Wrestlers With The Most World Titles (Across All Major Federations)

5 IWGP Heavyweight Championships

1 Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship

1 GHC Heavyweight Championship

Kensuke Sasaki is the first ever competitor to win all of Japan's three world titles, yet unless you're a puroresu *aficionado* it's unlikely his name will ring any bells. While some of his contemporaries like Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jushin 'Thunder' Liger or Keiji Mutoh are well known even by audiences outside of Japan, Sasaki himself never quite managed to reach the mainstream.

This probably has to do with him becoming a headliner just at the time his company was starting to lose heat. He rose to prominence in mid-to-late '90s NJPW, which was right before New Japan's new millennium slump. The glory days of Tatsumi Fujinami, Antonio Inoki, Vader, Riki Choshu and The Three Musketeers were slowly starting to look like a distant memory and the names of Shinsuke Nakamura or Hiroshi Tanahashi didn't mean anything yet; at that time a great deal of the momentum New Japan had boiled down to Sasaki. From 1997 to 2004 he won five IWGP heavyweight titles, won the G1 twice and earned a spot among New Japan's greatest.

From 2005 onwards, he began working for All Japan (when *they* started to lose heat...) and for Pro Wrestling Noah (at last a company which was at its best). These moves allowed him to become what we could call Japan's first ever unofficial Grand Slam champion. His work for Noah was particularly inspired: his match against Kenta Kobashi at Noah Destiny 2005 (see the video above) was rated 4.75 stars by Dave Meltzer, won Tokyo Sports' Match of the Year award and includes one of the most painful-to-watch chopping exchanges you'll ever see. In 2014, he received Tokyo Sports' Lifetime Achievement Award as a retirement gift, fittingly closing the book on his career.