ZEN (professional wrestling)

ZEN
The group leader and founder Atsushi Onita
Stable
Members	See below
Name(s)	ZEN
Debut	September 30, 1997
Disbanded	May 5, 1998
Promotions	FMW

ZEN was a professional wrestling stable in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW). The group was led by former FMW owner and the company's founder Atsushi Onita from late 1997 to mid 1998 and the group was based on World Championship Wrestling's New World Order (nWo). The group produced its own shows in collaboration with FMW like nWo promoted its own pay-per-view nWo Souled Out.

Upon its formation, the group immediately wiped out W*ING Alliance and Funk Masters of Wrestling that had been dominating FMW for the past few years and was the lead villainous group formed by the unofficial merger of both factions. Their dominance ended when Mr. Gannosuke, Yukihiro Kanemura and Hido turned on Onita after Onita lost a WarGames match to Hayabusa. The trio formed Team No Respect and ZEN turned fan favorites and feuded with TNR. The group was forced to disband after Onita lost to Kodo Fuyuki and the group disbanded on May 5, 1998.

Atsushi Onita had been feuding with W*ING Alliance since 1994 and the group was formed with the concept of ending FMW because the group held Onita and his FMW responsible for ending W*ING. Onita concluded his rivalry with W*ING at Kawasaki Legend on September 28, 1997 by defeating W*ING Kanemura and the match stipulated that W*ING group would be forced to disband if Kanemura lost to Onita. As a result, the W*ING group disbanded. After the match, W*ING members Kanemura, Hideki Hosaka and Hido were worried because FMW or any other group would not accept them and Onita became concerned about them and then quit FMW in anger and took them under his wing. On September 30, Onita announced the formation of his new group ZEN with W*ING Alliance members and FMW's Tetsuhiro Kuroda defected to the group as well. The group was irate at Hayabusa, Masato Tanaka and Koji Nakagawa's leadership of FMW and replaced Funk Masters of Wrestling as the new lead villainous group of FMW and marked the first time that Onita became a villain in FMW.