20 True Stories Behind Famous Wrestling Names

5. Hideo Itami

972263

When Japanese wrestling legend KENTA, inspiration to both Daniel Bryan and CM Punk (amongst many others) signed with WWE to debut in their developmental promotion NXT, you could hear the derisive raspberry from every pro wrestling fan with an Internet connection. 

KENTA? In developmental? What next, Jamie Oliver running the fry counter at Burger King? After that, the news that there was a name change in the offing came as no surprise – but, as far as utterly unnecessary new gimmick names go, Hideo Itami isn’t half bad. It literally translates to something like ‘Hero Of Pain’ – ‘Hideo’ is likely to be after Hideo Nomo, a heroic major league baseball pitcher, and ‘Itami’ is said to refer to a character on the Naruto manga and anime series.

If anyone’s interested, ‘kenta’ means ‘big and strong’, so ‘KENTA’ must mean ‘really, really big and strong’.

Contributor
Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.