Home of 4 Front Wrestling

4 Front Wrestling shines the spotlight brightly on a 4FW Star every month highlighting their past, present or future. This month www.4fw-online.com takes a look at the last 12 months of Behnam Ali’s career.

What a year it has been for 4FW Academy graduate Behnam Ali, after establishing himself as a regular roster member on 4FW shows over the course of 2010, earning a spot in this years 4FW Junior Heavyweight League, this young man has used this platform as a springboard for a phenomenal 2011 taking in championship matches, overseas trips, natural disasters and main eventing one of 4FW’s headline shows with a true wrestling legend.　

The year didn’t start off fantastically well for "The Persian Prince" as he challenged Owen Phoenix for the 4FW Junior Heavyweight Championship at January’s New Years Wrestleution show in Swindon and ultimately came up short in a tough hard hitting contest that took both wrestlers to the limit of their abilities. Although disappointed at the result Behnam vowed to battle on and earn a rematch against his adversary by taking the inaugural 4FW Junior Heavyweight League by storm but little did he know that there was a different opportunity just around the corner.　

The match against Owen Phoenix had, via the trainers at the 4FW Academy, found its way halfway around the world to the former WWE wrestler TAKA Michinoku at his Kaientai Dojo in Chiba near Tokyo, Japan. So impressed was the head trainer with the skills and clear potential in Ali that he received an immediate invite to attend the Dojo as a student for 3 months and at the start of March he jetted out to take up this rare opportunity.　

Behnam quickly progressed through the training, battling through intense physical workouts on a daily basis including tough conditioning circuits, martial arts, ring work and weights sessions. He impressed so much that he was deemed ready to feature as part of a K-Dojo event within days of landing in the country. After a well received tag team match his time in the land of the rising sun seemed to be off to the best possible start.

Unfortunately, Ali’s next experience in Japan was the devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the country. Fortunately he was largely unaffected by the tragic events or the issues that followed and the tough training continued, interspersed with aid efforts for those less fortunate. He was even involved in fundraising wrestling events that took place little over a week after the disaster struck.

As the country started the long rebuilding process so did the Japanese wrestling scene and April saw more appearances come for the young talent following continued hard work in the dojo with TAKA’s former WWE tag team partner, Funaki. He was offered opportunities for other wrestling companies, performed in the world renowned Korakuen Hall in Tokyo and also started to compete in singles competition. Behnam competed for the UWA World Middleweight Title and was getting a lot of respect from his Japanese peers with fellow K-Dojo wrestler Marines Mask mentioning him on his blog. "British rookie Behnam Ali is staying at Kaientai Dojo. He is still a teen. I trained with him today. I was very impressed by his devotion to the training". 

As April wore on some weeks were starting to look more like a full time wrestling schedule than a training trip with matches nearly every night although it was all alongside the gruelling training but everything was paying off. Behnam was now on shows where the cards featured such top Japanese talents as the likes of Kota Ibushi and Go Shiozaki amongst others and was reporting back that he had gained a stone in weight due to the focussed training schedules. 

Moving into his final month in Japan the 4FW Academy graduate continued to excel, Behnam Ali got the opportunity to compete for another former WWE wrestler, Tajiri, on his well respected SMASH Pro Wrestling promotion all the while appearing as a regular on K-Dojo shows each week.

Upon returning to the UK Behnam had a new attitude and aggressiveness that we hadn’t seen before, it almost seemed like he felt he was too good to be in front of the 4FW fans and he let all of them know. This amplification of his previous animosity towards them was embodied in a name change. As a reflection of his new standing Ali thought it was no longer fitting for him to be called a prince as he deserved the position of a king and, in keeping with his native Iran’s traditions, he became "The Sheik" Behnam Ali.

In the following few months Ali took on many opponents in singles and tag competitions as 4FW toured the South West and his showing in these earned him his first ever opportunity for the 4FW Heavyweight Championship against The Saint. In what was a really tough encounter Behnam pushed the Champion to the edge and was inches away from getting his hands on the gold after hitting his Brainbuster but the more experienced Saint managed to get a foot on the ropes at the last second and eventually came out victorious. 

August saw the huge announcement from 4FW that Japanese wrestling legend Dick Togo would be competing at a 4FW event as part of his worldwide retirement tour and having his last match in the UK on their annual Halloween Spectacular event. After a month of speculation it was finally announced that Behnam would be his opponent and, although this wasn’t the match that was universally expected, the contest made sense. After all who better to take on and learn from a retiring legend than a young star with bags of potential that had spent 3 months of the year being trained by Togo’s friend and former tag partner in the Dojo that takes its name from the Kaientai team that Togo was such a huge part of? The months ticked by and Ali continued to compete and train at the highest level, harder than ever, in preparation for the match, consistently in the 4FW Academy for conditioning and at the 24HR Gym in Swindon to make sure he was in the best physical shape he could be.

Then came the big night, in front of a packed house at the Grange Drive Leisure Centre in Swindon "The Sheik" Behnam Ali had his biggest contest to date as he took on the legendary Japanese star and former WWE wrestler Dick Togo. The match was full of hard hits, brawling, dives and big falls but it was far from one way traffic, the youngster refused to be overawed by the occasion or his experienced opponent and gave as good as he got as they battled around the arena and back to the ring. Eventually, after 30 minutes of punishing action, Behnam went down to Togo’s patented top rope senton. 

Despite not always having success Behnam claims to have learnt from every experience that he has had this year and goes into 2012 full of confidence that he can build on the lessons learnt. With the challenges that he has taken on and an open invitation to return to the K-Dojo in Japan we don’t doubt that he will.