Every Wrestling Rookie Of The Year: Where Are They Now?
6. 2017: Katsuya Kitamura
With his impossibly sculpted body, awesome meathead intensity and ridiculous/amazing mouthguard look, Katsuya Kitamura was a refreshingly different Young Lion who promised to add a new, more urgent dimension to the baggy and epic New Japan Pro Wrestling main event scene.
NJPW thought highly of him, even booking him on a Kenta Kobashi-adjacent character arc, but he vanished from the promotion under mysterious circumstances in 2019. Rumours that he had crushed his leg in an awful scooter accident were debunked when he tried his hand at MMA in 2021. It did not go well.
As dark rumours swelled around his personal life, Kitamura sadly passed away age 36 in 2022. No cause of death has been made public.