Osamu Nishimura passes away at 53

Two-time IWGP Tag Team Champion Osamu Nishimura has passed away at the age of 53 after a battle with cancer. Cauliflower Alley Club announced Nishimura’s passing in a social media post on Thursday night, expressing admiration for Nishimura, his wife, and their six-year-old son: A longtime veteran freelancer, Nishimura wrestled for every major Japanese promotion of his era, as wel as short stops in ECW and WCW. The Vintage Puroresu account has posted numerous highlights from his career in the wake of his passing: Nishimura announced in April 2024 that he had stage 4 esophegeal cancer, which later spread to his brain, requiring a craniotomy. Nishimura wrestled twice after the stage 4 diagnosis, both times for Atsushi Onita’s FMW-E promotion — once in a tag team bout with Dory Funk Jr. against Onita and Raijin Yaguchi last August at a Terry Funk Memorial/Onita 50th Anniversary show, once in December in a six-man barbed wire explosion match. This battle with cancer was the second that Nishimura had waged, as he