The In-Ring Disaster That Ended A NJPW Legend's Career

Injuries can happen at any point in a wrestling match. The men and women who perform put their bodies on the line every single time a bell rings, but there are some performers whose lives are forever changed in the squared circle, and many of the moves that change the course of their lives are moves they have taken hundreds of times.

Take Shinjiro Otani, for example. It's a name who most younger fans won't recognize, but in his prime, he was one of the most underrated and influential wrestlers of the 1990s. A staple of the Junior Heavyweight scene in Japan that would go on to be one of the most revolutionary group of wrestlers ever assembled, Otani spent nine years with New Japan Pro Wrestling between 1992 and 2001, winning a whole host of championships along the way. Most notably, Otani was the inaugural WCW Cruiserweight Champion and the final holder of J-Crown, a collection of championships from various promotions around the world that modern fans will associate with Ultimo Dragon, with eight of the ten title belts he is holding in that famous picture making up the J-Crown.

Otani would eventually leave NJPW to help form Pro Wrestling ZERO1 alongside former New Japan ace Shinya Hashimoto, and outside of cameo appearances in promotions around Japan (including being involved in one of Jushin Thunder Liger's retirement matches at NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom 14 in 2020) ZERO1 was Otani's home promotion. He was even winning championships in ZERO1 as recently as December 2020 — but on April 10, 2022, the career of one of the greatest Junior Heavyweight wrestlers of all time came to an end.

At ZERO1's anniversary event at Ryogoku Sumo Hall in Tokyo, Otani challenged Pro Wrestling NOAH's Takashi Sugiura for the ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship, with Otani looking to bring the title back to his home company. In the closing stages of the match, Sugiura delivered a German Suplex to Otani into the turnbuckle from which Otani didn't get up. The match was thrown out and fans were asked to leave the venue so Otani could be transported to a hospital. Some reports indicate Otani was conscious and talking to the referee while in the ring but was unable to move his limbs, while others suggest he was unconscious until he arrived at the hospital; the one thing that was consistent through all of the reports was that Otani had suffered a cervical spinal injury, and was paralyzed from the neck down. Otani underwent successful surgery a few days later and was transferred to another facility, where he would begin his rehabilitation.

It's been over three years since the in-ring accident, and while Otani still remains paralyzed from the neck down, he has remained in high spirits and still regularly posts on social media. One year on from his injury, ZERO1 named a number of their April dates "Ganbare! Shinjiro Otani!!" Ganbare roughly translates from Japanese to English as "Do Your Best" or "Come On," and in May 2023, Otani made a special appearance at a ZERO1 event where he was able to address the fans about his future, and received a bouquet of flowers from the man who injured him, Takashi Sugiura, with Otani promising that the two men would wrestle again, and that he would be the one to win the rematch.