Great Sasuke - Professional Wrestling Career

Professional Wrestling Career

In his early career, Murakawa wrestled under the name Masa Michinoku. Masa, from his given name Masanori, and Michinoku, after the alternate name for his Japanese home region, Tōhoku. Taka Michinoku adopted a similar gimmick to parody him. Later, on a tour of Mexico, Murakawa adopted the mask, uniform, and name Ninja Sasuke. This was the predecessor to the Great Sasuke gimmick he would adopt upon returning to Japan.

Murakawa is also the owner, and founder, of Michinoku Pro Wrestling, the first Japanese independent promotion not to be based around the Tokyo area. Instead, it was centered around the northern island of Hokkaido.

As part of an agreement between Michinoku Pro Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation, the Great Sasuke was part of the tournament to crown the first WWF Light Heavyweight Champion in 1997. Although Sasuke was heavily pushed to be the winner of the tournament, he would later brag to the Japanese media how he would only defend the title in Japan had he won the title and would refuse to drop the title on WWF television. When the WWF heard of Sasuke's comments, he was fired as well as his working agreement with them terminated, although a former member of Michinoku Pro Wrestling, Taka Michinoku, would end up winning the title.

In 1998 he and Tiger Mask IV began feuding with the heel (villainous) clones of their respective gimmicks: Masked Tiger (Takeshi Ono) and Sasuke the Great (Masao Orihara).

In 1999 he won the NWA World Middleweight Championship vacated by old rival Ultimo Dragon. Although the tournament was promoted by Ultimo's Toryumon Japan promotion, Sasuke took the title to his base at Michinoku and styled himself a "traveling world champion" in the style of NWA World Heavyweight Champions from the 1960-80s.

In 2002, Sasuke briefly turned into a heel and started using the name SASUKE, using blue stripes on his mask instead of the red stripes. However, he later turned into a face (fan favorite) when Jinsei Shinzaki "brought him back from the dark side" by "exorcising the evil out of him".

Sasuke still currently wrestles in Michinoku Pro Wrestling, although he left the running of the promotion to Shinzaki in 2003 to focus on his political career. In 2003 he lost the NWA title to Ultimo Dragon, who then vacated it and returned the belt to CMLL in Mexico, in preparation for his WWE career.

On April 15, 2011, Sasuke returned to the United States to wrestle for Chikara in the 2011 King of Trios tournament, where he would represent Michinoku Pro with Dick Togo and Jinsei Shinzaki. In their first round match Team Michinoku Pro defeated Team Minnesota (1-2-3 Kid, Arik Cannon and Darin Corbin). The following day, Team Michinoku Pro defeated Jigsaw, Manami Toyota and Mike Quackenbush to advance to the semifinals of the tournament. On April 17, Team Michinoku Pro was eliminated from the tournament in the semifinal stage by F.I.S.T. (Chuck Taylor, Icarus and Johnny Gargano).