Essential Japanese Wrestling Discussion/News

[SubZeroDegrees]

And another one



Can't say I'm surprised though, Takayama was working a regular schedule with hard hit matches for years when he was clearly broken the fukk down

Damn. No more Destructive Power enterance music.

 

[Jmare007]

When was this?

Early May.

 

[stro]

Kawada stiffed the kang one too many times

that's just fukking rude

 

[Beautiful Bobby Eatin]

And another one



Can't say I'm surprised though, Takayama was working a regular schedule with hard hit matches for years when he was clearly broken the fukk down

fukk... It is real... Top 5 Puro theme too

 

[Jmare007]

fukk... It is real... Top 5 Puro theme too

It''s sad as fukk, I had no clue it was this bad

 

[Beautiful Bobby Eatin]

It''s sad as fukk, I had no clue it was this bad

How does it happen with a routine sunset flip breh?! How?!

 

[Jmare007]

Wada DA GAWD on Baba's take on King's Road





There's a lot of people who go at the notion that 90's All Japan was some "higher level shyt" when it came to storytelling but, regardless of what one might think about how "deep" the matches were, it's telling that the guys that were there to create it did treat it like an elite level of wrestling

Too bad they had to go full retard in the final years of it

 

[stro]

Idk man, I just saw two different Jumbo/Misawa matches where Misawa kicked out of a backdrop, so Jumbo hit two more, and three more in another match until he stayed down. More often than not, Misawa would hit multiple tiger drivers, Kawada powerbombs/lariats, Kobashi lariats/powerbombs, etc. I'd argue that's more of a NOAH thing than AJPW outside of a handful of times in AJPW over the entire 90s.

 

[Jmare007]

I had not idea Kawada and Liger met when they were young



I knew about Misawa and Kawada being in the same school and wrestling team, but no clue about Liger being an opponent.

Idk man, I just saw two different Jumbo/Misawa matches where Misawa kicked out of a backdrop, so Jumbo hit two more, and three more in another match until he stayed down. More often than not, Misawa would hit multiple tiger drivers, Kawada powerbombs/lariats, Kobashi lariats/powerbombs, etc. I'd argue that's more of a NOAH thing than AJPW outside of a handful of times in AJPW over the entire 90s.

My point has more to do with the notion that the Four Pilars actually did sit down with Baba and thought out of the different nuances the style had. There's always been an argument that All Japan was just people doing shyt that worked and they just kept doing. To me, Wada saying that reffing was like conducting a symphony and Baba having a clear vision about the style shows that they actually were trying to do complicated stuff on top of high spots that popped the crowd.

And yeah, the quote might not work literally. King's Road did have a lot of tropes typical of any puro match from any promotion and that unique finishes were the exception and not the rule. It's like when Tanahashi talks about the excess of the current New Japan style and how it's not "good wrestling", when he was the one that introduced those excesses to it and still does them

 

[stro]

 

[Ed MOTHERFUCKING G]

Kenny with the when Tama said kenny is leading for bullet club....

Never noticed kenny's total fukkery faces during this. I saw okada losing his shyt during yanos' speech tho...gold

 

[3Rivers]

 

[Honga Ciganesta]

Going through the classic Observers and in 2000 Rikidozan was named most important wrestler of the century, it's a great write up

So with all the problems in trying to choose a Most Important Wrestler of the Century, the choice is.......

Kim Shinraku

There are plenty of arguments that can be made for various candidates detailed in last week's issues for different candidates. Lou Thesz had the amazing longevity and tremendous credibility worldwide and was the main in-ring performer that carried the National Wrestling Alliance to being the most powerful entity as an umbrella group for promoters around the world in the history of the industry. Hulk Hogan was the biggest worldwide celebrity of all and a fantastic drawing card. There has never been a performer day-in and day-out inside the ring over nearly three decades better than Ric Flair. Frank Gotch was the greatest American historical figure in wrestling and Strangler Lewis was a national celebrity before there was television to make it easy. And Antonio Inoki, within his home country, was a bigger deal than Hogan, Thesz or Flair ever were.

And then there's Rikidozan. Rikidozan was Japan's first pro wrestling superstar. He was by far the biggest television star ever in pro wrestling, and maybe the biggest television star ever in Japanese culture. He took an industry that didn't exist and turned it and himself into the first big television hit. He created an industry that has had its ups and downs but has never gone away, and also never, for better or worse, strayed from the sometimes strange values he instilled in it from his own life in sumo. He was the man who personally picked the two men who carried the ball, Shohei Baba and Kanji Inoki, after his death in Japan, and the man, Kintaro Oki, who became the biggest wrestling star ever in Korea. And his end came in a spectacular mob style murder at the age of 39.

In a country that at the time hated Koreans, he was one of the country's biggest celebrities and most popular sports heroes. And thus his birthplace and background were always hidden. His life story was a myth, just like the world he learned from the Americans and exported to Japan and made it bigger than any of the Americans ever dreamed it could be.

According to Japanese history, Rikidozan was born Mitsuhiro Momota on November 14, 1924 in the city of Omura, near Nagasaki, the site of the atomic bomb dropping in 1945. The reality is that his name at birth was Kim Shinraku and he was born in North Korea. The plight of a native of the Nagasaki area being the cultural figure a decade after Japan was devastated by Americans in a war that left casualties and spread cancer for generations throughout that city, fighting back against larger American imports became a television drama that was a huge hit in prime time for more than 30 years and remains a huge spectator sport today.

Unlike the rest of the world, where as time went on, wrestling got more and more cartoonish and gimmick oriented, with fancy costumes and unbelievable storylines, the world Rikidozan created of worked serious sport with almost a sumo like hierarchy and slow promotion to the top still exists today. In the two major promotions of Japan, while the moves have gotten flashier and the matches faster-paced, the basic themes remain within the realm of athletic believability, and the real outlandish gimmickry is generally saved for the smaller independents just looking for attention and aren't considered major league. Unlike in the United States, where the general public for decades dismissed pro wrestlers as phonies, and more recently gave them credit as cartoonish entertainers, in Japan, even though the matches are worked, the wrestlers were always regarded as great athletes and tough fighters who do worked wrestling matches, that sometimes become real. While America's first television stars were gimmick oriented Gorgeous George or barefoot acrobatic Argentina Rocca, Japan's original television superstar was a powerfully built man in long black tights and black boots, forever wearing the old International heavyweight title belt.

While Japan is not immune from the cyclical ups and downs of business, this concept of wrestling has led to, more years that not, Japan being the strongest economic market for pro wrestling for most of the past half-century. At his peak, it was larger as part of the general public culture than modern recorded pro wrestling has probably been anywhere, and at any time. Even to this day, nearly 40 years after his death, his name is known by everyone in Japan. His grave site in Tokyo is practically a national monument where wrestlers go to get their photos taken. And at the turn of the century, he finished No. 14 in a Japanese newspaper poll for Man--not Athlete--but Man of the Century. On many television and media retrospectives of the century in Japan, clippings of his early television wrestling matches were featured. Gorgeous George, his American equivalent as a television wrestling pioneer, died the same year as Rikidozan, and today the name is only known outside the hardest core wrestling fans to people past the age of 55 or to current wrestling fans as a brief memory of one of the million interchangeable silicon babes that appeared on TV wrestling over the past year.

Kim Shinraku's Japanese life actually started with an older brother, who was a big sumo fan growing up as part of a poor family in Korea. His brother left Japan for Korea to become a sumo, and Kim followed at the age of 15. He was christened Rikidozan as his sumo gimmick name, and at first in sumo was even billed from Korea, a fact later hidden in the media as he became popular in pro wrestling after the Korean War. From all accounts, he was a very tough and powerful man and was one of the top sumo wrestlers in the world, which in those days, made him already something of a household name in Japan. When he wasn't promoted to the rank of Grand Champion, or Yokozuna, in sumo, which may have been the strange sumo customs in those days regarding not elevating foreigners to the almost godlike ranks reserved for those native born, he complained and was forced out in May 1950.

After incurring racism in Japan after leaving sumo, he worked in construction and changed his name to Mitsuhiro Momota.

Japanese pro wrestling can trace its roots to when Masahiko Kimura, a Japanese judo champion (the same Masahiko Kimura famous in mixed martial arts for beating Helio Gracie before 20,000 fans in Brazil in 12:00 via submission in the early 50s) and Toshio Yamaguchi went to the United States and wrestled in San Francisco against Mike & Ben Sharpe for the World tag team championship in 1951. On September 30, 1951, Bobby Bruns, a famous wrestling booker of that period, ran an American tour of Japan using Kimura & Yamaguchi as his native stars, at the old Tokyo Memorial Hall. Hawaiian Harold Sakata (who later wrestled as Oddjob Tosh Togo and was more famous in the U.S. in the 60s as an actor playing Japanese roles, in particular for a cough syrup commercial where he karate chopped through tables, and for a role in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger" for his magic hat), who had won a silver medal in weightlifting at the 1948 Olympics, was the big star. They also brought in Joe Louis to referee on some of the big shows on the tour. Sakata recruited the recently retired sumo, who had a big sports name in the country, to see his first pro wrestling show. They started training him in basics. Just weeks later, on October 28, 1951 in the same building, Rikidozan made his pro wrestling debut going to a 10:00 draw against Bruns. Bruns signed him to a full-time contract and took him overseas to teach him wrestling and get publicity out to create a hand-picked Japanese wrestling native hero.

He left Japan in early 1952 to train under Oki Shikina in Hawaii, debuting by pinning Chief Little Wolf in a preliminary match at the Honolulu Civic Auditorium. He was promoted fast. On March 14, 1952, he teamed with Killer Davies to win the Pacific Ocean tag team titles from Bruns & Lucky Suminovich. A few months later he was sent to the mainland, promoted from the start as a superstar. He debuted on June 12, 1952 in San Francisco, beating Ike Eakins. Just two weeks after his mainland arrival he was in the main event at the Cow Palace on June 23, 1952 teaming with Primo Carnera to battle The Sharpe Brothers to a 60:00 draw for the World tag team titles. Three days later in the same city, he suffered his first pro loss, to Leo Nomellini, one of the greatest linebackers in NFL history and a superstar with the San Francisco 49ers who was one of the biggest names in pro wrestling during the off-season. That loss was done as part of a long-term plan as word was sent to Japan about Rikidozan's loss to the football superstar via the old UPI wire service, with both the story of the loss and that Rikidozan had become a sensation in San Francisco and when he returned to Japan, was going to start an American style pro wrestling company. In his first year wrestling in the United States, he wrestled 260 matches, losing only five, singles bouts to Nomellini, Tom Rice and Fred Atkins, and was on the losing end of two tag bouts challenging the Sharpe Brothers.

The Japan Pro Wrestling Association was officially announced on July 6, 1953, and its first show was on July 18 in Osaka, but those shows are really not referred to much in Japanese history. On November 29 of that year in Honolulu, they held a tournament for a challenger for a match against world champion Lou Thesz the next week. Rikidozan won, and had his first singles world title match on December 6, 1953 in Honolulu, and was pinned by Thesz' back suplex, which is why, even to this day, the back suplex means so much more in Japan than the United States, and why Jumbo Tsuruta used it as his main finisher in the 80s.

What is remembered as the beginnings of Japanese pro wrestling were three nights in 1954, February 19, 20 and 21 at the old Tokyo Sumo Hall at Kuramae. What wasn't important was the venue, or that all three shows were sellouts to see this novelty sport headlined by a Japanese former sumo who had gone to the United States and beaten most of the best that country had to offer on their own turf. What was important is that television, then in its infancy in Japan (as at that point in time they were far behind the U.S. technologically), agreed to broadcast all three shows, the first night on NHK, and the next two nights on NTV. The first night, Rikidozan & Kimura went to a draw against The Sharpe Brothers for the NWA world tag team titles and the Rikidozan phenomenon was born, images burned in the mind of most of the country of Rikidozan, making the hot tag, chopping the two gigantic (The Sharpes were 6-6 and 6-7 in an era when no athletes Japanese had ever seen were that tall) Americans (who were actually Canadian) and them selling his offense big. Virtually nobody in the TV audience had ever even seen pro wrestling and they didn't understand the first thing about it, but were enthralled by seeing a famous native athlete from their traditional national sport, beating up on Americans much taller than he was. The basis of Japanese wrestling for decades was created that first night on television. The fans had a hero to stand up to the big Americans who beat them in a war and left them poor and hungry. This created the fascination in Japan with big powerful American stars. And that's why people like Scott Norton, even to this day, can be wrestling stars in Japan.

There are news clippings from the time showing people, since few households at the time actually had television, when reading about this first night in the newspapers, looking in department store windows and thousands gathering in parks that had television sets watching Rikidozan fight the next two nights on NTV, which has continued to broadcast pro wrestling almost weekly for more than four decades. This led to a rush on people buying television sets, specifically to see Rikidozan beat up big foreigners, and he became the national hero who in many ways popularized television in that country. On the second tour, on August 10, 1954 in Osaka, Rikidozan & Kokichi Endo beat Leo "Shoulders" Newman & Hans Schnabel to win the Pacific Ocean tag team championship, the first title change on Japanese television.

.

 

[Honga Ciganesta]

This led to the biggest match in the short history of Japanese pro wrestling, and still a legendary battle today, on December 22, 1954 at Sumo Hall, billed as sumo vs. judo, Rikidozan vs. Kimura to create the first Japanese heavyweight wrestling champion. The agreement ahead of time was that this match would be a draw, but the end result was that Rikidozan, in the middle of a worked match, suddenly double-crossed Kimura and started shooting, and started throwing the most brutal kicks and chops to a stunned Kimura, beating him senseless, including stomping hard on the head of his stunned foe. Kimura was eventually knocked out from a brutal blow to the head and the doctor stopped the match. As often happens in this business, an unprofessional act of epic proportions creates a superstar of almost mythic proportions of the man who violated the basic tenants of the business. Pro wrestling had and still does have this weird long tradition of people benefitting from double-crossing people in a cowardly act. One could argue that Rikidozan did have guts to jump Kimura, since at the time he was believed to have been the equivalent of a UFC champion and legend at the time labeled him the toughest real fighter in the world. In those days with no true venues to prove it, any title like that is more the stuff of legend, but he was a legitimate judo world champion. But Rikidozan was a bigger man, and in any fight, when you get the jump and pound in blow after blow on someone not defending themselves and who doesn't even know he's in a fight until it's too late, it's pretty hard to come back. Rikidozan was also President of the company, called the Japanese Wrestling Alliance, starting the trend where the biggest star in the ring would also run the company outside the ring, which also lasted for decades.

Azumafuji, a sumo Grand champion, was then recruited into pro wrestling as Rikidozan's partner and they went to Honolulu on April 17, 1955 beating Bruns & Suminovich to win the Hawaiian tag team title. The two sumos became a touring act, popular throughout Asia, particularly in India, for nine weeks. The Japanese title he created 11 months earlier was dropped in lieu of creating an Asian heavyweight title, and he imported 450-pound King Kong (former Olympic games wrestling medalist Emile Czaya), who was at the time the superstar pro wrestler of Singapore and Hong Kong, to put him over on November 22, 1955 at Sumo Hall, one week after Rikidozan suffered a defeat in a tag team match teaming with Sakata against King Kong & Tiger Jokinder Singh (which is probably why a generation later Tiger Jeet Singh was able to have so much success in Japan).

At the end of January 1956, they started building for the big one. Slowly. Although he had never wrestled in Japan, Thesz was already famous there for not only being the elusive NWA world heavyweight champion, but for pinning Rikidozan, something the Japanese had never seen before, in the deciding fall of a match, in Honolulu. Rikidozan's promotion officially joined the NWA when he flew to St. Louis to make the deal with Sam Muchnick, to get dates on Thesz and build for the biggest series of two match ups to that point in the recorded history of the industry.

The year 1956 saw Rikidozan capture his first world title, as on May 4, 1956 at Osaka Furitsu Gym, Rikidozan used his trademark finisher of the hard chops, a judo whip, a body slam, a kick, drop kick and flying head scissors into a pin winning the NWA world tag team titles with Kokichi Endo as his partner beating the Sharpe Brothers. The reign was short as on May 19, 1956 in Sapporo, the Sharpe Brothers, through pinning Endo, got the titles back and returned to San Francisco with them. He also got to avenge his 1953 loss to Tom Rice, as on August 1, 1956, in Tokyo, he pinned Rice to win the Pacific Coast title, but immediately vacated the title.

By 1957, the novelty of pro wrestling was starting to fade, and business was bad when Rikidozan would leave on foreign tours. The novelty of bringing in Bobo Brazil, the first black superstar to come to Japan, picked up business big. On April 30 of that year, they announced, five months in advance, that--finally--the champ, was coming to Tokyo.

In what was undoubtedly the most watched pro wrestling match in history up to that point, on October 6, 1957 at Korakuen Baseball Stadium before 27,000 fans, Thesz and Rikidozan went to a 60:00 draw in a two out of three fall match with neither man winning a fall. The show drew an 87.0 rating, the largest TV rating pro wrestling is believed to have ever done anywhere in the world at any time. Rikidozan had several other matches including one the next week that did better than 60.0 ratings and to this day are among the top ten most watched television shows in the history of Japan. When he died in 1963, almost all of the most watched TV shows in the history of the country were his wrestling matches. What that basically means is that nearly everyone alive in the country on that day saw the first Thesz match. A rematch on October 13, 1957 at the Osaka Ogi Pool drew 30,000 fans to see them go another 60:00 with each man winning one fall. Thesz returned to the United States, seeing what Rikidozan had created, and wanted to cultivate the feud and make it stronger, and eventually drop the NWA world title to him because he felt the money making possibilities were well beyond what wrestlers could ever earn in the United States. When the alliance, and in particular Muchnick, who only understood America and didn't see what was happening and the potential of the new market, wouldn't agree to the idea of letting their champion leave the country more frequently and eventually doing a title trade, Thesz shockingly resigned as champion after eight years. The alliance asked him to drop the title to Buddy Rogers. He refused, citing his well known dislike for Rogers, and hand-picked dikk Hutton, a great real wrestler that he had great personal respect for, and the title change took place November 14, 1957 in Toronto. But replacing the well-known Thesz with the uncharismatic Hutton hurt the championship, and the NWA in general, greatly, causing major promotions to leave, form splinter groups, and create new champions.

Thesz, free from NWA commitments in the United States, used his name value from years as champion to book himself around the world, billing himself as NWA International heavyweight champion. On August 27, 1958 at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, Rikidozan beat Thesz in two out of three falls and brought the International heavyweight title to Japan, where it remained for some 14 years as the most prestigious title belt in Japanese wrestling. That belt, which he held until his death more than five years later, still exists today as part of the Triple Crown title.

Business went way up with Rikidozan returning after having finally pinned Thesz in the United States. To the Japanese, beating Thesz, the God of pro wrestling, was a bigger deal by that point than beating Hutton, who was an unknown. His first feud with Don Leo Jonathan in October was a huge success. But business fell in November when Rikidozan left for Brazil. During this down period, the idea for the World League tour (which still exists today in All Japan as the annual Champion Carnival every spring) came about.

The first World League, in 1959, was another huge success, selling out every show and drawing huge television ratings, particularly for the appearance of a huge masked man, Mr. Atomic (Clyde Steeves). The tournament ended on June 16, 1959 with Rikidozan pinning Jesse Ortega, in a match famous because it was the first major blood match in Japan. He brought Mr. Atomic back for a huge match on August 7, 1959 at the old Denen Coliseum where he pinned him to keep the International title.

While touring Brazil once again in March of 1960, Rikidozan heard about a Japanese high school boy who had migrated with his family and was living in Brazil that was a huge track star. The previous year, at the age of 16, he was the Brazilian national high school champion in the shot put and the discus. Rikidozan found Kanji Inoki and recruited both he and the tallest man ever to play major league baseball in Japan, Shohei Baba, into pro wrestling to be the two biggest stars after he stepped down. Baba was the chosen one from the start and had a path paved much easier for him by Rikidozan.

Rikidozan won the second World League tournament pinning Nomellini on May 13, 1960. Rikidozan then, starting his grooming for the future, elevated Toyonobori to the top level. He re-created the All-Asian tag team titles, and gave them to Danny Miller & Frank Valois, and on June 7, 1960 in Nagoya, he and Toyonobori captured the belts winning two straight falls and they became the main event tag team, dominating the belts until his death. He also had one of his biggest career feuds with Sonny Myers. He imported Tex McKenzie, who at 6-8, was one of the tallest headliners in pro wrestling at the time, with plans for a big feud. But McKenzie didn't like taking Rikidozan's chops, and the two never got along, and instead a former University of California football star was given the name Prince Iaukea (later known as King Curtis Iaukea) and he became his big rival as 1960 came to a close. But the biggest show, in hindsight, of the year was on September 30 of that year at the Daito Gym in Tokyo. The main event saw Rikidozan retain his All-Asian title going to a draw with Ricky Waldo, but on the undercard, Baba made his debut, pinning Yonetaro Tanaka, and Inoki (later Antonio Inoki), made his debut losing to Oki.

The third World League in 1961 was built around the creation of two new foreign monster superstars, the 6-5 450-pound Great Antonio and an ever better big masked man than Mr. Atomic, in Mr. X (Big Bill Miller).

Before the tour opened, they had a television demonstration which was covered in the news of the huge Antonio pulling four busses, totally eight tons. When the tour began, every night was a sellout to see Antonio, who was used as a non-tournament special attraction winning short squash-style matches, thus didn't have to do singles matches against the top wrestlers, from the strength demonstration. Antonio got such a big head and was bullying and harassing people everywhere he went, that he didn't even last the tour. Rikidozan ended the feud right away, beating Antonio on June 2, 1961 at Sumo Hall in two straight falls and was said to be unusually rough on him to punish him for being such an a$$hole on the tour. In the dressing room later, Karl Gotch and Miller took care of Antonio, and he was then fired and sent home. The tournament finals on June 29, 1961 in Osaka had a surprise finish, as in the third fall, Mr. X pinned Rikidozan doing the foreign object in the mask head-butt finish, however the Great Togo told the referee and the decision was reversed, making Rikidozan the winner. This led to a mask vs. International title match on July 21, 1961 at the Denen Coliseum in Tokyo, which Rikidozan won via count out and Miller's identity was revealed.

Rikidozan was always involved with the Yakuza, the Japanese mob, as later came out after his death. They were a strong influence in funding not only wrestling, but in numerous other businesses as Rikidozan was ahead of his time as an athlete who used his name to start other business ventures. He had his pro wrestling gym, a boxing gym, a golf course, a bowling alley, built mansions, apartment complexes and opened a night club. He even announced he would be a boxing promoter and at his death was getting back into the sumo world.

On February 3, 1962, Rikidozan & Toyonobori finally lost the All-Asian tag team title to Ricky Waldo & Luther Lindsay. It was the first major title loss for Rikidozan and the Japanese, not used to seeing him lose a title match, rioted at the building. They quickly regained the belts on February 15. He then went to the United States to prepare for the World League tournament, saying that he wanted to unify and create one real World heavyweight champion, trying to bring all the different major World champions at the time, Pat O'Connor (NWA), Edouard Carpentier (recognized in many areas), Fred Blassie (WWA) and Verne Gagne (AWA) along with top contenders like Bruno Sammartino and Buddy Rogers. But it never materialized. Before the tour started, Rikidozan cut a deal with Jules Strongbow, who was part-owner of the Los Angeles based wrestling promotion out of the Olympic Auditorium, to buy a world championship belt that the NWA would never allow him to have. That promotion had also pulled out of the NWA a little earlier, creating its own world championship, held by Blassie. On March 28, 1962, Rikidozan won his first singles world heavyweight title, pinning Blassie at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles.

 

[Honga Ciganesta]

Blassie, who had never been to Japan, was promoted huge coming in for the World League tournament as "The Vampire." Blassie did a tremendous job getting over his biting as his gimmick, filing his teeth, etc. and doing the best job of interviews the country had ever seen in the newspapers and on television to where he immediately became the hottest heel ever to hit Japan. Most buildings for the tour sold out before the tour ever started after seeing Blassie filing his teeth at Haneda Airport on his arrival to regain his world title.

Legend has it that Blassie bit Rikidozan's head in their first singles match, drawing blood, which shocked the Japanese public to the point that many people, the number having grown deep into double digits as the years went by and it became a typical pro wrestling tall story, had heart attacks watching on television. Of course, like with most legends, there is a germ of truth to it. On April 23, 1962 at Tokyo Gym, Rikidozan pinned Blassie to keep the title, but not before his was bloody from the biting to the forehead, which caused heat like Japanese wrestling had never seen before, but nobody died watching the match on television. It was actually four days later on a live television show from Kobe, where Thesz & Mike Sharpe & Blassie beat Rikidozan & Toyonobori & Great Togo, where the TV cameras showed close-ups of Blassie biting Togo's head, and the heavy juice shocked the nation, which is said to have caused six elderly men watching around the country to suffer heart attacks and pass away. Blassie, years later, when talking about the incident, used to brag and exaggerate that story into that he caused 93 Japanese to die during his career and complain he never reached his goal of 100. Rikidozan, NTV and Japanese pro wrestling received their first major media criticism for the broadcasting of the close-ups of the biting and heavy blood which led to the deaths. The story about Japanese people dropping dead watching a wrestling match, credited to Blassie's biting, even got substantial media play at the time in the United States. But as it turned out, business, and Blassie, got even hotter, making him the hottest heel up to that point in Japanese wrestling. However, he was toned down from that point, and in the tournament finals on May 24, 1961 at the Tokyo Gym, Rikidozan pinned Thesz in two of three falls. As per agreement, Rikidozan on July 26, 1962 went back to Los Angeles and dropped the WWA title to Blassie in a match that was stopped by referee Johnny "Red Shoes" Dugan due to Rikidozan's excessive bleeding from the biting.

Rikidozan did his first injury angle in Japan in September, as newcomer Yukon Moose Cholak injured his right shoulder and he was kept out of action for eight weeks, returning wearing pro football shoulderpads on the bad shoulder, on November 9, 1962 in Okinawa to beat Cholak in two straight falls in an International title match despite being unable to use his famous Rikidozan chops, and relied on nothing but kicking the entire match.

Rikidozan opened the final year of his life announcing his engagement and a wedding date set for June 5, 1963. His final World League tour opened on March 23, 1963, which featured the return of Giant Baba, who had wrestled the previous few years in the United States as the first real Japanese wrestler to be a top drawing main eventer almost everywhere in North America because of his size and unique physical appearance. On April 17, 1963 in Okinawa, he retained the International heavyweight title beating the allegedly 600 pound Haystacks Calhoun via count out (I actually saw this match and it was so bad), and then in a completely different match one week later, retained the title pinning O'Connor, who was a great wrestler inside the ring. Finally the tournament ended on May 17, 1963 at Tokyo Gym with Rikidozan pinning Killer Kowalski. But the big angle took place before the match even started, as The Destroyer (dikk Beyer), who came in billed as WWA champion (he had actually just lost the title prior to the tour to Blassie in Los Angeles). It was the match that made Destroyer for decades, including a stint as the first foreigner in history to become the regular tag team partner of a Japanese main eventer (the popular Baba & Destroyer tag team of the early 70s) and as one of the hosts of the most popular Japanese comedy shows of the 70s. It also made the figure four leglock, which was a hot finisher for decades, before losing its luster in the 80s, and being revived by Keiji Muto in 1995 in the Nobuhiko Takada Tokyo Dome match. And it was Rikidozan's only clean singles defeat ever in Japan, on May 19, 1963, when he lost a one fall match to the figure four leglock in what was billed as a WWA title match.

The shock of this loss led to the largest audience to ever watch a television show up to that point in time in Japan, a 67 rating (the Thesz rating was higher but by this point virtually every home in Japan had a television set), for the match five days later at the Tokyo Gym with the WWA title at stake. The best of three fall match ended in a 60:00 draw. It's still the most watched match in Japanese history today, even beating out the Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki match in 1976.

Rikidozan's wedding on June 5, 1963 was Japan's equivalent to the Lady Di wedding, more than 3,500 guests, featuring movie stars, major politicians, sports stars, company presidents and pop music stars, and he left for a world tour honeymoon. He already had a prior family, which included two sons who became pro wrestlers, Yoshihiro and Mitsuhiro Jr. (Mitsuo), the latter of whom actually wrestled in the United States at one point as Rikidozan Jr. in Texas. But neither was able to capitalize on their fathers' fame. The latter of the two still works the comedy matches for All Japan and is still something of an internal power broker.

Destroyer returned to Japan in December for the final matches of Rikidozan's life. By this point he was 39 years old, and was physically starting to deteriorate because of the years of drinking, plus with him running so many other businesses, it left him little time for any training and so much of his emphasis was away from pro wrestling. It is generally conceded that Destroyer, who was a super worker by the standards of the time, a smaller heel, was the right opponent by this time because he needed a better athlete to help make the matches exciting. On December 2, 1963, Rikidozan kept the International title winning two of three falls from Destroyer. Two days later they had a 60:00 draw. Two days after that, Rikidozan & Toyonobori retained the All-Asian tag team titles beating Destroyer & Buddy Austin. The next night in Hamamatsu, on the final wrestling card of the year, he worked in a six-man tag and took the train to Tokyo for a meeting with higher ups in the Japanese Sumo Association. There was irony in the fact that they wanted Rikidozan, through his American pro wrestling contacts, to help them promote sumo wrestling in the United States. The irony was that he was basically kicked out of sumo, and not promoted due to his ethnicity, and years later, they came back to him when he was a superstar and asked for his help.

On December 8, 1963, while partying with the sumo bigwigs at the Akasaka Night Club, in a gangland style slaying, as legend has it, his assailant, Katsuji Murata, a major player in a major mob family, peed on a knife, to insure it would cause an infection. Rikidozan was on his way to the bathroom, and Murata was coming from the bathroom, and in the hallway, stabbed Rikidozan in the stomach. There was a conflict between two branches of mob gangs over who would control the promotion of pro wrestling as well as other entertainment events, and Rikidozan was aligned closely with the rival gang. As many wrestlers who have become huge babyface superstars in the Hogan, Rhodes vein, and none were ever bigger than Rikidozan, he actually believed he was all that. After being stabbed, Rikidozan beat up his assailant to an admiring mob of fans and threw him out of the club. He went to the stage, mentioned that he'd just been stabbed, and acted as if he wasn't even injured, and drank and danced the night away. Legend had him singing "Mack the Knife" on stage, which is also probably more myth than reality. But the failure to get immediate medical attention resulted in him contracting peritonitis and all his years of drinking had done a number of some of his internal organs. At first the word was that he'd be fine, but a few days later he was forced to undergo major surgery and on December 15, 1963, he died. And very nearly, so did the American entertainment form that he transported to Japan and made it bigger than the Americans, who invented it, ever could.

He did not die an incredibly wealthy man, as much of the money he earned in wrestling and other businesses he squandered in gambling and booze. After his death, some of the truth about Rikidozan became public. His drinking. His mob connections. That the Yakuza was heavily involved in the pro wrestling business, and his other businesses. That he was an iron-fisted boss. It came out that the national sports hero wasn't so heroic in how he conducted his real life business. But while it wasn't a top secret, it apparently wasn't the time to come out that Japan's sports hero was actually Korean, and that the matches he won before the large television audiences were actually fixed. Many of the major arenas refused to even allow pro wrestling shows. With its only real native drawing card gone and the business leaving the public with such a bad taste, the arenas that would book the shows didn't draw well. NTV, because pro wrestling had a track record of being so successful on television, didn't cancel, which kept pro wrestling barely alive with Rikidozan's long-time second banana, Toyonobori, as the biggest star. But it was only two years later, when the JWA brought Giant Baba back and shot him past Toyonobori as the top star, and later the rise of Inoki, that the business got back on track with another boom period in the mid-to-late 60s.

More than 20 books have been written about him since his death. There have been numerous television documentary retrospectives about him. During a later boom period 20 years after his death similar in many ways to the current WWF boom in the United States, caused by the incredible popularity of Inoki, Riki Choshu and Satoru Sayama, much like pro wrestling in the U.S. in 1998-99, pro wrestling in Japan around 1982-83 was getting all the mainstream media ink. Unlike in the United States, Japan had real documented wrestling history and it caused many articles in the media about this huge sports entertainment form and where it came from, and the answers to that question went right back to Rikidozan. It was at this point in time when the media and the country at large finally revealed the secret. That Japan's national hero when Japan as a nation started its comeback from the war and who more than anyone else popularized the new medium of television, was actually not Japanese. But even today, while he may have been the biggest wrestling star that ever lived, virtually no wrestling fans even know the name of Kim Shinraku.