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Kazuchika Okada

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Biography

Kazuchika Okada is a Japanese professional wrestler who signed to All Elite Wrestling in March 2024, where he won the 2024 AEW Continental Classic tournament to become AEW Continental Champion, then in 2025 defeated Kenny Omega for the AEW International Championship, unifying the two titles and becoming the first and only AEW Unified Champion.

Trained by Último Dragón at the Toryumon professional wrestling school, Okada made his professional debut on August 29, 2004, in Toryumon Mexico before joining New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) in 2007 as a Young Lion and training in the NJPW Dojo. He was sent on excursion in February 2010 to the American promotion Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA).

Across his 18-year run in NJPW from 2007 to 2024, he became a five-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, including a record-setting fourth reign of 720 days, a two-time IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, a one-time NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Team Champion with Tomohiro Ishii and Hiroshi Tanahashi as members of the now-defunct CHAOS, a two-time New Japan Cup winner in 2013 and 2019, and a four-time G1 Climax winner in 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2022.

Okada is commonly cited by fans, wrestling journalists, and fellow wrestlers as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, recognized for his elite match quality, sustained excellence at the main-event level, ability to elevate opponents, and central role in driving modern Japanese wrestling’s global resurgence. He was ranked No. 1 in the Pro Wrestling Illustrated PWI 500 in 2017, earned multiple Feud and Match of the Year honors for his rivalries with Kenny Omega and Hiroshi Tanahashi, won Wrestling Observer Newsletter Wrestler of the Year and Most Outstanding Wrestler in 2017, was named Japan MVP in 2019 and 2022, inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 2021, and also collected five Tokyo Sports MVP Awards plus nine Best Bout Awards against opponents including Tanahashi, Shinsuke Nakamura, Genichiro Tenryu, Naomichi Marufuji, Omega, SANADA, Tetsuya Naito, and Will Ospreay, with his body of work often held up as the benchmark for championship-level performance.