How a small rural ironworks ended up making professional wrestling rings

In this post, I would like to write about the process of how our company started getting involved in professional wrestling ring production, the hardships we faced, and our production policies.

Since I just started using note, I want to try various things, so I have presumptuously created a table of contents like the one below. I hope to include photos and other things to make it easier to understand.

At first, I stubbornly refused! The reason is...

Recently, our company has been engaging in social media activities that put professional wrestling at the forefront, and we have even reached the point of making rings, but it wasn't like that from the beginning.

Although I have been a professional wrestling fan for 30 years, I kept my public and private lives strictly separate, so I almost never mentioned anything related to professional wrestling at work.

However, as someone who had seen almost every professional wrestling match in this region, I gradually became familiar with various people involved. As the owner of an ironworks, I was often asked to fix bent steel frames for rings or to weld parts that had broken off. But since I didn't want to turn my hobby of professional wrestling into a business, I basically handled all repairs as free volunteer work.

During that time, I was asked several times if I could make a ring itself, but because I am a professional wrestling fan, I felt strongly that "a ring is sacred and a matter of life and death," so I refused, saying, "I won't make one at all because I can't take responsibility!" I also didn't want to turn my hobby into a job... However, since I was still often asked to repair rings, I was able to thoroughly understand the structure and mechanisms of the parts by looking at various rings while repairing them.

Change of direction

In the midst of this, Haru-san, who is very helpful to me and works as a referee and ring builder mainly in Nagoya, asked me, "Could you make a ring?" but I refused at first for the reasons mentioned above.

However, Haru-san also runs a welfare facility where Maeno-san, a wrestler who had his career cut short by an injury during a match and is working hard on rehabilitation, lives and often helps Haru-san. Haru-san passionately told me, "I want to get a ring for Maeno-san, who is working so hard, so that he can be involved in professional wrestling with more hope!" and I had no reason to refuse anymore. This was the moment I changed my way of thinking, deciding that instead of not doing it because of some strange obsession, I should try it if someone I trust wants it this much! But I decided that if I was going to do it, I would do it thoroughly and seriously. I also resolved to make it a proper win-win business, so I finally got off my butt and started working on ring production!

Ring making was not easy after all

That said, although the size of a professional wrestling ring is somewhat fixed, the details differ depending on the ring, and there are no blueprints. So, for the time being, I had the Nagoya professional wrestling group Team Dera bring their ring to our company, and after actually assembling it, I took lots of photos, took measurements, and drew up the blueprints myself.

I didn't know which steel pillars or square pipes to use because the weight changes completely even with a 1mm difference in plate thickness. However, having repaired rings for various groups in the past, I had seen plates that were thin, welds that were weak, and parts that were bent or cracked. To ensure that such things wouldn't happen, I used slightly thicker materials. I also knew that welding wasn't strictly necessary to that extent for a ring, but I made an effort to use the precise and beautiful welding I usually do in my main business so that people could feel at ease just by looking at it, and I started production.

I started at the beginning of the year and repeated trial and error, and I was forced to remake things many times because there were parts that didn't fit even though I followed the measurements. A ring is finally completed by tightening the ropes, so there must be some play in the dimensions. If you don't manage well where to make it tight and where to leave room, the parts won't fit if it's too tight. I place a round pipe with a spring in the center, but it can't be fixed, so that also added a sense of fuzziness to the dimensions, and I had a hard time adjusting it. I only realized the weight of the parts after assembling them, and I was faced with challenges almost every day, like, "This is sturdy, but it's too heavy..." In a sense, it might have been even more severe than my main business products, which have solid blueprints and require millimeter-level adjustments.

Completed after much struggle! But then, a major incident...

After all that hard work, all the steel parts were finished on March 10th. The ring was scheduled to be used for the first time on March 21st at an event in Kobe.

We had a little bit of time in our schedule, but since our company basically only manufactures the steel frame parts, and other components like ropes, wood, urethane, and turnbuckles were being prepared separately by Haru-san, we needed to assemble everything once before delivery to make sure the parts we made matched up well with the others.

At first, we thought we'd just assemble it normally, finish it, and be done!
But then we thought, if we're going to assemble the ring anyway, wouldn't it be best to actually invite wrestlers to have a match on it?!
I thought that if our employees could see it, they would realize that the things they made were actually being used, so we hurriedly decided to hold a 'Durability Test Pro-Wrestling' event on March 14th, where we would assemble the ring on our company grounds and have them wrestle.

And when the day arrived, we started setting up and an incident occurred.

To our surprise, the ropes were longer than expected and couldn't be pulled tight, leaving them all saggy! It turned out that the dimensions were calculated based on the corner post positions without accounting for the length taken up by the turnbuckles, which pull the ropes inward.
There were various other problems too, like the wood not fitting and the number of eyelets on the mat not matching up.

So, the test pro-wrestling match ended up being held with the ropes still saggy. It still makes my blood run cold to think about what would have happened if we had discovered this on the spot at the Kobe venue, but conversely, I deeply felt the importance of doing this durability test, and I have been doing it that way ever since whenever we are commissioned to build a ring.

The sight of wrestlers I know well having a match in a ring I built

The day after the test pro-wrestling, I immediately asked the wire rope shop to make repairs, and the ropes were finished to the correct dimensions right away. However, there was no time to test them together before the actual event, so it ended up being a trial by fire at the Ring Soul event in Kobe on March 21st.

Naturally, I went to Kobe to watch, and the tension was incredible.
When I received the report that it fit perfectly, and then entered the venue and saw the completed ring, I felt something I can't put into words.
I was so exhilarated, thinking that the sight of professional wrestlers I know well actually having a match in a ring we built is something no one else gets to experience.

A style of daringly exposing the production process!

Since then, we have been commissioned to build several more rings, and each time, issues like the width of the wood not fitting or the spring tension not being quite right often come to light during the test pro-wrestling. Even if we build them the same way, slight differences can make them not fit at all. The more I build them, the more I realize that a ring is truly a delicate living thing—it seems simple, but it's a difficult thing to manufacture.

But after incorporating all those challenges, we have solidified a design that is easy for us to build and assemble, so now we have reached the point where we can propose an Ito Seikan Kogyo original-style ring.

By the way, we don't hide the production process much and post it on social media. I know that in many cases, this kind of thing is confidential and can't be posted, but since professional wrestling is also about entertainment, I use this style because I want people to see and enjoy this production process that you don't often get to see.
To be honest, if another ironworks wanted to imitate us, I think they could, but I am certain that there is absolutely no one else who can build it with such care and, above all, 'with such love for pro-wrestling'. So, if anything, I have a 'try it if you can!' spirit (lol).

Thanks to this style, we were discovered by Ring Soul in Kobe, World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana in Kawasaki, and the Hamamatsu Pro-Wrestling Vitality Association, who we had no prior connection with, and they commissioned us to build rings for them, so I guess you could say it's also effective for branding!?

Well, I just do it because I think it's fun if it's simple, so I don't really think about it that much in reality (laughs)

Finally, my philosophy on ring making

Last year, we even placed a ring in our booth at a large-scale cross-industry exchange event called Messe Nagoya, and this year we even went as far as hosting our own event called Swimming Splendid Pro-Wrestling, but I would like to write about these stories separately later (laughs)

Now, having written this much, I still don't make them for just anyone who wants one. The most important thing in doing business is a relationship of trust. I cannot work without that. This is true even if it's not about making rings.

As I wrote at the beginning, the premise that a ring is a 'product that involves life' remains unchanged, and my feeling that I cannot make them lightly has not changed even now.

If you understand that and still want us to make a ring for you, please try to persuade me!
Thank you.

Well, I realized I've written 4,800 characters. Thank you for sticking with my long-winded, rambling text!

【Organizations to which we delivered fully manufactured rings】
World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana
Ring Soul
Hamamatsu Pro-Wrestling Revitalization Association
Takeshi Maeno
【Organizations to which we delivered rings for which we manufactured more than half of the parts】
Yanagase Pro-Wrestling
【Organizations to which we delivered rings that underwent large-scale repairs】
Haru-san's Ring A
DEP
【Organizations to which we delivered rings that underwent some form of repair】
Sportiva Entertainment
Tokai Pro-Wrestling
Team Dera
Yanagase Pro-Wrestling
Haru-san's Ring B
【Organizations for which we produced championship belts】
Pro-Wrestling Heat Up (co-produced with Ohno Seiko)
【Organizations for which we produced entrance gates】
Sportiva Entertainment
【Organizations for which we produced weapons】
Pro-Wrestling Freedoms

【Organizations to which we provided some form of sponsorship】
Sportiva Entertainment
Yanagase Pro-Wrestling
World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana
Team Dera
Pro-Wrestling Freedoms
Pro-Wrestling Heat Up
Shibaya Mammoth Promotion
Nagoya Dream Girls