Two Paths: An Introduction to Fujiyama Dojo

Located just south of Yokohama, the School of Two Paths offers instruction in the combat arts. Believing that pro-wrestling and the martial arts should form an inseparable union, Izawa Fujiyama founded his dojo in December 2002 and since then numerous students have stepped beneath the archway and onto the training floor. With the decline of SAKURA Pro and the rise of Shining Road, Fujiyama dojo has become the de facto training center in the region for young wrestlers who aim to improve their skills.


Izawa Fujiyama is one of the most decorated junior heavyweights of the 1980s and 90s, winning championships and tournaments throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Known throughout most of his career as the infamous DARK FEATHER, he burst on the scene at a time when most junior heavyweight wrestlers adopted lucha libre and other aerial styles. But Izawa would always follow his own code and eschewed what he referred to as ‘aerial theater’ for a technical approach that relied upon strikes and submission holds.

As his career continued, he saw that the strong style seemed pitted against King’s Road. As he competed against the heavyweight fighters, Izawa again knew he had to innovate. He then developed the unique fighting style of the Two Paths, an attempt to fuse these seemingly incompatible paradigms into a coherent and ultimate blend. As a result of this success he went on to win the GPWS Heavyweight Championship from the legendary Takeo Yoshida on 7/13/2002, becoming the first and only junior heavyweight to ever pin the master. After winning the inaugural Sword of Lite Grand Prix and become the first GPWS Junior Heavyweight Champion, Izawa would become known as “Triple Crown Man” for becoming the first person to ever hold all three of the GPWS championships.

By the early 2000s and in the twilight of his career, he decided to continue his pursuit of pro-wrestling as a teacher by opening up his own school where he would impart his innovations on future generations. Following his retirement in 2006, he would turn his attention to the school on a full-time basis.


Fujiyama sensei comments to his students that the Way of the Two Paths is less of a fighting style and better resembles a philosophy or mindset. The repetitiveness of the shoot-style became a crutch while the fabled King’s Road suffered from diminishing marginal returns despite more and more elaborate maneuvers.

Izawa understood that the destructive capabilities of the shoot-style could break the perpetual cycles of stagnation caused by the King’s Road. Punishing knee strikes, ‘deep’ submission holds that could leave an opponent broken, these were just as awesome and impactful as a head-crunching piledriver. The shoot-style enables a fighter to examine the capabilities and search for physical weaknesses in an opponent, while the awesome suplexes and drivers emblematic of the King’s Road deteriorate and drain an opponent’s endurance and concentration.

With these two principles in mind, the Two Paths enable the user to seamlessly test both the abilities and resolve of an opponent and allowing the flow of the match to dictate which method will provide the greater “return on investment”, so to speak. This approach potentially optimizes a fighter’s efficiency, the primary drawback is that the user must have both the intelligence and the intuition to properly transition back and forth between the Two Paths.


While Izawa Fujiyama’s reputation preceded the dojo, success has come to many of his students. The first success story came in 2006 when the late Aoki Saito – best known for bringing his MMA influence to SAKURA Pro – began training in the Two Paths in order to defeat the legendary Takeo Yoshida, who had suffered his last defeat four years ago at the hands of Izawa himself, for the GPWS Heavyweight title. Shinto Priest #2 would also capture Tag Team gold with Saito in 2002 and then defeat Fujiyama to become the 2nd GPWS Jr. Heavyweight Champion.

Across the Pacific in 2007, a student of the Two Paths dojo named Julian Cutlass would enter Lion’s Road Pro-Wrestling based out of Ontario, Canada would soon come to dominate the North American landscape. With at one point four titles in hand – the King of Lions Heavyweight and Tag Crowns, the All-Ontario Heavyweight Championship, and the UWL Tag Team Championship – the Two Paths had finally become a worldwide phenomenon.

Despite the bankruptcy of SAKURA Pro, Izawa continued to train students – notably the Japanese-American MMA fighter, Hayato “Falcon” Hamada – who emphasized his pro-wresting chops in the world of MMA, at one point using a German suplex to claim victory and declaring that the Two Paths represented the strongest form of fighting. The Saudi Arabian born ex-boxer and extreme wrestler, Sheik Spectre, would also bring the Two Paths with him into battle as he brought Vale Tudo and boxing to the world of the deathmatch circuit and rise to international wrestling prominence.