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ring name: 小橋 建太 (born, March 27, 1967) is a Japanese professional wrestling promoter and retired wrestler. Broadly referred to by the nickname 4= Iron Man, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. He is best known for his two runs in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and Pro Wrestling Noah, of which he captured AJPW's Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship thrice, and Noah's GHC Heavyweight Championship once. He is the winner of numerous Match of the Year and Wrestler of the Year awards, including from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (WON) and Tokyo Sports.
Kobashi started his wrestling career in AJPW in 1987, debuting the next year and becoming the star rookie of the promotion. Booked as a resilient jobber by AJPW founder Giant Baba, he became a key major figure in the shift between old wrestlers to younger ones in the turn of the Super World of Sports . In 1993, he was officially dubbed as one of the members of the Puroresu no shiten'nō of AJPW, alongside Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, and Akira Taue. He became renowned for his matches and rivalries with gaijin (foreign) wrestlers and fellow Japanese wrestlers alike. He became a widely successful tag wrestler, teaming with Misawa, the AJPW ace, as part of the Chou Sedai-gun, and becoming a noted combatant in some of the most highly acclaimed tag team wrestling matches of the 1990s.
He became successful as a singles wrestling star later on, usually by his determination and performance in highly acclaimed matches, usually for the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship or in the Champion Carnival tournament. His matches with his fellow Kings, as well as the likes of Steve Williams, Stan Hansen, Burning stable-mate and tag partner Jun Akiyama, and Terry Gordy, are held in high regard and praise, especially those against the Kings and Hansen. As a top singles wrestler in AJPW, he qualified for the 1997 and 1999 Champion Carnival finals, and won the 2000 tournament.
Kobashi was part of the dissenting crew who would take part in the second exodus of All Japan Pro Wrestling in 2000, which led to the creation of the Pro Wrestling Noah promotion, and would later continue to work as a wrestler for the promotion for thirteen years. He notably concluded the inter-promotional rivalry with Misawa in Noah, winning the GHC Heavyweight Championship from him on March 1, 2003. He went on to have the longest singular reign for the championship of all time, holding it for 735 days, losing it to Takeshi Rikio on March 5, 2005. In that reign, he had defended the title thirteen times (the second most ever behind Takashi Sugiura, who had one more than Kobashi), and had sold out each of the Noah-affiliated shows that had him defend his title.
Kobashi spent many of the later years of his career sidelined due to various injuries. He underwent numerous surgeries on his arms and legs in the early-mid 2000s before retiring from in-ring action in May 2013. Kobashi continues to make sporadic appearances in Noah, as well as DDT Pro-Wrestling, whilst also promoting his own shows under the Fortune Dream banner.
Kobashi joined a Judo club in junior high school, and he, in his senior year, placed third in the qualifying round at nationals, having been outweighed by his opponent in the semifinals by 50 Kilogram (110 lbs). He also had practice in rugby union, but did not have any placements in competitions with the sport. He attended a New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) show at this time, of which he was, according to Kobashi himself, hit with Stan Hansen's bull rope. After graduation, in 1986, he took a job as a Kyocera General Affairs worker, working in plants in Kyoto and Kagoshima. After being inspired by a magazine article featuring a young Mike Tyson, he quit his job the next year, and he sent his resume to the AJPW offices, which was rejected. After being in contact with International Wrestling Enterprise referee Mitsuo Endo, he was set up to do an interview at the Shiga Prefectural Gymnasium in Otsu on May 26, which happened to be with Giant Baba, the founder and then-head booker and chief executive officer of AJPW. After Baba declined to have an interview and instead prompted Kobashi to wait and relocate to Tokyo, Kobashi was accepted to their dojo on June 20, 1987. He was trained there by Baba, as well as Funk brother Dory Funk Jr., Kazuharu Sonoda and Baba-protégé Masanobu Fuchi. Sonoda died on South African Airways Flight 295 on November 28, and after having an argument with Baba, was sworn under pressure to be trained exclusively for a time by Fuchi.
Kobashi had his first championship match in February 1989, teaming with Giant Baba to lose to the incumbent All Asia Tag Team Champions Footloose, the team of Toshiaki Kawada and Hiromichi Fuyuki. Kobashi won his first singles match on May 16, 1989, against Jim Crockett Promotions jobber Mitch Snow, and on June 6, he picked up a win over established Stampede Wrestling rising star John Hindley. During 1989, when The Road Warriors were in AJPW, they taught Kobashi the "Road Warrior Workout". Eleven months later he won his first title, the aforementioned All Asia Tag Team Championship with Tiger Mask II (Misawa); however, shortly after removing the mask, Kobashi and Misawa would vacate the title. Later in the year, he won them again, this time with John Laurinaitis.
Kobashi would be confirmed as one of the five wrestlers assigned to the newly formed Super Generation Army, and would have his official first match as part of the new stable on August 10, 1990, defeating Joel Deaton and Johnny Ace in a tag match alongside Kawada. The stable would then start an official feud with the Jumbo Tsuruta-led 鶴田軍. Once a loved babyface now turned to a tweener role, Tsuruta now wanted to declare himself superior over the Super Generation Army in spite of his age. A lot of the matches featuring both stables had mixed the rivalry between Misawa and Tsuruta, and the prowess of Kobashi, who had been thrown in as an underdog to the more experienced wrestlers, mostly including Tsuruta himself, as well as Masanobu Fuchi, Yoshiaki Yatsu (Jumbo's tag partner for several years) and The Great Kabuki. At the same time, when teamed with the smaller Tsuyoshi Kikuchi in the All Asia Tag Team Championship division, he would play a "big brother" role, coming in to try to save the match after Kikuchi had been worked on for a while by the opponents. The title win with Kikuchi over Philip Lafond and Doug Furnas, the Can-Am Express, took place before a rabid crowd in Kikuchi's hometown of Sendai on May 25, 1992; the match quickly gained legendary status among Tape trading, and was voted 1992's Match of the Year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
During this time, he had started a feud with Stan Hansen. Hansen and Kobashi had begun to have their first matches together in the late 1980s, with Kobashi being beaten every time by Hansen and his tag team partners, predominantly Genichiro Tenryu. With Tenryu gone, their matches usually then turned to singles matches, with Kobashi losing every time to Hansen via the Western Lariat. For the next few years, especially during the period between 1991 and 1993, Kobashi would increasingly have longer matches with Hansen, which would culminate in close falls and traded offence.
Kobashi gained his first singles victory over a former Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, when he defeated Terry Gordy in May of that year in Sapporo. The match, and the subsequent ones also featuring the three other company Puroresu no shiten'nō of Misawa, Kawada and Taue, against their foreign foes (Hansen, Steve Williams and Dan Spivey respectively), marked a shift in the guard for AJPW and their main event scene. Heralded by Baba and coined by journalist Shoichi Shibata, who'd borrow it from the Buddhist concept of the same name, each of the kings would become the four big national faces of AJPW, and would be heavily featured on magazines and other media as such. On July 29, he faced Stan Hansen in a singles match, which Hansen won. The match was considered a superior match to the main event: a Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship match between Misawa and Kawada. It also was Kobashi's first singles match to be awarded five stars by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter
On October 25, Kobashi and Misawa held a Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship match against each-other, for which Misawa was the champion and Kobashi was the expected underdog. Misawa and Kobashi, who had been known in the press as "inseparable", faced off against each other to great fanfare at the Nippon Budokan. After over forty minutes, Misawa pinned Kobashi with a Tiger Driver to win and retain the title.
On July 24, 1996, Kobashi earned yet another chance at the Triple Crown, this time against the unexpected incumbent Akira Taue. Taue had previously won the title against Misawa, defeating him to halt the latter's 364 days reign, which had been won and lost in the same city: Sapporo. Kobashi defeated Taue in their Tokyo bout, won his first Triple Crown Heavyweight title, and had, for the first time ever, defeated a fellow member of the Four Heavenly Kings in a singles match. His first defense as champion came against his gaijin rival, Stan Hansen. In a considerable nod to Hansen, Kobashi started to use Hansen's own move, the Western Lariat, to win more matches. Mainly, instead of it being of a similar nature where Hansen would run toward the opponent before hitting them with the Lariat, Kobashi would hold the opponent and wind up his arms before hitting the move. It would officially be dubbed the Burning Lariat, in recognition to Kobashi. The main reason for this change was due to Kobashi's ailing knees, which had been succumbed to injury both during the execution of his main finisher, the moonsault, and for other reasons. Hansen and Kobashi fought on September 5, with Kobashi coming out on top with the Lariat.
By the end of 1997, Kobashi had begun to procure a closer partnership with Jun Akiyama; a fellow Super Generation Army member, and an occasional tag partner of Kobashi in the faction. Both were foe and partner on several occasions, and maintained respect for one another, in consideration to Kobashi being Akiyama's senior. At the end of 1997, Kobashi and Akiyama would officially join forces as an official tag team; this would anger his original main tag partner during this period, John Laurinaitis, and would lead to Ace turning on Kobashi in the process in August the next year. The aforementioned tag team of Kobashi and Akiyama, which had been given the name Burning, would be transformed into a unit that same year when Akiyama and Kobashi recruited apprentices and AJPW Dojo trainees Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Kentaro Shiga. Ace himself would also form a stable, this time with Johnny Smith, Bart Gunn and Wolf Hawkfield, as The Movement. Both stables would feud in the year, with Burning coming out on top on most occasions.
While Kawada would finally end his pursuit to defeat Misawa for the Triple Crown at AJPW's 25th Anniversary show in the Tokyo Dome, Kobashi would replace Kawada as Misawa's top rival, albeit one that was more respectful to one-another, instead of the bitter interpersonal distaste from Kawada and Misawa. During the year, Kobashi officially adopted a new theme song: the Osamu Suzuki produced Grand Sword, which would be adopted between 1998 and 2003, and 2005 until the end of his career. On June 12, 1998, Kobashi defeated Kawada to begin his second Triple Crown title reign. In the time of which Kobashi and Misawa would feud against each other, Kobashi would adopt a move to rival the fierceness of Misawa's Tiger Driver 91, which hadn't been kicked out of by anyone except Kobashi at that point. The debut of the move would come on October 24, 1998, in a match pitting Kobashi and the FMW-affiliated Jinsei Shinzaki, taking on Misawa and Takao Omori. Drawing inspiration from another popular move of that time, the Etsuko Mita-innovated Death Valley bomb, Kobashi would, to the shock of the crowd, use an Argentine rack dropped into a front face-lock driver (akin to a DDT) to win the match. The move had been given a fan-coined name afterward: the Burning Hammer. The move bore resemblance to Kyoko Inoue's Victoria Driver, but was different in the way each move had done the drop. The week after the debut of the Burning Hammer, Kobashi lost the Triple Crown title again to Misawa, after having defended the title previously against Taue and Akiyama. In December, Akiyama and Kobashi would win their first World's Strongest Tag Determination League as a duo by defeating Stan Hansen and Big Van Vader; Kobashi's fourth and Akiyama's first.
At the same time of the in-ring success of Kobashi in 2000, tensions had boiled in AJPW. Giant Baba had died in January 2000 after battling cancer secretly, and internal struggles had emerged between Motoko Baba, his widow, and Mitsuharu Misawa, the newly inaugurated President of the company. Kobashi, in Misawa's cabinet, had become a board director in the organization. On June 16 of that year, a press conference was held in Tokyo, with Misawa announcing that he would be leaving AJPW effective immediately alongside numerous other talents that had stayed by his side as president, which represented a large chunk of officials, announcers and especially wrestlers. Among those that joined him was Kobashi. Immediately, the Triple Crown belts was vacated whilst Kobashi departed. In the process, Misawa had begun to receive funds and support to start up his own professional wrestling organization, Pro Wrestling Noah, of which Misawa would take the helm as president.
In January 2001, he went through a four-and-a-half hour operation, wherein he would have his knees worked upon. In the time period of which he was out of action, he had to undergo a total of six surgeries on both of his knees, and on both of his elbows. During his recovery, in April 2001, he witnessed the crowning of the first GHC Heavyweight Champion, Mitsuharu Misawa, in a hospital bed. His return match was on February 24, 2002, and featured Kobashi reforming his pairing with Misawa to face the now-GHC Heavyweight Champion Akiyama and New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Yuji Nagata. His left ACL gave out on him during the match. After taking another four months to recuperate, he returned, and Noah began to slowly build towards him winning the Heavyweight title. By this time, the GHC Heavyweight Championship had changed hands several times, many of which resulting in shorter-than-expected reigns. Misawa, Akiyama, Yoshinari Ogawa and Yoshihiro Takayama had all staked claim to the title whilst Kobashi was inactive, with Misawa holding the belt for a second time.
Kobashi's first successful challenge for the title would be against ally Tamon Honda. The first stated pick for the challenge would've been Dark Agents leader and Sternness member Akitoshi Saito, but he had lost a tournament final to crown the next contender against Honda. On April 13, Kobashi defeated Honda at the Ariake Coliseum. The match is notable for the introduction of his new entrance theme song, Blazin'. His next challenge would be against Masahiro Chono, who had come to the Honda match to watch and to challenge the champion. After shaking hands with Kobashi, the match was confirmed but not scheduled. The scheduling for the match would be at the Tokyo Dome-held NJPW Ultimate Crush event, the first time ever (and one of two overall) that Kobashi stepped into a NJPW ring, and the first time since the 1990 Wrestling Summit that he had stepped into any ring affiliated with NJPW. Both wrestled in the co-main event, and with no time limit added to the match, a title first. Kobashi defeated Chono after nearly half-an-hour, during which he had, at one point in the match, beaten Chono so bad that cornerman Hiroyoshi Tenzan threatened to throw in the towel.
During the time of which he would hold the GHC Heavyweight title, he became involved in the tag team division of Noah. He and Tamon Honda were paired together as part of the Burning stable, which had reformed in Noah, and they went ahead to challenge Dark Agent Akitoshi Saito and Jun Akiyama for the GHC Tag Team Championships. Honda and Kobashi defeated the pair to win the belts, making it Kobashi's eighth overall tag team championship in his career. His first defense of the titles came against NJPW talent Togi Makabe and then-IWGP Heavyweight Champion Yoshihiro Takayama on July 16, with Kobashi pinning Makabe to retain the titles. Kobashi defeated Bison Smith to retain the Heavyweight title the next month in Nagoya, and later set up an inter-promotional feud with invader heel Yuji Nagata. Previously in the few months since arriving to Noah, Nagata had defeated both Akiyama decisively and Akira Taue in damage-ranged bouts. Nagata and Kobashi met at the Nippon Budokan on November 1, which Kobashi won. Kobashi also later defeated Yoshinari Ogawa in a title match at the same venue on November 1. After defeating Akira Taue and Battlarts star Daisuke Ikeda in a tag title match on October 24, Nagata and future NJPW ace Hiroshi Tanahashi (working as a heel) defeated Kobashi and Honda to win the GHC Tag Team titles in Sapporo on November 30. Despite his up-comings, Nikkan Sports and Tokyo Sports gave their annual top wrestler awards to Takayama, for his numerous championship victories and inter-promotional dominance, over Kobashi and his GHC Heavyweight title glories. Kobashi was named Wrestling Observer Newsletter Wrestler of the Year in spite of it, and his match with Mitsuharu Misawa on March 1 would be named Match of the Year by all three publications.
In what was built as the pair's first singles match against each-other, Takayama and Kobashi faced off in their highly anticipated match on April 25. According to promoters, the show for the match was sold out within the day. In what was later acclaimed as a highlight in Kobashi's reign, Kobashi defeated Takayama with a moonsault aimed to the head. The title defense at the Tokyo Dome was shifted to put Kobashi in a defense against Jun Akiyama, the first singles match against each-other since the match on December 23, 2000, and the first headliner for both at the Tokyo Dome. In a Dave Meltzer, Kobashi defeated Akiyama after over thirty-five minutes of wrestling, with Kobashi ending the match by hitting a Burning Hammer. Akira Taue was selected as the next opponent to Kobashi and his GHC Heavyweight title reign. In preparation for the title match, Taue and Mitsuharu Misawa fought to a thirty-minute draw. In the match, Kobashi debuted the first of what would be the last big move he would innovate, a wrist-clutch variant of the Burning Hammer. After using it on Taue, Kobashi defeated him.
After being built to go against Kobashi the year previous before being beaten out by Tamon Honda, Akitoshi Saito was finally given a chance to challenge Kobashi for the GHC Heavyweight Championship on October 24 in Osaka. Kobashi defeated Saito, but not before being given respect from the champion in the process of the loss. As a result of the defense, which was Kobashi's eleventh, this would mean that Kobashi had become the most successfully-defensive major champion in modern puroresu history up to that point. It had beat out Yuji Nagata's ten-defense reign as IWGP Heavyweight Champion and Toshiaki Kawada's ten-defense reign as Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion; all of which those titles had occurred at the same time. Kobashi's final successful championship match of 2004, and his twelfth overall, was against Mike Awesome, who had gone under the ring-name The Gladiator.
After 22 months and twelve successful title defenses, Kobashi was scheduled to face the Takayama-allied Pancrase representative Minoru Suzuki for the GHC Heavyweight title at the January 8, 2005 Nippon Budokan event. During the lead-up, Kobashi was announced as the Nikkan Sports Pro Wrestling MVP and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Wrestler of the Year for the second year in a row, and his match against Jun Akiyama was named the Match of the Year by both Nikkan Sports and Tokyo Sports, as well as being internationally regarded as the Match of the Year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Kobashi was also listed as the Best Box Office Draw by the latter newsletter for the year of 2004. At the aforementioned event in the Nippon Budokan, Kobashi defeated Suzuki, making it Kobashi's thirteenth overall successful defense of the title, extending his record. On March 1, 2005, Kobashi officially hit two years (731 days) as champion; four days later, on March 5, he faced Takeshi Rikio in a rematch for the title. Rikio earned a pin over Kobashi in a tag tournament, and had considerable performances against other top wrestlers in Noah. Rikio defeated Kobashi to win the title with a Muso slam, ending his 735-day reign with 13 successful defenses. The commentator after the win declared in Japanese, "the Absolute Champion is defeated!", and celebrated Rikio's win.
During the 2008 Global Tag League tournament finals in April 2008, he, KENTA and Honda defeated Takayama, Shiozaki and Takuma Sano in a six-man tag team match. On June 14, Kobashi and KENTA would face their respective rivals, Kensuke Sasaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima, during the Great Voyage 2008 In Yokohama; the match resulted in a thirty-minute time limit draw, with Nakajima and KENTA brawling after the match. On June 22, Kobashi took part in the European Navigation tour, competing at a wXw crossed-over program. Teaming with Shiozaki, he faced Bad Bones and Big Van Walter, later widely known as Gunther, in a successful effort. He made his return to Kensuke Office on August 17, competing in an Eight-Man Tag Team Survival Match. He teamed with Pro Wrestling Noah younger talents KENTA, Atsushi Aoki and Akihiko Ito, losing to Nakajima, Sasaki, Kento Miyahara and Takashi Okita. Kobashi lasted for nearly forty minutes in the match overall, and ended when Nakajima pinned KENTA after hitting a Death Roll kick whilst Sasaki was holding Kobashi in the outside of the ring, preventing him from saving the match after a thirty-five minute period.
Mitsuharu Misawa died on June 13, 2009, in a show in Hiroshima, leaving Akira Taue to fill the role as head of Noah's booking team and presidency. On August 30, 2009, Kobashi returned to All Japan Pro Wrestling for one night only, competing in his first match for the company in nine years. Kobashi teamed with Akihiko Ito and fellow AJPW alumnus Tsuyoshi Kikuchi in a losing effort to then-current AJPW stars and representatives Satoshi Kojima, KAI and Hiroshi Yamato at Pro Wrestling Love in Ryogoku, Volume 8. On December 23, 2009, Kobashi was seriously injured in a three-way match against Honda and Kikuchi. He was sidelined for 19 months with nerve damage in his right arm, mainly from the usage of his knife-edged chops. Kobashi declined the advice to stop using the move, and continued using the move until he retired. Kobashi made his return on July 23, 2011, teaming with Go Shiozaki in a tag team match, where they were defeated by Akitoshi Saito and Jun Akiyama. On August 27, 2011, he debuted his new temporary charity ring gear, mixing his later-stage black and early-stage orange at the inaugural All Together show at Nippon Budokan, teaming up with Keiji Muto to defeat Chaos members Takayuki Iizuka and Toru Yano. On October 6, it was announced by Noah that Kobashi had stepped down from his position as an Executive Vice President of the promotion.
On December 3, 2012, Noah confirmed that they had released the now-45 year old Kobashi from his contract, which had been decreased to exclusive in-ring competition. The news sparked shockwaves in Japan, as Atsushi Aoki, Shiozaki, Akiyama, Kotaro Suzuki, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru spoke out, declaring their intent of not re-signing with Noah after their contracts expire in January, out of loyalty to Kobashi. On December 9, Kobashi attended Noah's Ryōgoku Kokugikan event and, during an in-ring interview, he revealed that he was planned to retire in a Noah ring in 2013. Noah and Kobashi seemingly came to an agreement to let him retire as opposed to forcing him to leave the promotion. Despite this change in plans, Noah confirmed on December 19 that Akiyama, Shiozaki, Suzuki, Kanemaru and Aoki all would be leaving the promotion after December 24. On January 23, 2013, Kobashi announced that his retirement match would take place on at the Nippon Budokan. Kobashi's retirement event, Final Burning in Budokan took place on May 11. His retirement ceremony was held after the second match on the show and was attended by former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, legendary NTV announcers Akira Fukuzawa and Kazuo Tokumitsu, former colleagues Akira Taue, Hiroshi Hase, Masahiro Chono, Mitsuo Momota, Toshiaki Kawada, and Stan Hansen (the latter via video message), along with many others. In the main event, Kobashi teamed with Jun Akiyama, Keiji Muto, and Kensuke Sasaki in an eight-man tag team match, where they defeated Kobashi's Noah and All Japan-affiliated protégés: Shiozaki, KENTA, Maybach Taniguchi, and Kanemaru. In the match, Kobashi pinned Kanemaru with a moonsault for the final win of his career. The event at Nippon Budokan was attended by 17,000 fans and aired live across Japan on the television network BS Sky! and in movie theaters.
On February 14, 2014, Kobashi announced that starting June 8, he would begin producing his own independent events under the brand "Fortune Dream". The inaugural event featured wrestlers from various promotions, including All Japan Pro Wrestling, Big Japan Pro Wrestling, Kaientai Dojo, Pro Wrestling Zero1 and Wrestling New Classic.
On May 10, 2015, Kobashi returned to Noah to serve as a "special witness" for a GHC Heavyweight Championship match between champion Minoru Suzuki and challenger Naomichi Marufuji. Kobashi's role included making sure that the Suzuki-gun stable did not interfere in the match.
In September 2023, he made an appearance for DDT Pro Wrestling's Shinkansen specialty match between Minoru Suzuki and Sanshiro Takagi. Notably, during the appearance, he did a gyaku-suihei chop (knife-edged chop) on Suzuki, who also won the match later on. He assumed the role of a ticket checker on the Shinkansen train. Other wrestlers who appeared in the match included the now-DDT signed Jun Akiyama, Kazunari Murakami and Hikaru Sato.
Kobashi is known to have not gone any time in his career being a heel. With his noted work as a determined, belligerent wrestler, it made him more likeable with the crowd, especially at the early stages of his career. Showing that he'd never give up in his career, Kobashi's presence in the ring was always noted for his determination to endure and deal damage, as seen evidently in his championship matches against his fellow Four Heavenly Kings: Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue.
Known for his passion towards bodybuilding and training, Kobashi owns and operates a branch of Anytime Fitness in Setagaya, Tokyo.
Kobashi married his girlfriend of 14 years, singer Mizuki (Birth name Mai), on October 2, 2010. In August 2015, Mai gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter.
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