexity Addiction: He will not perform a simple move if he can do it with pumphandles, cross-arms, wrist-locks and other complicated holds.
- Confusion Fu: Although part of CIMA's complexity addiction is just showing off, there is an element of using his elaborate setups to mask what he's actually trying to do from his opponent
- Cool Shades: He wore regular shades in Crazy MAX and an eccentric wraparound model afterwards.
- Finishing Move:
- Originally, the Mad Splash (an intentionally gnarly frog splash). He mostly abandoned after he injured his knee. ** Since 2001, the Schwein (a back to belly piledriver, similar to Mariko Yoshida's Air Raid Crash, only with his opponent straight over his shoulder). It comes with many variations and improvements, like the Schwein-Gatame (a leglock/neck crank performed from the move's position), the Schwein Redline (the basic move with a wrist-clutch), Schwein-Steiner (a version from the second or top rope) and Egoist Schwein (a sort of weird mix with Magnum TOKYO's Egoist Driver).
- Since 2003, the Meteora (diving double knee drop to a seated opponent).
- And since 2004, the Crossfire (a complicated powerbomb, crossing the opponent's arms using them as pumphandles between his legs). He has also the Crossfire Naciente (mixed with Masato Yoshino's Sol Naciente).
- Five Moves of Doom: In his beginnings, it was down to Venus, iconoclasm and Mad Splash, often with the Perfect Driver and later the Schwein thrown in in either before or after the last.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Don Fuji, whom CIMA has worked with from the start of their careers until his departure from Dragon Gate. That would've been from when they began training in 1996 through 2018. In earlier times, SUWA and TARU qualified just as well, being the other two members of the original Crazy MAX, but those went separate ways and now only Fujii and CIMA are left in Dragon Gate.
- The Idiot from Osaka: While he's definitely no idiot, CIMA is still an Osaka native with an outgoing personality, and often deliberately plays up his love for wrestling this way. He also tends to surround himself with other Osaka personalities like Gamma and Magnitude Kishiwada.
- Invincible Hero/Invincible Villain: Part time. In his good times, CIMA tended to slowly get booked to look stronger and stronger until he's so damn good he needed half the roster to interfere to make him lose, and even then he got away with blaming it on an injury; then he would suddenly be reigned in and shoved away from the main event scene for a while before returning full force. This tendency got drastically muted since he was permanently moved away from the Open the Dream Gate scene after his 2 year reign ended, but it still happened a bit even at his last years in DG, when he was mainly a trios wrestler.
- Keet: He leaped around the ring happily with his moves and simply couldn't stop moving in his young years.
- Lightning Bruiser: When he got his start in WCW he was a high-flyer, but he diversified his moveset into llaves, drivers and varied spots after it began messing his body up. He still uses some top rope moves though.
- Loincloth: His signature tights sport long fabric strips around the legs, giving the illusion of a loincloth or a war skirt.
- Mad Artist: His wrestling moves are not always logical, but they are always fascinating to see. For a while, part of his gimmick was that he could counter any finisher.
- Manly Tears: Being an extroverted guy, he cried during the press conference announcing the breakup with Toryumon and the closing ceremony of Crazy MAX.
- Mundane Made Awesome: His Venus signature move is essentially one or more jumping slaps to an opponent who has climbed up the turnbuckle.
- Put on a Bus: In 2018, Dragon Gate sent him to China as sort of a combination envoy and trainer to teach some native Chinese kids to wrestle, with the long term plan of expanding into China. T-Hawk and El Lindaman went with him. It later turned out that there was a very acrimonious breakup between CIMA and Dragon Gate, and although they both kept it professional regarding his departure he's not coming back any time soon.
- Red Baron: "The Dragon Gate Icon", "Ring no Saita Aku no Hana" ("The Flower of Evil that Blossoms in the Ring", used when heel and especially during his old days).
- Smug Snake: Used to have a signature smug grin back when he was a scoundrel.
- Spot Monkey: Subverted. He is usually a fine wrestling planner, but he does have a tendency to seek the most impressive spots possible.
- Time to Unlock More True Potential: Has done it many times in order to get a new (and usually more complex than the previous) finishing move.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: Occasionally his rolls are evasive in nature or used to recover, but more often they are a telegraph that leads him more likely to miss even if his opponent doesn't see the attack coming. CIMA usually does hit anyway though, just cause he's that good.
- The Unpronounceable: While he was in WCW and going by Shiima Nobunaga, everyone had trouble with his name, particularly his last name. In one episode of WCW Saturday Night, his opponent Chris Jericho messed up his name in five different ways before their match, and then commentator Larry Zybysko messed it up even worse, calling him "Shiima Ramalamadingdong."
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Gamma. They are best friends whenever not going after each other's throats.
- Worf Had the Flu: He had a tendency to blame every loss he suffers on "not being 100%".
