Several outlets in Japan reported that Hideki Hosaka has died at the age of 49 after suffering from cancer for the past two years.
Hosaka was born in Itoigawa City and was involved in amateur wrestling in high school before starting to train for professional wrestling.
Hosaka was a long-time partner of Atsushi Onita’s and made his pro debut days after his 20th birthday in 1991 for the W*NG (Wrestling International New Generations) promotion under the name “Benkei”.
In 1993, he joined FMW and feuded with his mentor, Onita.
Hosaka won the FMW Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship in February 1995 defeating Ricky Fuji in Okazaki and held the title until the end of March that year when he was defeated by Koji Nakagawa.
In 2000, he formed a team with Yoshinori Sasaki and became the WEW Hardcore Tag Team Champions after winning the vacant titles in April. They lost the titles in June 2000 to Eddie Fatu & Matty Samu (who would later become 3 Minute Warning). Hosaka and Sasaki would win the belts twice more that year.
He was part of the ZEN faction with Onita and W*NG Kanemura and later part of Team Zero with Onita until leaving FMW in early 2001.
From there, he split his time between Big Japan and All Japan Pro Wrestling before focusing on AJPW almost exclusively by late 2001.
On one of AJPW’s 30th anniversary shows, Hosaka teamed with Ryuji Hijikata losing to Mil Mascaras & Dos Caras, who were returning to the promotion as a tag team for the first time since the Real World Tag League in 1983.
Hosaka remained a constant on All Japan cards during this part of the early 2000s and would wrestle with Zero-One as well. He left All Japan in mid-2004 after suffering a bad knee injury during a match.
He didn’t wrestle again until 2006 where he returned as a freelancer. Throughout the remainder of his career, he worked for promotions that included Zero1, Freedoms, Pro Wrestling NOAH, K-Dojo, the FMW Revival Series, and other independents.
He would wrestle until August 2019 with his final match being a multi-man “Street Fight Tornado Anywhere Scramble Bunkhouse Death Match” for Big Japan. (We had originally listed his last match as taking place in August 2016, which was incorrect, and regret the error).
Hosaka was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and it was reported it had spread to his liver and had surgery performed in October that year.
We send our condolences to the family and friends of Hideki Hosaka, who was 49 years old.
With notes from Cagematch.net
