Main Roster


BADBOY Hido

Garuda

GENTARO

GOEMON

Kintaro Kanemura

Mammoth Sasaki

Masato Tanaka

Mr. Gannosuke

Onryo

Shinjuku Shark

Soldier

Tatsuhito Takaiwa

Tetsuhiro Kuroda

Yoshihito Sasaki


Fuyuki Army History
written by Kevin Wilson

After the fall of FMW, three different promotions popped up with the promotion's former stars as they tried to keep alive the legacy of FMW. It is a complicated history, but in order to understand how Fuyuki Army was created I am going to recap what happened from the spring of 2002 to the spring of 2003 as quickly as I can. After FMW closed in February of 2002, Kodo Fuyuki created WEW (World Entertainment Wrestling) with part of FMW's former roster (including Kanemura) while Mr. Gannosuke created WMF in August of 2002. On March 19th, 2003, Fuyuki died from cancer, and May 5th was the last show under the WEW banner. Kudo Fuyuki's wife, Kaoru Fuyuki, decided to continue promoting shows with both former WEW wrestlers and WMF wrestlers participating. The promotion lasted from July 7th, 2003 to May 5th, 2004, which is when Kaoru Fuyuki stopped funding the promotion.

Fuyuki Army started off with a bang on July 7th, 2003. Besides the wrestlers from WMF, the debut show also saw participation from Genichiro Tenryu, Masato Tanaka, TAKA Michinoku, Ryuji Ito, and the top former stars of WEW. Kintaro Kanemura formed a faction called Apache Army, and for the duration of the promotion they would battle invaders from larger promotions. Running most of their shows at Tokyo Korakuen Hall, the backing of Kaoru Fuyuki helped the promotion prosper until the end of 2003. At the final show of 2003, Zero-One would invade and the team of Otani, Tanaka, and Takaiwa would defeat the Fuyuki Army trio of Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Mr. Gannosuke, and Mammoth Sasaki when Otani pinned Kuroda.

Unfortunately, the promotion was beginning to lose money and Fuyuki grew tired of promoting a wrestling company. On March 19th, a year after Kudo Fuyuki's death, Fuyuki Army had a big event at Tokyo Korakuen Hall in honor of him. In the main event, the great Shinya Hashimoto defeated Tetsuhiro Kuroda with a Jumping DDT. Also on the show the All Asia Tag Team Championship was defended, with Great Kosuke and Shiryu defeating Kintaro Kanemura and BADBOY Hido. The event drew a full house, but at the show Kaoru Fuyuki announced the promotion would be closing after the show on May 5th - at the famous Kawasaki Stadium.

The Kawasaki Stadium show did not do as well as they hoped. Originally it was announced that Hashimoto and Choshu would team in the main event, but the main event ended up being Kintaro Kanemura and BADBOY Hido against Riki Choshu and Tomohiro Ishii. Also, the weather was cold and rainy, which did not suit the outdoor stadium. With well under 10,000 in attendance the final show was considered a failure and an unfortunate way to end a promotion that was created to honor one of the legends of FMW.

After the promotion closed, Mr. Gannosuke continued to promote WMF (which had continued running shows all along) while Kintaro Kanemura with the help of sponsors started his own promotion - Apache Pro. Mr. Gannosuke and Kanemura's split was not amicable, and the two would never work together again. Mr. Gannosuke did not have Kanemura's sponsoring, leading to Apache Pro running more shows and even taking some of WMF's roster. While it seemed for many years that Kanemura had won their personal war, with Apache Pro's closing in 2008 it was Mr. Gannosuke that had the longer lasting promotion. While Fuyuki Army only ran 11 events in 10 months, the promotion was the last time that the majority of former FMW wrestlers were all in the same place, and even though the promotion ultimately closed they were able to honor Fuyuki's memory for a year while putting on entertaining events.