is a Japanese wrestler for Dragon Gate.

Biography

Kenichiro Arai, also known as AraKen, is a second term graduate of Último Dragón's Toryumon Japan group, and has been a mainstay on the roster ever since. He participated in

FMW Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion founded on July 28, 1989, by Atsushi Onita as (FMW). The promotion specializes in hardcore wrestling involving weapons such as barbed wire and fire. They held their ...

before joining Toryumon. He debuted as a heel, but turned face within the year and remained so for over a decade. He is known for his love of the

Hanshin Tigers The Hanshin Tigers (Japanese: 阪神タイガース ''Hanshin Taigāsu'') are a Nippon Professional Baseball team playing in the Central League. The team is based in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and is owned by Hanshin Electric Railway ...

baseball team, and for his very hard head. Arai frequently no-sells attacks to the head when wrestling. Earlier in his career, he played an alcoholic, and would spit beer in his opponent's faces, but this aspect of his character was quietly dropped. Arai started as a midcarder, but gradually lost card position over the years, until he was fighting mainly in opening matches and rarely winning. However, his career changed for the better when he joined the cram school based stable Tozawa-juku in early 2007. It saw the first ever alteration of his character, and he formed a tag team with Taku Iwasa that gave his career a resurgence. The two won the Open the Twin Gate championship from inaugural champions Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino on February 8, 2008, successfully retaining the titles twice before dropping them to

Ryo Saito (born August 15, 1979) is a Japanese professional wrestler, who currently works for Dragon Gate. He is a former member of the Jimmyz stable, where he was known by the ring name Ryo "Jimmy" Saito. His name is sometimes abbreviated as SaiRyo, so ...

and Susumu Yokosuka on May 5. However, he would find championship success again the following month, for on June 28, he – along with Iwasa and newest Tozawa-juku member Shinobu – would capture the Open the Triangle Gate Titles from Shingo Takagi,

Yamato was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan. Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan. Japanese his ...

and

Gamma Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...

. Unfortunately for them, they lost the titles in their first defense on July 12, losing them to

Yasushi Kanda is a Japanese wrestler currently performing for the Dragon Gate wrestling promotion in Japan. He is considered one of Toryumon's greatest heel characters, and was a founding member of the M2K stable. In his pre-injury days, he was famous for h ...

, Yamato and Gamma. On November 16, he, Iwasa & Tozawa fought the Triangle Gate champions Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fujii and

Magnitude Kishiwada (born May 19, 1971), better known under his ring name Magnitude Kishiwada (マグニチュード岸和田), is a Japanese wrestler. Career During his highschool life, Fujita trained in artistic gymnastics, mixed martial arts and powerlifting, a ...

for the titles, but they had agreed to end Tozawa-juku if they lost. Arai ended up being pinned, bringing the stable to an end, and he and the others were given a graduation ceremony. On January 18, 2009, Arai shocked everyone when he joined the heel group Real Hazard, turning heel for the first time since 1998. It came about when he came to the ring seemingly to assist Yasushi Kanda from suffering a beatdown from Real Hazard, after he lost a Real Hazard banishment match to Gamma, but instead, he joined the group, and then he joined Kanda and the other group members in beating down and ousting Gamma. He adopted a violent fight style and also re-introduced the alcoholic aspect of his character, carrying large amounts of alcohol bottles to the ring, which he used in his matches. Since joining Real Hazard, Arai's career has been relatively uneventful. He has won matches on a semi-regular basis, usually via a low blow followed by a flash pinfall, but he has not been in title contention. In January 2010, during Real Hazard's disagreement on whether to fight clean matches or continue to cheat, Arai continued to team with the "cheat" side but didn't take a strong position on the issue. When the clean fight side of Genki Horiguchi, Susumu Yokosuka and K-ness left Real Hazard on February 10, Arai stayed with the heels, and with them became one of the founding members of the new Deep Drunkers stable a couple of weeks later. Since the formation of the Deep Drunkers, Arai has been mostly absent from cards and losing matches in short order when he does appear. On October 13, 2010, the Deep Drunkers lost a six-man tag team match to World-1 and were as a result forced to split up. However, following the match World-1 member Naruki Doi turned on his stablemates and joined the former Deep Drunkers and Takuya Sugawara to form a new heel group. They however decided that Arai was not needed in the new group and kicked him out.

Championships and accomplishments

*Asuka Project :*Asuka Project Championship (1 time) * Dragon Gate :* Dragon Gate I-J Heavyweight Tag Team Championship ( 1 time) – with Taku Iwasa :*

Dragon Gate Open the Owarai Gate Championship The Open the Owarai Gate Championship was a professional wrestling title in Japanese promotion Dragon Gate. The word ''owarai'' in the title's name is the Japanese word for ''comedy''. The championship was first conceived during Stalker Ichika ...

( 1 time) :* Dragon Gate Open the Triangle Gate Championship ( 1 time) – with Taku Iwasa and Shinobu :* Dragon Gate Open the Twin Gate Championship ( 1 time) – with Taku Iwasa *Guts World Pro-Wrestling :*GWC Championship (1 time) :*GWC Tag Team Championship (3 times) – with Shota :*

GWC 6-Man Tag Team Championship The is a six-person tag team title established in 2006 by the Japanese professional wrestling promotion . After the promotion folded in 2018, the titles moved to Ganbare☆Pro-Wrestling, a sub-brand of DDT Pro-Wrestling. In June 2021, the title ...

(

2 times "2 Times" is a song co-written and recorded by British Italian-based singer Ann Lee. It was released in 1999 as the lead single from her debut album, ''Dreams'' (1999). The single entered and peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart. Outside ...

) – with Masked Mystery and Ryan Upin (1), Masked Mystery and Shota (1) *

Pro Wrestling Freedoms often stylized in capital letters as FREEDOMS is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion based in Chigasaki, Kanagawa. Founded by Takashi Sasaki in 2009, the promotion lets wrestlers choose their own fighting style, having the "freedom" of ch ...

:*King of Freedom World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Gentaro :*

UWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship The is a title that was originally promoted by the Mexican lucha libre promotion Universal Wrestling Association. After the UWA closed in 1995 the title was defended on the Mexican independent circuit and in the Puerto Rican promotion World Wres ...

(1 time) *Pro Wrestling Heat-Up :*Heat-Up Universal Tag Team Championship (1 time, current) – with Hide Kubota :*Powerful Tag Tournament (2017) – with Hide Kubota *Style-E :*Style-E Openweight Championship (1 time) * Tenryu Project :* Tenryu Project World 6-Man Tag Team Championship ( 1 time, current) – with Kohei Sato and Masayuki Kono *Theater Puroresu :*Furyujin Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Kenta Hattori *

Toryumon Japan operating as and often referred to simply as Dragon Gate (also stylized as Dragongate (ラゴンゲート, Doragongēto)), is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion formerly known as Toryumon Japan. Most of the promotion's wrestlers are ...

:* NWA World Welterweight Championship (

) :* UWA World Trios Championship (

) – with Masaaki Mochizuki and Dragon Kid (1), Dragon Kid and Naruki Doi (1)

References

External links

Arai's Dragon Gate profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arai, Kenichiro 1972 births Living people Japanese male professional wrestlers People from Nerima 20th-century professional wrestlers 21st-century professional wrestlers NWA World Welterweight Champions UWA World Trios Champions Open the Twin Gate Champions Open the Triangle Gate Champions Open the Owarai Gate Champions International Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Tenryu Project World 6-Man Tag Team Champions UWA World Junior Heavyweight Champions