Manabu Murakami

Manabu Murakami
Manjimaru in June 2014
Born	(1984-08-21) August 21, 1984 Oma, Aomori, Japan
Professional wrestling career
Ring name(s)	Maguro Ooma Manabu Murakami Manjimaru
Billed height	1.74 m (5 ft 9 in)
Billed weight	78 kg (172 lb)
Trained by	Último Dragón Jorge "Skayde" Rivera
Debut	December 7, 2002

Manabu Murakami (村上学, Murakami Manabu)^[1] is a Japanese professional wrestler. He currently wrestles in Michinoku Pro Wrestling as Manjimaru.

Professional wrestling career

After training in the Último Dragón Gym, Murakami started his career in Mexico under his real name. He adopted a comic mixed martial arts gimmick parodied from Kazunari Murakami (no relation), wearing a red fundoshi and performing sexual antics to disturb his opponents. Murakami and his class were moved to Toryumon X, where his bizarre gimmick brought him an unexpected amount of popularity.^[2] After the Toryumon X closing, his unit was transferred to Michinoku Pro Wrestling, where he changed his name to Maguro Ooma and adopted the gimmick of a Japanese fisherman, also wearing a fundoshi. Maguro had feuds with Tsubo Genjin and Junji Tanaka, and started to wear more traditional attire.

In 2005, Maguro turned heel and joined the STONED faction, directed by Kagetora. He started to employ a wild and violent fight style, using a spiked bat and any other weapon he can get his hands on. On the May 3 show of M-Pro, Maguro, Kei Sato and Shu Sato defeated Los Salseros Japoneses (Takeshi Minamino, Pineapple Hanai & Mango Fukuda) to win the UWA World Trios Championship, which was vacated the same night. When El Dorado Wrestling was opened, Maguro and his M-Pro colleagues competed for it, with Maguro being known as Manjimaru. He had a brutal feud with Mototsugu Shimizu, in which they destroyed lots of El Dorado atrezzo and were ordered to pay off their damages by general manager Noriaki Kawabata. Manjimaru and Mototusugu competed as a tag team in the Treasure Hunters Tag Tournament 2006 in order to use the prize money to pay the fine, but they were eliminated by the eventual winners, Dick Togo & Shuji Kondo. Next week, the pair pleaded to Kondo to give them the money, but they were interrupted by YASSHI, who had come with a similar petition to clear his own debts. After an accidented main event, Kawabata partitioned the prize and gave both sides some of the money, and Manjimaru proposed using their part to produce the next El Dorado show and collect enough money to finally pay off the fine.^[3] During the show, both competed in a battle royal for the full control of the prize money, which was won by Shimizu with help from Onryo. Manjimaru and Shimizu paid the fine, and Motosugu gave the rest to his partner, who needed it for shoulder surgery. Now reconciled, the team promised more damages in the future, and Manjimaru left El Dorado to undergo surgery.^[4] Murakami briefly returned to El Dorado as a Hell Demons member, but the promotion fell in 2008.

After the fall of Hell Demons, Maguro became a member of the Kowloon stable, directed by Fujita Hayato, and formed a tag team with Takeshi Minamino, which was called Tonery Family. Minamino and Ooma won the Futaritabi Tag Team League 2009 and beat Kesen Numajiro & Kinya Oyanagi to win the Tohoku Tag Team Championship. They retained the title during months, until they dropped it to Yapper Men (Yapper Man #1 and Yapper Man #2). After the dissension of Kowloon, Tonery Family and Ken45º turned tweener and followed Hayato to his new stable, Bad Boy.

In wrestling

• Finishing moves
  • Manjiotoshi^[1] (Over the shoulder reverse piledriver)
  • Shining Hip Attack^[5] (Running hip attack to the face of a kneeling opponent while using their knee for leverage)
  • SKB^[6] (Sitout side powerslam) – 2002–2005

• Signature moves
  • Leaping hip attack,^[1] sometimes while springboarding
  • SHINJO^[7] (Kendo stick shot)
  • Springboard moonsault^[1]

• With Takeshi Minamino
  • Toneri Thunder^[8] (Bridging German suplex (Maguro) / chokeslam (Minamino) combination)

Championships and accomplishments

• Apache Pro-Wrestling Army
  • WEW Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Takeshi Minamino

• Michinoku Pro Wrestling
  • Tohoku Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Takeshi Minamino
  • UWA World Trios Championship (1 time) – with Kei Sato & Shu Sato
  • Futaritabi Tag Team League (2009) – with Takeshi Minamino

References