KinchStalker

I don't know as much on the subject as I would like; as I have stated elsewhere on the board, my Otsuka/NJPW thread is on hold because I am trying to get a bit more context for South Korean pro wrestling. But the industry was propped up hard by the Park regime. The president of the promotion itself, which was known as the Kim Il Supporter's Association until 1982, was Chung-hee's bodyguard, "Pistol" Park Jong-gyu. Chung-hee apparently paid for the Kim Il (later Cultural) Gymnasium, a commission which Oki hooked his architect buddy Lee Chun-sung up with. I can't verify this, but I remember reading somewhere that the promotion had lost television coverage at some point, but that Chung-hee forced it to go back on TV. In the 2019 Kim Duk interview that gave me a lot of info for the Oki/Korea post, he also notes that Jong-gyu’s wife was a huge fan and basically a patron. Oki always went out with a cadre of KCIA bodyguards. Et cetera. Everything seems to point to a simple explanation for the decline: the promotion had been coasting on government funding. I raised an eyebrow when reading Showa Puroresu state that tickets for the March 1975 Kim Il/NJPW tour ranged from 4 to 15 won, a tenth of Japanese ticket prices (that top amount equated to about ¥900 at the time). Kim Duk has this to say about his life as a trainee in 1967: “All the money for food and stuff came from the Korean Wrestling Association. In other words, money from the government. I stayed at Mr. Oki's house for about three months, but the other trainees complained, so I moved into a training camp. We young guys were paid as well. We were paid about ¥3,000 a month. All living expenses were covered by the association, so we could eat out and live on that salary. Prices were cheap.” I should also note that South Korea clearly didn’t have the infrastructure for the kind of tours that Japanese promotions did. You never read about them working in provincial markets. I only ever read about shows taking place in about half a dozen cities, the smallest of which was Pyeongtaek, which had a population of around 200,000 in 1975. Oh, and that gym? It was in the Changdeokgung Palace garden.

I've never talked about this here, but I have elsewhere online. I am convinced that the way Taue took the Tiger Driver '91, which would become the standard for the move, was not the original intention. On April 5, Misawa used the move again on a Carnival match against Kobashi in Takamatsu. As seen in a camcorder recording, Kobashi lands on his shoulder blades. Excerpt from 2019 FOUR PILLARS BIO: CHAPTERS 10-17, PART FIVE: I believe that the Tiger Driver '91 was originally conceived as a followup to the standard Tiger Driver, where Misawa drove his opponent down rather than flip them into a sitout pin. Nothing more, nothing less. This era of All Japan is marked by sequences of similar but distinct maneuvers that trade on the aesthetic benefits of repetition. Think of Misawa's multiple-suplex finishes in the early big Kawada matches. It is used in the Kobashi match in the same way, as a followup to a Tiger Driver nearfall. Misawa might be a dick here, but him going "fuck your neck, Taue" on a trial series match is out of character and out of step with the broader product. This is not 6/3/94. Perhaps the height difference between Misawa and Tsuruta/Taue led him to decide to put the move on ice. I suspect it was shelved to put over the stepover facelock as Misawa's new finish instead. But by 1994, when the nightmare bump arms race was on, I believe the move was retconned to have always been intended the way that Taue took it. (Weekly Pro coverage of the Kobashi match [special issue #432 (May 5, 1991)] did not contain a photograph of the finish, which likely obscured the contrary evidence.) I cannot confirm any of this, but it feels much more plausible to me than the notion that this superfinisher was busted out three years before it came back again. Baba, Fuchi et al. were good, damn good, but they were booking a wrestling promotion, not writing Babylon 5.

This was a topic that I had not planned to write about for a while: not until I reached 1979 in the NJPW/Otsuka thread, by which time I would have properly contextualized it with all the years of politicking between All Japan and New Japan. But your friend and mine, Loss, will soon reach this point in his Wrestling Playlists Newsletter, and I cannot leave our brother in the lurch (or try to have him cram all the interesting details in there himself). This, as best as I know it, is the story of the 1979 Tokyo Sports show. On March 8, 1979, Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki met for a private Chinese dinner in Roppongi with Tokyo Sports editor-in-chief Noriyoshi Takahashi and sports department head (and World Pro Wrestling color commentator) Yasuo Sakurai. The most powerful paper in puroresu had big plans for the year, but they needed these two on board. Both men had been consulted in February, after groundwork had been laid in a meeting between top executives of all three puroresu organizations: NJPW’s Hisashi Shinma, AJPW’s Ryozo Yonezawa, and the IWE’s Toshio Suzuki. Now, Takahashi and Sakurai needed to see if they could stand to be around each other. The story goes that they left for forty minutes to see if Baba and Inoki, who had not dined together in over seven years, could get along. When they returned, the two were reminiscing happily. It would not go this smoothly for long. On May 22, Tokyo Sports representative director1 Ryotaro Motoyama used its front page to urge Japan’s three pro wrestling organizations to clash in a joint show for their 20th anniversary. Coverage of this commemorative event would give the paper the excuse to raise its price by 10 yen, which would help them make back the investment of putting on the show; since 1974, they had increased their price twice due to their role in promoting major NJPW matches (namely, the first Inoki/Strong Kobayashi match, and the Muhammad Ali fight). Most of the proceeds would be split between the three promotions. New Japan held a press conference immediately and approved. The following week, though, Baba's reluctance was made clear in comments printed by the paper. He noted that Inoki had said "terrible things" about him, that Inoki had proclaimed he would not do business with All Japan because Baba had dodged his challenge; now, they waited on Baba's call. Baba acknowledged that Inoki and New Japan's provocations may have stemmed from passion, but at worst, they had obstructed his business. When the Tospo interviewer asked if Baba wanted them to retract their previous comments, Baba denied it, but he wanted them to "be reasonable". The March dinner had been arranged with the understanding that Inoki could not walk back his years of public comments without compromising his image, and the account of that meal shows that there was still a common bond between them, but Baba still leveraged that past beef in public comments. Yoshiwara, Inoki, Motoyama, Baba, and Takahashi at the June 14 press conference. A press conference was scheduled for 11:30, but bad weather delayed Baba’s flight, and he did not land in Tokyo until 12:20. The conference finally began at 12:44, with both Baba and Inoki in a sour mood. It had been announced that the full details of the show would be revealed during the conference, but all that ended up confirmed was that the Budokan was booked for August 26. When a reporter asked Takahashi what card they had in mind, the editor admitted that he wanted to book Baba vs. Inoki. In fact, Tospo wanted to realize other top dream matches, such as Abdullah the Butcher vs. Tiger Jeet Singh and Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Tatsumi Fujinami. The tension on this point showed through in the conference, with Inoki remarking that if they were going to do a joint show, he didn’t want it to be “a festival”. But Baba played the same refrain that he had for years, and also invoked the need for a unified Japanese commission that represented all parties’ interests. Earlier that year, New Japan and Kokusai had created one between themselves, but had only asked All Japan to accept it after the fact. Speaking of Kokusai, Isao Yoshiwara noted that their joint shows with All Japan had been difficult to coordinate, and that a full three-way show would be even more difficult. Nevertheless, he was willing to do business. After the conference, the parties continued talks in a private meeting. Baba left for AJPW’s show that evening, and the Destroyer’s subsequent farewell party, but returned late that night. During these talks, Inoki was reluctant to accept the alternate pitch of a one-night-only BI-gun reunion, as he wanted assurance that this would lay the groundwork for a future Baba vs. Inoki match. As Baba was set to leave for the States, and Inoki for Pakistan, both men gave full power of attorney to others to start the booking process: Inoki to Japanese commission head Susumu Nikaido, and Baba to Tokyo Sports itself. Nikaido and Motoyama met at the House of Representatives’ 1st Assembly Building on July 4. The Funks defeated BI-gun in their final match on December 7, 1971. BI-gun’s opponents would be decided in a fan poll with a July 14 deadline. Issue #16 of the Showa Puroresu zine records the top thirty results, but the top three teams left the other suggestions in the dust: Tsuruta & Fujinami, with 34,405 votes; the Funks, with 40,876; and Abdullah the Butcher & Tiger Jeet Singh, with 41,193. Over seven years earlier, the Funks had been the team’s final opponents. Inoki had objections to another Funks match, seeing where their loyalties lied as bookers for AJPW. Perhaps speculation is irresponsible of me, but one doubts that a Funks win would have been printed if the parties involved had no intention of fulfilling it. There has been at least one confirmed case of this phenomenon, which occurred in similar circumstances. In 1995, Baba would force Weekly Pro Wrestling reporter (and AJPW creative consultant) Hidetoshi Ichinose to falsify the results of a similar poll for All Japan’s six-man tag match at the Bridge of Dreams show, whose top choice had been Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, & Giant Baba vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue, & Jumbo Tsuruta. The August issue of Monthly Pro Wrestling featured a list of predicted matches, which was likely written at a point when the Funks topped the poll. I doubt that any of the other matches had been provisionally booked when the article would have been written, but they are nevertheless worth reprinting in the footnotes.2 On July 25, a second meeting was held to discuss matches that were not the main event. The second press conference afterwards announced the whole upper card, with Baba and Inoki far friendlier towards each other. The poster was unveiled, and tickets went on sale. Ringside “A” seats went for one million yen each, with “special seats” double that (roughly $23,500 today). From there, the rest of the first floor seats ran from ¥5000 to ¥7000, and the second floor seats ran from ¥2000 to ¥4000, with a 50% discount in general seating for kids in junior high and below. On August 1, the full card was announced, and four days later, Yoshiwara stated that Joe Higuchi, Mr. Takahashi, and Mitsuo Endo would all serve as referees, alternating as primary official while the others assisted. All advance tickets were sold out by the day of the show, and the general seats all sold out on the day. Some fans had even camped out at the venue the previous night. Among those in attendance were Keiichi Yamada, the future Jushin Thunder Liger, and future NJPW announcer Hidekazu “Kero” Tanaka. 7,000 pamphlets were printed, and all sold out despite their ¥500 price; a mail-order pamphlet would also be produced. (For perspective, a Budokan show at this point in time generally only needed to print two to three thousand units, and those were priced at ¥200. The mail-order system was presumably unprecedented.) The show began at 6:20. All Japan’s ring had been unavailable due to their ongoing Black Power Series tour, so New Japan provided theirs. After speeches by (Noriyoshi) Takahashi and Yoshiwara, and an entrance ceremony, the night began with a battle royal for a ¥300000 check. 15 participants had been announced, but the final match had four more. Seven wrestlers represented All Japan and New Japan each, with Kokusai rounding things out with five. At the end of the twelve-minute match, NJPW booker Kotetsu Yamamoto made the first graduate of the AJPW dojo, Atsushi Onita, submit to a Canadian backbreaker. He said he would share the prize with him at the time, though it is unconfirmed whether he did. According to G Spirits Vol. 20, this battle royal had developed from the original idea of an Onita singles match against the young Akira Maeda. While mostly filled with rookies, Sakurai suggested that Yamamoto be added as a "neutralizing agent". Baba allegedly suggested that Bobo Brazil, who was then working a tour with All Japan, could join the fray, but this did not materialize. The first proper match saw NJPW’s Makoto Arakawa face the IWE’s Snake Amami. Nicknamed the Kagoshima Championship for their shared origins (though this moniker is confusingly shared with Arakawa’s matches against Masanobu Kurisu), the match was reportedly an effective one. Arakawa won with a hip drop. Sadly, Amami’s career would barely last into the new decade, and a brain tumor took his life one month before his 30th birthday. In the first of two matches where one half of the IWA Tag Team champions teamed with an NJPW star, Mighty Inoue joined forces with Kantaro Hoshino to face Osamu Kido & Takashi Ishikawa. At the start of the year, Inoue had worked a program with the Yamaha Brothers to win back his company's tag belts, and his being booked (by Kotetsu Yamamoto) to lose a fall by submission would influence his resolve never to work for New Japan when Kokusai crumbled in 1981. But on this night, apparently, he and Hoshino made a good team. Less so Kido and Ishikawa, as the latter's relative inexperience and sumo background contrasted with the rest of the participants. At one point, though, Ishikawa blew Inoue out of the ring with a sumo tackle. Half a decade later, those two would team up for two lengthy All Asia reigns. Next was the first of two six-man tags on the card. Ashura Hara, the last great hope of the IWE, would be working with two wrestlers on their return match from expeditions. Kengo Kimura had worked in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Los Angeles (billed as Pak Choo in the latter two territories), and at this juncture there were hopes that his return to New Japan could replicate the Dragon Boom that Tatsumi Fujinami had triggered in the spring of 1978. (Kimura claimed many years later that, before this match, Hisashi Shinma had strongly encouraged him to receive a facelift to increase his marketability to female fans.) Akio Sato, who Kimura had debuted against in 1972, had been Baba's valet when he started All Japan, but had left for the States in 1976. There, he had mainly plied his trade in the Midwest while learning how to book from George Scott and finding love with fellow wrestler Betty Niccoli. Their opponents were Haruka Eigen, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and Isamu Teranishi. According to Showa Puroresu's show recap, Sato gave a disappointing performance, perhaps not helped with being paired with the likewise dry Eigen. I will allude multiple times to a roundtable discussion on the show that was published in Gong, which featured all three active Tokyo Sports reporter-commentators (Sakurai, Takashi Yamada, Takashi Kikuchi) as well as puroresu journalism pioneer Hiroshi Tazuhama. Someone on that panel went so far as to say that Sato had regressed since leaving for his excursion. Kimura would be pushed as a major junior talent in the year to come, which would culminate in a run with the NWA International Junior Heavyweight title. Sato would not make a proper full-time return to Japan for two years, but would become an important figure in AJPW’s reinvention in the new decade, working behind the scenes as a booker and on-site supervisor. The match had a safe ending as Hara pinned fellow Kokusai talent Teranishi. The fifth match of the night is the last one that, to my knowledge, does not exist on tape. (Showa Puroresu writer Dr. Mick—who I am certain did not attend this show, as I know he’s from Osaka and he would have been just a child—implies in his show coverage that he has seen video footage of the previous match, which suggests that there is either more footage from the same taper that I will address soon, or an alternate recording.) It’s a shame, too, because it features the one interpromotional dream team that actually had a future. Animal Hamaguchi had spent two years as an IWE tag champion, built up by a reign alongside Great Kusatsu before teaming up with Mighty Inoue to form one of the most definitive (and certainly the most chronicled) IWE teams. But tonight, he shared the corner with Riki Choshu, two months after Choshu had won the NWA North American tag titles alongside Seiji Sakaguchi in Los Angeles. On the other corner, Motoshi Okuma & Great Kojika represented All Japan. They had Choshu in their control in the first half, but the debuting team got something going against Kojika. While he was helpless in Hamaguchi’s airplane spin, Okuma intervened and then assaulted Mr. Takahashi to lose by foul play. Match #6 was the second singles match of the night, and the first match on the audience recording in circulation. On one end was Seiji Sakaguchi, probably New Japan’s #3 star. On the other was prominent AJPW midcarder Rocky Hata. It may not surprise you to learn that this match was not the original plan. Although it had been announced at the August 1 press conference, it is known that Sakaguchi’s original opponent was IWE booker Great Kusatsu. Kusatsu shot it down, as Showa Puroresu reported in 2008 and as then-valet Masahiko Takasugi confirmed in a late-2010s G Spirits interview. I happen to have the issue with the Takasugi interview, but I had not scanned it before my scanner broke, and I do not have access to my transcription method. So I cannot give any more details from Takasugi. But Showa Puroresu notes that Kusatsu was frequently mistaken for Sakaguchi, and that his refusal may have been a petty one along these lines. I feel that not wanting to work a match that one had not booked themselves could be a plausible explanation, but everything I know about Kusatsu suggests that the SP account is possible. Kusatsu attended the show. Hata was reportedly nervous, and had spent the whole night before drinking. He lasted six and a half minutes before a jumping knee and atomic drop ended his misery. In the Gong roundtable, Kosuke Takeuchi asked Sakurai outright if they really could not have found Sakaguchi a better opponent. Sakurai said that Jumbo Tsuruta, Rusher Kimura, Kusatsu, Tiger Toguchi, and others had been considered, and credited Inoki with suggesting Hata. The second six-man followed. Jumbo Tsuruta, Tatsumi Fujinami, and Mil Mascaras joined forces in a boy fan’s dream against a trio of lone wolves: Masa Saito, Akihisa Takachiho, and Tiger Toguchi. The babyfaces would be dubbed the Bird Men Trio, and all three got to show their unique styles. This match had developed from the original Fujinami vs. Tsuruta pitch, which Baba had rejected. After Baba had also rejected a Fujinami-Tsuruta tag match, Sakurai suggested that Mascaras be added, and Baba finally approved. One must commend Saito and Takachiho in particular, who had recently worked alongside each other in Florida. The future Great Kabuki had joined AJPW on its then-ongoing Black Power Series tour, making his first appearances in Japan since early 1978. He had left out of disillusionment over Samson Kutsuwada’s attempted mutiny, and it has been speculated by Dr. Mick that both Takachiho and Kazuo Sakurada had been eyed by Hiro Matsuda to effectively jump ship to New Japan the previous year, in what became the late-year Okami Gundan angle. (Mick cites a tip in a 1978 issue of Gong where a Mr. S and Mr. T claim that they want to work for NJPW.) While this show could never have happened with a conventional broadcast deal, production masters were created for the top three matches. These were for news programs, which would be allowed to clip up to three minutes for their reports. A production master of this match was created with the AJPW broadcast team of Takao Kuramochi & Takashi Yamada. This leads one to presume the agreement was that Nippon TV-affiliated networks could only air clips from this match, due to their contracts with the network. While the full tape has been lost to history—NTV once stated that they still had the edited version they aired on the news, though I have never seen it—we can see it on the fancam, and it holds up the best of the matches available to us. It's certainly better than what followed. As Sakurai admitted decades later, Isao Yoshiwara was reluctant to have his ace, Rusher Kimura, wrestle Kokusai deserter Strong Kobayashi in a grudge match. At the time, though, Sakurai credited Yoshiwara with pursuing the match in the Gong roundtable. Even the Kokusai devotee Dr. Mick doesn’t mince words; this one was a dog. Mitsuo Endo was the main referee, which bred concern about his loyalties. The crowd was about seventy percent in favor of Kobayashi, who lost by ringout. No matter how much Kimura protested on the microphone that he would challenge his former tag partner “anytime”, it was not a good look for the tragic ace, who was only eighteen months removed from one of the most humiliating losses in the history of puroresu against Baba. Yoshiwara had been willing to compromise his top stars for years due to his dependence on interpromotional matches for the cash flow from better-paying networks, such as Rusher’s early draws against Jumbo Tsuruta and Mighty Inoue’s clean loss to Tsuruta in the previous year’s Japan League tournament. If he was hesitant now, it was too late, and his company’s image cannot have been helped by this result. Kobayashi had relinquished his spot as Sakaguchi’s tag partner to Choshu, and the last major matches of his full-time career were in association with Kokusai. Plans were made for him to team up with the Rusher-led Kokusai Gundan heel faction in 1982, but Kobayashi’s pivot into entertainment made them moot. A production master was created by Tokyo 12 Channel, presumably with the Kokusai Pro Wrestling Hour commentary team of Shigeo Sugiura & Takashi Kikuchi, but it is now lost. Finally, BI-gun reunited one last time. Abdullah the Butcher and Tiger Jeet Singh had been the definitive foreign heels of their respective stomping grounds. Abdullah had debuted for the JWA in 1970. It was when he and Baba wrestled in the 1971 World Big League final that Inoki held the infamous impromptu press conference where he first challenged Baba. Since then, he had become AJPW's most popular heel, and this was the year where he worked five of the promotion's ten tours. Singh, meanwhile, was NJPW's first genuinely homegrown heel, a committed character wrestler who garnered massive early heat and had stayed relevant since. A production master was created with the World Pro Wrestling commentary team of Ichiro Furutachi & Yasuo Sakurai, with Sakurai's future successor on color commentary, Kotetsu Yamamoto himself, sitting in. A dupe of this tape eventually got into fans’ hands. (It had been available on YouTube but was taken down by NJPW. Only the abridged news report version is on there at the time of posting. But I trust you can find it yourselves.) After thirteen minutes, Inoki got a Joe Higuchi three-count on Singh with a bridging German suplex. After the match, Inoki grabbed the microphone. "Thank you all very much for coming today. Earlier, [PWF] Chairman Lord Blears gave me a very kind word to make the Baba-Inoki fight a reality. I am willing to risk life and death to make this fight happen. I will continue to work hard so that I can fight Baba. The next time the two of us meet in this ring, it will be time to fight!" Baba had no choice but to play along, exclaiming “let’s do it!” in response. This carried over into the subsequent press conference, where Baba acknowledged that there were still issues, but claimed that “he didn’t care about them now”. In truth, though, Baba had taken this as a sign that Inoki still could not be trusted. A 2022 column on the NJPW-AJPW rivalry by Kagehiro Osano reports that Baba had come to this conclusion due to a private telephone conversation the two had had a few days before. While this may or may not be the same incident, a recent article by Gantz Horie sees Shinma claim that the night before the event, Inoki had suggested to Baba that the match’s finish be changed to have them go over one of the two heels clean.3 The next day, Tokyo Sports hit the shelves with its new ¥50 price. FOOTNOTES

Jumbo Tsuruta plays one of his "recital" fan concerts. Accompanying on his left is Jimmy Suzuki, president of the Jumbo Tsuruta Friendship Club, charter member of the influential Maniax club, and a future photojournalist, reporter, and promoter.

Bad news. Funds for a new laptop are much more limited than I expected. There are some posts that I plan to write in the interim, such as one about the Tokyo Sports show which Loss will soon reach in his newsletter. But as before, I cannot process much of the resources I have acquired, due to my inability to type Japanese. As earlier stated, I refuse to continue the NJPW thread until I can transcribe a Pak Song serial that should give me context on the South Korean promoters that Oki competed with, and who Inoki later worked with.

Early puroresu music's love of cheesy slick jazz fusion made that stuff grow on me. NJPW had three guys come out to disco-era Maynard Ferguson at some point, one of whom was Hogan. AJPW's producers loved stuff orchestrated by Richard Hewson because he did the strings on "Sky High" (you are not ready for Dick Murdoch's theme from that period). There has to be an alternate timeline where Herb Alpert's "Rise" doesn't become a #1 hit off of General Hospital and thereby becomes cheap enough for one of the networks to license.

RIP to Johnny Powers, who reportedly passed away on the 30th. Here is a Greg Oliver obit.

On transit to BOTB now. It's my first wrestling show since a 2006 Smackdown taping, so as far as I'm concerned, I have the right to cut a little loose.

Gogeum sits about a mile south of the tip of the Goheung Peninsula. Its 63 square miles, bolstered by reclaimed land in the northwest, make it just a little bigger than Chicago. Kim Tae-sik was born in Gogeum in 1929, as his country sat beneath the “black umbrella” of Japanese annexation. Little of the island itself is arable, so Kim’s father farmed green laver. Although this practice has declined significantly in recent decades, it is likely that he did so using the traditional ‘racks’ method. Every year, he would have planted bamboo in the seabed. Then, he would have affixed nets to the sticks to catch floating laver seed. These nets would then be arranged in racks on the farm, submerged in high tide but exposed to the sun on low tide, and the seaweed bred from winter through spring. It’s a demanding process with low yield, and it should be little surprise that the Kims lived in poverty. Kim (center) with a calf won in ssireum. (September 1956) Tae-sik was the eldest of five. His future valet, Masanori Toguchi (Kim Duk), recalled the names of all but the third. Kwon-sik was the second, Yu-shik was the fourth, and Kwang-sik was the fifth, born in 1952.[1] As a child, Tae-sik had wanted to join a sumo stable in Japan. He would later compete in local ssireum tournaments where the prize was a calf. The legend goes that he won 27 of these, but Toguchi thinks this is an exaggeration. Tae-sik married Park Geum-rei when he was 16, and the two would have two sons and two daughters.[2] While Kim would have been able to watch wrestling on Japanese televisions in the Busan area, this isn’t what tipped him off to the existence of Rikidozan. Japan and the Republic of Korea had no diplomatic relations, but their fishery industries still did business together. It was a sailor at the Yeosu port who showed Kim a wrestling magazine. He made the hard decision to leave his family and smuggle to Japan on a fishing boat. The voyage from Yeosu to Shimonoseki, the city at the southwestern tip of Honshu, took 20 hours. Kim made it to Osaka and took a train to Tokyo, where he was arrested. Kim did time in a special prison for stowaways in the Kyushu city of Omura. He wrote a letter to JWA commissioner and Liberal Democratic Party politician Banboku Ōno, appealing to join the promotion. After nine months in jail, he was essentially released into Rikidozan’s custody in April 1958. The truth of these circumstances was not revealed for some time, as a 1961 Pro Wrestling & Boxing article claimed that Kim was a failed businessman who came to Rikidozan’s home and asked to join the JWA. It was not until the 1972 Gong serial “Tiger of Asia”, written by JWA Commission secretary general Shigeo Kado, that the real story was publicized. (This was one example of how Kado's writings, while likely sensationalized, were the most revealing of early puroresu journalism.) He was given the ring name Kintaro Oki. Kintaro, or “Golden Boy”, is a folk hero: a boy with superhuman strength.[3] Billed as being four years younger than he really was, Oki debuted in November 1959 as the second of puroresu’s first “four pillars” (after Yukio Suzuki). The following year, he was the debut opponent of one Kanji Inoki. Oki took well to Inoki backstage, believing at first that he was really Brazilian and bonding with another outsider. As Inoki disclosed in his autobiography, he lost his virginity on Oki’s dime in a Kumamoto brothel. Inoki wrestled him numerous times throughout the first four years of his career, eventually taking him to many draws but never beating him. [Note: I will be referring to Kim as Oki henceforth, for ease of reading.] In September 1963, Oki left for an American excursion; the story has long gone that it was originally intended for Inoki, but that a knee injury caused him to be passed over. Billed as a Japanese native, Oki teamed up with Mr. Moto in the WWA and won their tag titles from Bearcat Wright & Red Bastien on December 10. During this stint in Los Angeles, he created what would eventually become his Korean stage name. One night at a Korean diner, Oki met UCLA student architect Lee Chun-sung and introduced himself as Kim Il. Lee would connect him with the local Korean community, who attended his matches at the Olympic Auditorium. A decade later, Lee would design the Cultural Gymnasium in Seoul, which was initially owned by Oki's promotion. Oki at Haneda Airport in January 1964. After Rikidozan’s death, Oki returned to Japan on January 24, 1964. He had done so without permission, but was nevertheless allowed to work for them starting in February. He competed in the 6th World Big League, losing against Gene Kiniski and Caripus Hurricane to notch three wins, two losses, and one draw. On a Sapporo show on May 28, he debuted a ring name that he would work under intermittently for the rest of the decade, Kintaro Kongo (金剛金太郎). It was said at the time that he wanted to avoid confusion with head referee Oki Shikina, but this name had apparently been thought of by Rikidozan. According to Toguchi, Kongo was a reference to North Korea’s Mount Kumgang (금강산/金剛山). Top figures in the political and criminal spheres are involved in this story. Top to bottom, left to right: Park Jong-gyu, Yoshio Kodama, Park Chung-hee, Hisayuki Machii, and Kim Jong-pil. Oki returned to Korea for the first time in six years on June 27. According to his autobiography, he had come into contact with an agent of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, who asked if he wanted to meet President Park Chung-hee. Smuggling to Seoul for ten days, Oki did not meet Park. He did, however, meet KCIA director Kim Jong-pil. Three years earlier, Kim had engineered the coup in which Park had seized power. He was an associate of Hisayuki Machii, the Yakuza godfather who ran the Tosei-kai and held the rights to promote JWA shows in the Tokyo market. Kim asked Oki to become “the Rikidozan of Korea”, and that would be taken rather more literally than one might imagine. Machii and Yoshio Kodama—ultra-nationalist, power broker, and president of the JWA’s shareholders organization—pressured the JWA in a summer meeting to allow Oki to adopt Rikidozan’s stage name in Korea. While the recently deceased Bamboku Ono had opposed the effort for Japan to sign a treaty with the Republic of Korea, these two strongly favored and facilitated it, as they stood to gain a cut of the investments that reparations money would go towards. Alongside the casinos and cabarets they would open in Seoul, it is clear that they planned to replicate the Rikidozan formula with Oki. In fact, they were carrying out what Toguchi suspects Rikidozan had intended all along. Rikidozan had visited South Korea at Kodama’s insistence in January 1963, and the Korean side had wanted him to hold and wrestle in an international tournament there. Rikidozan would never have agreed to this due to the risk that it would expose his secret in Japan.[4] As top wrestler-executive Junzo Yoshinosato later recalled, the only way that they got out of the demand was by setting an impossible condition. They would allow Oki to adopt the name…if he defeated the NWA World Heavyweight champion. After a brief return to Japan in August, reverting to his first ring name, Oki returned to the States in September and, well, he tried. On October 16 in Houston, he got a match with the NWA champ, a 48-year-old Lou Thesz. He went off-script with a shoot headbutt and was beaten and bloodied for it, to the tune of 24 facial stitches. While I do not know whether Thesz was ever made aware of the political context of Oki’s actions (I’m sure Koji Miyamoto could have told him the story at some point), the two would become friends. Thirty years later, Thesz pushed Oki’s wheelchair for his retirement ceremony, which took place during Weekly Pro Wrestling’s Bridge of Dreams show at the Tokyo Dome. Oki returned to Japan in June 1965. On June 11, though, the JWA expelled him for the match with Thesz, as he had gotten it booked through former JWA talent booker Great Togo. Togo was persona non grata in the JWA since he had extorted them for solatium after Rikidozan's death, which they only granted with his promise never to work in Japan again. Just two weeks later, Japan and the Republic of Korea signed the Treaty on Basic Relations. That same day, Oki met with Toyonobori in Tokyo. There is a factor that I have not discussed yet. Oki would be encroaching on another promoter's territory. Jang Yeong-chol and Chun Kyu-deok, the pioneers of Korean pro wrestling. Pro wrestling had existed in South Korea for four years. Jang Yeong-chol, a wrestling coach, and Chun Kyu-deok, a serviceman who taught taekwondo at night, had seen Rikidozan on Busan television. They had no one to properly teach them, so they had to learn secondhand.[5] They apparently ran first in Busan before taking their operation up to Seoul, in which they held their first show in June 1961. (Two months earlier, a trio of former JWA wrestlers—Osamu Abe, Takao Kaneko, and Mitsuo Surugaumi—had run a pair of Seoul shows.) They eventually earned the support of President Park Chung-hee, who expected them to run once a month at the 10,000-seat Jangchung Gymnasium once it was opened in 1963. Jang's promotion was built on matches against Japanese talent unaffiliated with the JWA. He did business with a group led by former AJPW Association wrestler Hisaharu Kaji, which as mentioned in Interlude #3.1 of my Naoki Otsuka/NJPW series included Mr. Takahashi.[6] In December 1964, they received network backing when Tongyang Television launched, thanks to future Seoul Olympics production director Kim Jae-gil. Jang would surely be interested in a JWA partnership, and Oki could not let that happen. Ultimately, Oki was successful. He wasn't brought back into the JWA, but he intended to wrestle in Korea anyway. Jang and Chun would be forced to work on his terms. On June 30, he landed in Seoul Airport to a hero's welcome. In the two months before Oki's Korean debut, Jang struggled with tensions in his ranks, particularly as to his top prospect. Pak Song-nam, a 6'6" giant he had scouted two years before, refused to swear loyalty to him. In early August, Jang allegedly had Pak abducted and held without food or water in a secluded mountain cottage near the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He was found after five days by a military patrol. Late that month, Oki wrestled as Kim Il for the first time in the Far Eastern Heavyweight Championship Tournament. He brought four JWA wrestlers with him: Yoshinosato, the former light heavyweight champion soon to become JWA president; Michiaki Yoshimura, the best worker of puroresu's first generation; undercard stalwart and onetime coach Hideyuki Nagasawa; and Umanosuke Ueda, a bone-dry technician yet to discover his voice as a heel. The Korean end of the tournament was Kim, Jang, Chun, and Pak. Oki defeated Yoshinosato to win the tournament and the eponymous title. An article states that "pro wrestling is a show". Three months later, the World Big League-inspired Five Nations Championship Tournament was held. The same four Koreans in the previous tournament competed against representatives of Japan, Turkey, Sweden, and Denmark. Yusuf Turk, who helped book the tournament alongside Oki and Shigeo Kado, represented Turkey. Karl Karlsson, seen donning a leather helmet in newsreel footage, represented Sweden. Denmark’s Viking Hansen was the future Erik the Red. Finally, three-year veteran Motoshi Okuma stood in for the JWA. On November 25, Jang and Okuma wrestled in a tournament match that went south when Okuma cranked back on a single-leg crab and Jang’s posse stormed the ring to break it up and beat him. The particulars of what happened next appear to have been misunderstood in decades of Japanese accounts. Their narrative went that Jang exposed the business to the police to keep his boys from being arrested. Chun asserted in a late-life interview that it had happened somewhat differently. Jang had kept his mouth shut, but the police had taken his silence as a confirmation. Regardless, the next day’s papers read that “pro wrestling was a show”. Jang lost his support from Park Chung-hee, and the dojo built for him in Seoul’s Samgakji area was taken over by Oki’s group. Jang’s faction also switched sides. In December, Oki defended the Far Eastern Heavyweight title against Ripper Collins. This was the first time that South Korea booked an American talent independently of the JWA, and with the financial backing of a dictator, it would not be the last. President Park's right-hand man, Park Jong-gyu, became the president of the promotion, named the Kim Il Supporters' Association upon its formation in 1967. FOOTNOTES

Just wanted to give an update. It looks like I will be able to get a new laptop soon, but I am waiting for the funds to come through. I have a computer available to me, but I do not have the authority to install Java on it, which Kanjitomo runs on. (I tried a mobile app called Kaku, but I just could not get a good workflow going with it. Even more than Kanjitomo, it was clearly designed for manga and visual novels, not dense text.) I have written over 2000 words of what originally was supposed to be the next entry in the NJPW/Otsuka series, which would at least cover the Kintaro Oki match. But 2000 words of that have wound up being solely about Oki's early career and the birth of Korean wrestling. I am preparing a thread solely devoted to that, so that I can get this information out there without bloating the Nooj series. What I have written goes up to the end of 1965.

Major Update: This profile has been expanded with information from a 2019 G Spirits article by Etsuji Koizumi. This was the last Japanese resource that I was working on when my laptop went under, and I had transcribed about 85% of it. I plan to complete it when I have a computer to use Kanjitomo with again.

Agreed. As a side note, the first-gen puro guy with the best reputation as a worker is Michiaki Yoshimura. He's solid in what I've seen, but we just don't have that much. The story goes that he was so good as a FIP that his daughter got bullied at school for how weak he was.

Bad news, brothers. The laptop is, indeed, FUBAR. I don't know when I will be able to get a new one. Any transcription is off the table for a while.

I brought my laptop to a local repair place, and while the diagnostic hasn't happened, I believe I have enough saved up to fix the issue. I backed up all of my files related to puroresu research, but again, transcription isn't feasible on mobile. Automatic OCR for Japanese is still so poor, particularly for a language so context -dependent, that it will take you more time to correct the errors and insert skipped characters than just to plow through it yourself with Kanjitomo, one to four characters at a time. And I can't do that. The last thing I was working on was the next entry in the Otsuka/NJPW thread, which will at least cover the Inoki/Oki match and the surrounding context. (Inoki vs Kobayashi II will either end this post or start the following one.) I wish to start it with a detailed Oki bio; and I have 1200 words written on his life through 1965. One of the last resources I transcribed before my laptop crapped out was an interview with Kim Duk, which provided excellent information. But I want a better sense of Oki's place in the Korean wrestling industry when he came to NJPW. He was its biggest star, yes, but I read that he was considered "anti-mainstream". I need to know what other promoters were working in the market before I am comfortable putting out the Oki bio, because those promoters would end up working with Inoki. I have a two-part G Spirits bio of Pak Song that I want to transcribe. Even though his match with Inoki doesn't happen for another two years, this article is the likeliest among my available resources to contain the necessary details. (There is another G Spirits interview on the JWA with the late former Tokyo Sports reporter and AJPW planning department head Teiji Kojima. I am quite interested in it, and while I am aware that that might sound like a waste of time for those interested in the NJ thread...I have to keep myself interested in this, okay?)

My laptop may have just gone FUBAR. For the last ten days or so it's been not detecting the replacement battery I got a couple months back. I know it's still in there because the battery charge was showing up, but the computer doesn't draw power from it. This has resulted in restart loops where some fluctuation in power supply or something messes a thing up and I have to go into boot menu stuff. Now, the keyboard lights flicker when I turn it on, but no boot happens. I reinsert the battery and it goes into a preboot sequence but that crashes when it tries to initialize the battery, and we go back to the keyboard flicker loop. (Which is all that happens when I try to boot without the battery altogether.) It's four years old, so repair likely isn't a realistic option. All historical work is on indefinite hold. Transcription is just not feasible on a smartphone. I apologize for this.

Much of the direct testimony I have on the life of an early young lion comes from a 2019 interview with autumn 1972 trainee and current dojo custodian Kuniaki Kobayashi. I would like to expand this post if and when I acquire more testimonies and resources. The next post will finally return to the main narrative and cover the last third of 1974, but it may take a while, as I would like to transcribe a resource I have about Kintaro Oki: namely, a 2019 interview with his former valet Masanori Toguchi (Kim Duk). LIFE WITH THE LIONS (INTERLUDE #3.3) January 29, 1972: Kotetsu Yamamoto, Yusef Turk, Osamu Kido, Antonio Inoki, and Tatsumi Fujinami drink from a ceremonial barrel of sake at the NJPW Dojo’s opening. NOGE DOJO In 1971, Antonio Inoki and Mitsuko Baisho bought a mansion in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, near the Tama River. It had previously belonged to enka singer Midori Hatakeyama, and according to Naoki Otsuka, the property had been brought to Inoki’s attention by Hiroshi Iwata. Otsuka recalls that the house was said to be haunted, due to a rumor that a maid had committed suicide during Hatakeyama’s tenancy. The couple had originally bought the property to live in, but as the late Yoshihiro Inoue put it, “Inoki had no land, so he destroyed his house”. After the mansion garden, with its pine trees and carp pond, was cleared “overnight”, New Japan’s dojo was built. Kido Corporation, run by Osamu's father Yoichiro, was contracted for this task, although Yoichiro used his connections to have other companies assist. During this time, Tatsumi Fujinami’s training consisted of construction assistance, such as picking up pebbles and carrying steel frames, as well as running along the river. The dojo would be a single-story wooden building with 48 square meters of floor space. As mentioned in #3.1, Kotetsu Yamamoto paid for the ring, which was constructed at Kamata Ironworks in parallel with the dojo. (in a 2022 interview, Fujinami speculated that Yamamoto had measured the ring at the JWA dojo before he was fired.) The Noge Dojo was opened on January 29, 1972, at 4:00. In a traditional ceremony known as kagami biraki, the four wrestlers and Yusef Turk broke a wooden barrel of iwai-zake with wooden mallets. After drinking the ceremonial sake, they held an open practice session. While Osamu Kido split his time between the dojo and his parents’ house, the young lions otherwise lived in the mansion, each with his own room. Inoki came only once or twice a week, but Yamamoto was at the dojo every day. Awaking at 8am, the lions would practice for three hours starting at 10. After that, they ate chanko together and were free for the rest of the day. Curfew was 9pm, but Kobayashi admits that none of them observed it. Kuniaki notes that he thinks it is harder to be a young lion now than it was in this early period, because the much larger number of senior wrestlers gives them so much more chores to do. Kobayashi claims he was never bullied, and that all his senior young lions were kind men, even if Hamada “used him a lot”. Kuniaki is called Sanpei by his seniors, which was a nickname that Toyonobori had bestowed upon him, one which Kobayashi feared he would be made to wrestle under. Kotetsu Yamamoto needed to produce talent quickly, and he was already a conditioning fiend, so the physical demands he made of young lions were great. Kobayashi was blindsided by the 1000 Hindu squats per day, as he had only been doing one to two hundred. One day, Yoshiaki Fujiwara asked Yamamoto if he could perform a reduced number of squats due to a knee injury suffered the previous day. When this was refused, Fujiwara briefly became fixated with murdering his coach and practiced stabbing Yamamoto with a kitchen knife on a birch tree just outside the dojo. (Even Akira Maeda, who entered the dojo half a decade later, remembers the marked tree.) Another case that Kobayashi recalls was when Yamamoto made Hamada perform bump drills when he complained of stomach pain, which he would find was due to appendicitis. I am not equipped to untangle kayfabe from reality when it comes to the matter of NJPW’s sparring, but I can’t write this post without acknowledging it. A 2021 blog post about a 2014 NJPW-licensed book quotes a plausible testimony from Motoyuki Kitazawa. Kitazawa states that New Japan’s sparring had its roots in the gachinko (literally “cement”: equivalent to shoot) training of the JWA, and long preceded Karl Gotch’s coaching tenure. When Rikidozan was in charge, the dojo practiced joint-based submission sparring called kimekko, in which wrestlers received instruction from Kiyotaka Otsubo. But according to Kitazawa, this "was not something noble like sparring in the dojo”. Those who could not adapt to kimekko would “never be recognized as professional wrestlers”, and in essence, Kitazawa and others were toys to be experimented on and crushed by the older wrestlers. Those who couldn’t handle it ran away. When Gotch coached for a year (for which he made Otsubo his assistant), he expanded the kimekko tradition not just with new submission holds, but with rougher methods of escape, such as elbows to the back of the head and finger thrusts into the anus. Kobayashi says that Fujiwara was the best of the first young lions at sparring. The young wrestlers who followed Sakaguchi from the JWA were assimilated into the fold, but Kotetsu stoked his lions’ competitive spirit: “Don’t you ever lose to them!” Ozawa was the best of the ex-JWA trio at sparring, due to his size and sumo experience, but Fujiwara always came out on top. There was a substantial pay gap between Kobayashi and those three, whose salaries at least quadrupled his ¥50k per year, but they went out to eat and drink with the rest of the roster from the start. Yamamoto once quipped that those in the JWA who hated practice had joined AJPW, and later criticized Jumbo Tsuruta for allowing himself to develop such a stomach (while giving Shinya Hashimoto a pass because of his constitution). Later on, he would acknowledge that the Four Pillars had excellent conditioning but still criticized the AJPW curriculum for its lack of sparring. As I mentioned in my profile of Masio Koma, All Japan’s original head coach had been good friends with Yamamoto, and the two had talked shop about their training methods before Masio’s death in 1976. I believe Kotetsu’s comments should also be considered in that context, as the Great Kabuki has claimed that Koma’s original curriculum had retained some gachinko training, but that this was lost due to the subsequent influence of the Funks. (I would like to track down interviews with Onita or Fuchi to see if they did any kimekko in the first years of their career.) Kobayashi contrasts Yamamoto’s “scary” personality with Inoki, who did not use corporal punishment in the dojo. Notably, Inoki also did not force young lions to drink alcohol, as Rikidozan had made him do as a teenager when meeting with sponsors. As for Gotch, Kobayashi praises him as a teacher. Karl did not ignore the students who struggled, and taught everyone as an equal. Gotch preferred natural exercises to bodybuilding, and on top of squats and pushups he had young lions climb rope. When Mitsuo Yoshida joined the company, he trained as a young lion. This contrasts sharply with how Tomomi Tsuruta was brought into AJPW. As Tsuruta completed his baccalaureate in the five months after his signing, he received basic training from Masio Koma, who was assisted by Akio Sato. Yoshida only wrestled one match in Japan before leaving for the States alongside Gotch. IN THE RING The 1979 Monthly Pro article describes Kotetsu watching the prelims at a seat out of sight with a notebook in his hands. The ideal for a preliminary match was consistent with Rikidozan’s: essentially, amateur wrestling with a bit of color. There would be corporal punishment backstage if you stepped outside of these parameters. Kobayashi recalls that he was punished by Inoki for a match with Arakawa in the Adachi Ward Gymnasium (possibly early 1975), where the two had gotten into a strike exchange and excited the crowd. When interviewer Kagehiro Osano points out that Fujiwara lost many of his matches by “backbone folding”, Kobayashi explains that that was what we know as a camel clutch. Little Hamada was given special permission to use a dropkick due to his short stature. Yamamoto also fined wrestlers for poor matches. Kobayashi remembers that he lost ¥3000 every time he wrestled Arakawa. One time, Kobayashi was forced by Inoki to do a thousand squats after a stinker against him and did them with frustrated tears in his eyes. Kotetsu would also implement a ¥5000 bonus for good matches, which Kobayashi says he always received when working with Satoru Sayama. Others Kuniaki praises include Kitazawa (“He brought out something in me, or rather, he let me wrestle properly”) and Haruka Eigen (“He was easy to work with and knew how to excite the crowd”), the latter of whom joined NJPW upon his return from excursion in October 1973. Poor performances ran the risk of corporal punishment. In a 2022 interview, Fujinami recalls that Inoki came to the ring and beat him with the shinai during a stinker against Fujiwara. The match continued afterwards, but as Tatsumi recalls, he was less focused on either his opponent or their audience and more concerned about "whether the door would slam in the waiting room". Fujinami claims that Kazuo Sato was a frequent recipient. Kobayashi cites an example that the cards I could find don’t totally match up with. He specifically claims that this happened in a match between Arakawa and Masanobu Kurisu, and that both men’s parents attended the show. Inoki came into the ring and beat them both, but the way he says it doesn’t quite line up with the records. He says it was in their hometown of Izumi, and specifies that they were wrestling against each other, but neither of the Izumi shows from the era had them in the same match. He could be referring to one of two singles matches in Kagoshima city from 1975, or to a myriad of other singles matches. Arakawa and Kurisu would wrestle each other numerous times, and due to their shared hometown, this match would be nicknamed the Kagoshima Championship. (Arakawa’s 1979 Tokyo Sports show match against the IWE’s Snake Amami, a fellow Kagoshima native, also received this nickname.) A section in New Japan pamphlets called Ore wa yuku! (“I’m going!”) was dedicated to young lions. This example is from the 1976 Big Fight Series. In autumn 1974, NJPW held the first Karl Gotch Cup during the Toukon Series. The ancestor of the infrequent Young Lion Cup ended when Fujinami defeated Ozawa. In June 1975, nine lions became five. Fujinami and Kido left for West Germany, while Hamada and Hashimoto went to Mexico. Kobayashi confirms that Hamada had nearly been fired the month before. At the final show of the 1975 World League tour, held in the Nihon University Auditorium, Hamada and Yamamoto got into an argument over chores in the waiting room. Kobayashi claims he saw Hamada doing chores, but a misunderstanding arose and Hamada’s will was too strong to back down. They stood there arguing over whether he was going to do them until Kotetsu struck Hamada and everyone stepped in to pull them apart.

I don't think I emphasized Tarzan's role in shootstyle's myth enough. According to a book by journalist Joji Inoue (as cited by the excellent Japanese Wikipedia page on Mr. Takahashi's book Bloody Magic), Yamamoto was heavily involved in the publication of Satoru Sayama's 1985 book Kayfabe, for which he wrote the prologue and epilogue. (He may have also suggested the title, a term which we take for granted but which he had to learn from Jumbo Tsuruta fan club president turned overseas photojournalist Jimmy Suzuki.) This was apparently why Tarzan had been banned by AJPW/JPW even before the Weekly Pro boycott. Choshu would later say that Tarzan had been the "U" in UWFi.

Here, finally, is the meat of the post. I will take a look at what I consider the first phase of young lions. I know of 19 from this period. Some made their debut in NJPW, while others hadn’t. A few had short careers before leaving the company or taking backstage jobs. A couple never wrestled at all. But all are worth noting. The third part of this interlude, which I have just started to write, will cover the life of a young lion and various stories surrounding these first ones. THE FIRST PRIDE (INTERLUDE #3.2) Many of the young lions introduced here stand outside the NJPW dojo, likely circa 1974. Squatting, left to right: Daigoro Oshiro, Tatsumi Fujinami, Seiei Kimura. Standing, left to right: Masanobu Kurisu, Mr. Takahashi, Kuniaki Kobayashi, Makoto Arakawa, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Kosuke Hashimoto (?), Masashi Ozawa, Motoyuki Kitazawa, and Hiroaki Hamada. THE FIRST TWO LIONS Unless one counts Donald Takeshi—a unique case that will be addressed at the end of this post—Osamu Kido was the most experienced of the first young lions. He was the fourth son of Yoichiro, a Kawasaki engineer, and he wasn’t the first of them to enter puroresu. Yoichiro and third son Tokio had met Rikidozan through a mutual friend in 1962. Standing at 5’9”, weighing 181 pounds, and holding a black belt in judo, the 15-year-old earned Rikidozan’s interest, and entered the JWA dojo with his mother’s hesitant blessing. Just the next year, the day after setsubun, Tokio’s seventh cervical vertebrae was shattered after a bad bump training with Shinya Koshika. He continued to read about and study wrestling in the coming months, but he would never walk again. By the time his little brother was set to begin junior high, he was coming to terms with that. Osamu had followed Tokio (and second brother Yoshio) into judo and already had his own black belt. As Tokio split his time between home, hospital, and sanitorium, Osamu completed junior high. After a year of high school, he found that study didn’t suit him and dropped out to begin work for his father. Unbeknownst to his parents, though, he sought to fulfill his brother’s dream. One day in November 1968, Osamu visited the JWA’s Aoyama office. He met Kokichi Endo and Yoshio Kyushuzan and told them he wanted to join, but when they learned who his brother was, they would not allow him to do so without his parents’ blessing. Yoichiro and Mume were taken aback, and Osamu had prepared for his mother to withhold her approval, but a family meeting saw her relent in light of Osamu’s determination and Tokio’s enthusiasm. Kido debuted in February 1969. Osamu was assigned to referee Yusef Turk as a valet, but he continued to live with his parents when not on tour. He had joined during Karl Gotch’s year as coach, and became his most beloved pupil. Many years later, in the heyday of the second UWF, Gotch told a Weekly Gong reporter that only he, and not the “kick boys” Akira Maeda and Nobuhiko Takada, had been faithful to his style. Kido had a lot going against him, perhaps most of all his temperament. While Tokio had been showy, smiling, and cheerful, Osamu was quiet and reserved. Even their father admitted that the elder of the two had been better suited for pro wrestling. Kido’s stone face was also a problem. Future NJPW trainee Allen Coage recalled in a shoot interview that he asked Inoki why Kido was not being pushed like Fujinami, and credited Inoki’s answer—Osamu had no charisma, and his face always looked the same—with motivating him to work on his own facials. But even if he would never be an ace, Kido’s time would come. As Kido was getting his start in the business, the other original young lion was across the country. Tatsumi Fujinami was born in Oita, a city on the northeast coast of Kyushu. The son of a charcoal burner had first watched wrestling “over the shoulders of adults, with trepidation”. It was an era when only those with big bodies or special skills and achievements entered the ring, and he remembers holding a “tremendous fear” for martial arts. But gradually, aspirations grew. After junior high, Tatsumi went through trade school into a job at Nakamura Motors in nearby Beppu [source]. He attended the JWA’s infrequent shows in Oita but was too shy to talk to any of the wrestlers. When he brought home a show program which included the JWA’s office address, his older brother mailed multiple applications on his behalf but never received a response. Finally, he heard that Kitazawa, who hailed from the nearby town of Aki, was staying in Beppu for its hot springs. When they met, Kitazawa told him to come to the JWA’s next show in Shimonoseki. That show was on June 16, 1970, and he did as he was told before following the company on the tour leg back to Tokyo. After an interview with JWA executives, he was hired and assigned as Inoki’s valet. Perhaps owing to a total lack of martial arts experience—he had done track and field in school, then bodybuilding—it took eleven months for Fujinami to get his first match. He is quoted here saying that he wasn’t allowed to practice in the ring during tours, so he worked on his bumps in the halls of the inns where they stayed and did squats in the corners of the venues they booked. Finally, he debuted against Kitazawa in May 1971. Seven months later, Fujinami and Kido sneaked out in the night to Inoki’s Daikanyama apartment, soon to become NJPW’s first office. 1972 NJPW’s first true trainee was Mikio Sato. According to his peers, he showed great physical aptitude, but he had one major barrier: he was deaf. Yamamoto was apparently not thrilled about training him. According to a 2021 Twitter thread by Sato's future business partner Shuji Toyoshima, it was Inoki who gave Sato a chance. Mikio was ultimately needled into giving up after a knee injury. Four decades later, he worked as a guest referee for an indie promotion featuring deaf wrestlers. This inspired him to form one of his own. Deaf Japan Pro-Wrestling HERO held its first show in 2010, and he debuted on it under the ring name Yamiki. For six years, he wrestled alongside fellow deaf wrestlers Yuryu and Momotaro, using a spinning toe hold and headbutt as his signature maneuvers. After a neck injury in 2016, he was found to be suffering from an undisclosed illness. He died that April. Rebranded HERO Pro-Wrestling, the promotion now run by his son strives to promote “barrier-free pro wrestling” and offers accommodations for the hearing and visually impaired. These include a signer, subtitled venue monitor, free radio receivers tuned to the commentary booth, and even opportunities to touch the ring and wrestlers before matches. As mentioned in Interlude #2, another early trainee was Masaharu Ito. [Note: I previously transcribed his name as Shoji Ito, due to DeepL’s mistake.] He worked in early battle royals but retired after an injury. Ito became one of NJPW’s advance riders and worked with Naoki Otsuka into the Japan Pro Wrestling era. In that period, he would be put in charge of Osaka sales for JPW and AJPW. According to Showa Puroresu, he later worked as a promoter. Tetsuo Sekigawa during his brief NJPW stint. Hiroaki Hamada and Tetsuo Sekigawa had been classmates in junior high, and both were skilled judoka. Hamada had struggled with liver problems and bounced from making musical instruments to driving funeral directors, while Sekigawa had gone to Chuo University (the same year as Jumbo Tsuruta) but dropped out after his father’s death and briefly entered sumo. The pair had tried to apply for the JWA in 1971. Great Kojika was running the dojo then, and he showed some interest in “the big guy” but turned away Hamada. The two came to New Japan and joined without any tests. Hamada was originally scheduled to work on the company’s first show, but Toyonobori’s participation led Kitazawa to be slotted back on the card for the match that he would have worked. Sekigawa did not debut until two weeks later, but he received the honor of seconding Karl Gotch, who called the 300-pound recruit “Skinny Boy”. The future Mr. Pogo did not get on well with Yamamoto. It was long thought that Sekigawa had run away, but he denied this in his autobiography. According to him, he had indeed left the dojo after the tour’s end, but it was for a personal reason. His father had been a politician in his hometown, and he was coming home to see a statue of him unveiled. By the time he got home, his mother was in tears. Kotetsu had just fired her son over the phone. As for Hamada, he couldn’t leave; they had taken his car! Soon christened Little Hamada, Hiroaki would wrestle for NJPW until 1975, when he was sent to Mexico after a backstage argument with Yamamoto nearly cost him his job (more on that in part three). There, as Gran Hamada, he became a legend. The son of a forestry worker, Masanobu Kurisu had played baseball in junior high before shifting to judo in high school and bodybuilding in college. After graduating from Kokushikan University, he spent six months working in construction before moving to Los Angeles. There, he juggled a restaurant job with training to wrestle. Kurisu originally had no intention of wrestling for a Japanese organization, as he didn’t want to deal with that culture, but that changed when Inoki stopped in Los Angeles. This was in February, when he traveled across America in search of allies. The two met at a restaurant which was a popular hangout for Japanese wrestlers. Kurisu returned to Japan and joined the company in April, but would not debut until September. NJPW was stuck to holding five-match events for its first tours, with a Fujinami-Hamada match opening most shows. Three new trainees joined the company around the time of its office move and restructuring in July, but only one would last into the following year. Shinichi Kihara debuted on the New Summer Series tour, whose pamphlet claimed that he had gotten into many fights in junior high and once knocked another kid out. He had a background in amateur wrestling and had done bodybuilding before joining the company. Kazuo Sato was a graduate of Kansai University and had wrestled on their team but didn’t debut until September. The two were three years apart in age and had come from different places, but according to Kuniaki Kobayashi, the two were good friends by the time he had met them. Both quit after the year-end New Diamond Series, and Kobayashi’s impression was that it was a case where one left because the other left. According to Showa Puroresu, Sato entered law enforcement, while Kihara later became the owner of a pachinko parlor. The only July trainee who stuck with the business was Makoto Arakawa. Makoto had practiced judo since junior high but had flirted with amateur wrestling in high school. The story goes that he got disqualified in a tournament match against future politician Kenshiro Matsunami for throwing a dropkick. (I have to share this reenactment.) Early on, he adopted the ring name Shin Arakawa. While his in-ring performances left much to be desired in this period (more on that in #3.3), the thick build he developed through bench-pressing and copious eating leaned into a natural resemblance to Rikidozan which would serve him well. Don Arakawa became a pioneer of modern comedic puroresu in the early eighties, but we have a long, long way to go before it is time to tell that story. Kuniaki Kobayashi had watched wrestling since childhood, and as he suspects most in his generation were, he was a big Inoki fan. He had experience in karate, and two fan profiles state that he also did shot put in junior high. Dropping out of high school after a few months, Kuniaki learned about New Japan when browsing magazines at a bookstore. The 16-year-old stood at 181cm, six over the minimum, but he was 15kg below the requirements. He traveled from his hometown of Komoro to NJPW’s Tokyo headquarters, but everyone was out on tour. Kobayashi returned to his parents’ house, but returned one week later, and Kotetsu had heard about him. He began dojo life, and would debut in early 1973, but Kobayashi struggled to gain weight as a rookie and was rarely booked at first. Still, Yamamoto’s willingness to give him a chance set a precedent for later hires, most notably Keiichi Yamada. One week after him, the last trainee of 1972 arrived. A farmer’s son from Kitanami (300 miles north of Tokyo), Yoshiaki Fujiwara had moved to Yokohama after high school. Bouncing from office work to culinary jobs, he would spend half a year preparing for wrestling at Takao Kaneko’s Sky Bodybuilding Gym. He befriended Tsutomu Yonemura in the process, who joined the IWE at Kaneko’s recommendation in June 1972. Fujiwara entered the NJPW dojo on November 2, showed good fundamentals "from the start", and debuted just ten days later. That match, in which he lost to Fujinami, lasted more than ten minutes, and Toyonobori refused to believe that a man who could hang that long had really just wrestled his debut match. The roster in a Hakone photoshoot, circa autumn 1972. Fujiwara wears black as a trainee. APRIL 1973 Alongside referee Yonetaro Tanaka and various office people, three young wrestlers followed Seiji Sakaguchi to join NJPW at the start of the 1973 fiscal year. The most seasoned was Masashi Ozawa. A basketball player in junior high, the Niigata native joined the Kasugano stable and debuted in 1963. He was so thin when he started that it hurt to wear a mawashi, but he coped by inserting folded paper between the cloth and his hip. Ozawa competed for seven years, receiving the shikona Etsunishiki in 1967. The March 1970 tournament would be his last. An orthopedic appointment led to a chance encounter with Motoyuki Kitazawa, who scouted him for the JWA. Ozawa asked his stablemaster Tochinishiki to be allowed to retire, but was denied, so he ran away. After recovering, Ozawa called Kitazawa to bring him from Daikanyama station to the JWA office. The executives asked him to take off his shirt, and when he did, they told him to go get a medical certificate, because “he was going to get bigger”. Masashi joined the JWA in January 1971. Assigned as valet to Michiaki Yoshimura, Ozawa debuted in a match with Osamu Kido that June. A decade later, Killer Khan returned home from his star-making overseas run when he heard that Tochinishiki, still the master of Kasugano but now also head of the Japan Sumo Association, had become a widower just days before. As he used the entrance for lower-ranked wrestlers, Tochinisiki’s first words to him in a decade were, “Ozawa, you use the front door from now on.” As Khan lit incense, the 44th yokozuna asked his former pupil how much he weighed: 140kg. Tochinisiki noted that he’d have done better in sumo if he’d gained that kind of mass at the time, “but now your name is Killer Khan. Keep up the good work and don’t get hurt.” Ozawa was moved to tears. Kimura (left) on October 31, 1972. Seiei Kimura “was always getting into trouble with his parents and everything around him”. A delinquent who spent several stints in a reformatory, Kimura’s best hope was baseball, as he dreamt of competing in Japan’s annual Koshien high school tournament. Unfortunately, he failed the entrance exam for a strong baseball school. At 15, Kimura ran from home with nothing but clothes and coins. He joined the Miyagino sumo stable in the summer of 1969. Kimurayama only lasted a year, as he states that he developed spondylosis. As he tells it, though, the stable wouldn’t let him leave, so he’d had to sneak out by “wrapping himself up in his beard”. After that, he bounced from part-time jobs such as soba noodle delivery until January 1972, when he joined the JWA. Kimura, Mitsuo Hata, and Masao Ito all joined at the same time; as an open call for new recruits a couple months later turned up empty, these three were the last wrestlers the company produced. Assigned as a valet to Sakaguchi, Kimura was the earliest to debut. He first appeared in a March 12 battle royal. Five months later, he wrestled Akio Sato in a house show on Kikaijima island on August 2. He took the ring name Takashi Kimura soon after and would wrestle under it for almost five years, until a switch to Kengo Kimura in spring 1977. Finally, there was Isao Oshiro. Born in Kume, a small Okinawa island, Isao had moved to Tokyo after graduating from junior high and found work driving a truck. It is known that he participated in one of the IWE’s open tryouts before joining the JWA in 1971, where he was assigned to Sakaguchi’s entourage. After a first appearance in the same March battle royal as Kimura, he debuted in July 1972. While Japanese fan profiles state that he would be a popular undercard wrestler, it says something that the most notable incident of his career was probably his last JWA match, in which opponent Kazuo Sakurada was ordered by Great Kojika to shoot on him in revenge for jumping ship. His new ring name, Daigoro Oshiro, arose from a perceived resemblance to Daigorō Ogami, the child co-protagonist of then-running (and now-classic) manga Lone Wolf and Cub. DECEMBER 1973 Yutaku Hashimoto joined at the end of the year. Standing right at the cutoff point of 165cm, the 21-year-old from Otsu had experience in amateur wrestling and gymnastics and entered after “an enthusiastic sales pitch”. Just eleven months after his debut in September 1974, Kosuke Hashimoto followed Hamada to Mexico, where he wrestled as Hashi Masataka. In a 2017 G Spirits interview [excerpt here], Hamada said he didn’t know why Hashimoto tagged along, and speculated that promoter Francisco Flores had wanted a tag team. As Hashimoto’s promotional photo had shown him wearing a title belt, Flores created the fictitious AI Championship for him to defend. In early 1976, Hashimoto worked a program with Villano III for the UWA Welterweight title. Upon his return to Japan, he only worked one match that June against Kuniaki Kobayashi. Hashimoto transferred to the sales department soon afterward. By Naoki Otsuka’s recollection, he assisted general manager Akio Nakane and worked in Tohoku, the northeast region of Honshu, but only lasted about six months. Hashimoto was far overshadowed by a hire which was announced on December 8. You know him as Riki Choshu, but he was not yet known as such. Mitsuo Yoshida, or Kwak Gwang-ung, was the youngest of four children born to a Korean garbageman and his Japanese wife in Tokuyama. His ethnic background led to discrimination from teachers as a child. Mitsuo’s first dream was to become a baseball star. Late in his elementary school years, he was the catcher on a community team that won a city tournament two years in a row. He had also begun judo, and had talent for it. Yoshida joined the judo club in junior high, and according to this column won a prefectural championship. Yoshida with the judo club at Giyang Junior High (seated, center), and receiving first place at the 24th National Sports Festival. (Beside him in the latter photo is the future Snake Amami, who placed third.) He was then invited to attend Sakuragaoka High School and join its wrestling department. In his last year of junior high, Yoshida introduced himself to the sport. About 25 miles southeast of Tokuyama, in the city of Yanai, was the Saito Dojo. Less than a decade earlier, in 1961, Ken Saito had founded the school to teach amateur wrestling to children. It is the oldest actual wrestling dojo (that is, not a university club) in the country. As Yoshida recalls, the building had previously been a pawnshop, and they wrestled on its second floor. As a junior in 1969, Yoshida won second place at nationals in the freestyle 73kg class. That autumn, he entered the 24th National Sports Festival (held that year in Nagasaki) and won the freestyle 75kg class. He wasn’t supposed to enter since he was not a naturalized citizen (and would not be until 2016), but his instructor had gotten him in deceitfully and feigned ignorance of the rule when the matter was brought up. Regardless, Yoshida’s performance earned the interest of university scouts. Yoshida enrolled with Senshu University on an athletic scholarship in 1970, and joined its wrestling club from the jump. His coach was Keizo Suzuki, and his captain was Kiyomi Kato, who would win Olympic gold. (One of his juniors is also worth noting: Mitsushi Hirasawa, father of future NJPW wrestler Mitsuhide Hirasawa/Captain New Japan/Bone Soldier.) In his sophomore year, Yoshida won student nationals in Greco-Roman at 90kg. During a tour of the United States, he competed as a foreign entrant in that year’s US Greco-Roman championships, where he lost in the final to Willie Williams. (This does not seem to be the karateka Willie Williams who would challenge Inoki in 1980.) Yoshida wouldn’t be able to sneak onto the Japanese Olympic team, but Olympic officials got him a deal to join South Korea. Their Olympic team only had three wrestlers: Greco-Roman bantamweight An Cheon-Yeong, freestyle flyweight Kim Yeong-Jun, and freestyle bantamweight An Jae-Won. He entered the Japan Olympic training camp but struggled to stay in financially. As he recalled in a 2020 POPEYE magazine article, Yoshida had spent his nights cleaning street gutters for ¥4000 a day to help pay the ¥60000 dormitory rent. He would compete under his Korean name as the second-youngest freestyle wrestler in Munich. A second-round win against Romanian Ion Marton was not enough to keep Kwak afloat, as he was eliminated after the third round with losses to East German Günter Spindler and Cuban Bárbaro Morgan, the latter of whom was just a day younger than him. As a senior, the now-captain of the Senshu team entered nationals as a heavyweight in both Greco-Roman and freestyle. Wrestling at the Nippon University Auditorium from August 9-12, he won both blocks, with a fellow double entrant, Meiji University’s Yasunari Akiyama, earning both silvers. Double wins at the student championships followed the next month. Kagehiro Osano’s 2020 Jumbo Tsuruta biography, The Strongest Champion of Eternity, claims that the future Choshu had been on All Japan’s radar. One of Baba’s biggest allies in wrestling print media, Monthly Pro Wrestling editorial advisor Satoshi Morioka, was the brother-in-law of Akio Nojima, a Japan Amateur Wrestling Association board member and the president of equipment manufacturer Olympique Products. Nojima played a part in Tsuruta’s courtship, and he later recalled that he had an eye on Yoshida as well, but Choshu told Osano in 2019 that Nojima had never approached him, even if he had attended an All Japan party with his coach. Suzuki invited Yoshida to a “high-class” sukiyaki and steak dinner with Takehira Nagasato. Nagasato was an alumnus of Waseda University’s wrestling club, which linked him to the man at the top of both it and JAWA, Ichiro Hatta. More importantly, he was the director of NET TV’s sports department. Hisashi Shinma scouted Yoshida through Nagasato’s mediation. Mitsuo Yoshida is introduced at the December 7, 1973 Osaka show. 1974 As far as New Japan was concerned, January 1974 was most notable for the debut of Kantaro Hoshino. But he was joined by a far less remembered JWA veteran: one who doesn’t really fit in this discussion, but who fits even less elsewhere. Donald Takeshi was puroresu’s first exchange student. Donald Leow Seng Boo was the son of Singaporean wrestler Leow Kong Seng, whose career seems to have spanned from the late forties through the late sixties. At 17, he was encouraged by his father to drop out of the country’s oldest and most prestigious secondary school, the Raffles Institution, and wrestle in Japan. He joined the JWA during Gotch’s year as coach and debuted in a battle royal on May 26, 1968. According to Mitsuo Momota, Donald quickly adapted to the setting, and he learned Japanese quickly by conversing with the young female receptionists at the ryokan where they stayed. After winning his first match against Fujinami on June 30, 1971, he had proclaimed that he wanted to be as famous as Donald Duck. He was conscripted into the Singapore Army two months later, but newspaper ads for early 1973 shows at the Gay World Stadium indicate that he wrestled during this time. By the time his service was done, the JWA was gone, so he joined New Japan, where he wrestled for eighteen months. According to a 2013 Tokyo Sports column by Kagehiro Osano, Donald found work back home as a travel guide. Donald brought a friend with him: Bruce, a Chinese-Singaporean who had been a cook in Hong Kong. He never made it to the ring, and he couldn't speak Japanese, but his portrait was shown in early 1974 pamphlets and he was at ringside during the first Inoki-Kobayashi match. Bruce brought “authentic Hong Kong cooking”, bird feet and all, whenever he was on chanko duty.

The view from the top will never tell you the whole story of New Japan Pro-Wrestling. This special three-part interlude is by far the longest piece I have yet written for the thread, but I brought it on myself for putting it off so long. Part one will be a biography of NJPW’s head coach, Kotetsu Yamamoto, up through 1974. Part two will look at nineteen wrestlers and would-be’s from the company’s first three years. Finally, part three will cover various topics pertaining to these men, from Yamamoto’s training philosophy and methods to various incidents and anecdotes. At the time I am posting this, I am about 80% done with part two. NAOKI OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #8: THE PRIDE - 1972-1974 (INTERLUDE #3) PART ONE: DEMON COACH (INTERLUDE #3.1) Rikidozan’s last disciple. One of the best tag specialists of puroresu’s second generation. The first man to fulfill the potential of the wrestler turned color commentator. The greatest wrestling trainer of his generation. Kotetsu Yamamoto was all of these things, and he defined NJPW as much as anyone. An uncited passage on Kotetsu Yamamoto’s Japanese Wikipedia page recounts an appearance on Tensai Takeshi No Genki Ga Deru TV!!, the variety show hosted by “Beat” Takeshi Kitano. He and other television personalities were gathered in an empty classroom and hypnotized to “revert to their kindergarten days”. The others cried, fought, and played with blocks, but Yamamoto showed no response. When asked about it by Masanobu Katsumura, he explained that he had never attended kindergarten. Masaru was the sixth of either ten or eleven (the latter is claimed in Dave Meltzer’s obituary) born to a poor family in Yokohama. His father Tozaburo bounced from various jobs and died of an unspecified illness when Masaru was fifteen. He himself had worked since the fourth grade, first as a paperboy and then doubling as a cook for a neighbor “for twenty yen a day”. He took to athletics well. Masaru began bodybuilding in his first year of junior high, while also being “a good runner” on the track team, and even becoming captain of the basketball team. Although some places online claim that Yamamoto graduated from high school, both a 1979 Monthly Pro article and Meltzer’s obituary write that he dropped out after Tozaburo’s death. Yamamoto found work at a Tokai Metal foundry. According to the 1979 article, he also worked at a candy wrapping paper manufacturer. Meanwhile, he kept bodybuilding at a YMCA gym, training alongside old friend Terou Takahashi with the mutual aim of becoming wrestlers. Yamamoto first tried to enter the JWA when he was 20, but he was turned away by Rikidozan for being too small. He added mass and trained more over the following year, and then made a second attempt. As the story is told in a 2015 issue of Nippon Puroresu Jikenshi (as cited by Japanese Wikipedia), Rikidozan’s first instinct was to rebuke him again, saying that “he was no good no matter how many times he came to him”. But when Masaru stood firm and looked into his eyes with his fists clenched, Rikidozan relented. He would be his final disciple. On July 19, 1963, Yamamoto wrestled his debut match against future NJPW coworker Motoyuki Kitazawa. Just one month later, he was given his ring name. Like others christened by Toyonobori, Kotetsu (“little iron”) was a reference to a historical character. — A contemporary two-volume biography of Aizu-no-Kotetsu, the namesake of Kotetsu Yamamoto and stock character of Bakumatsu and early Meiji-period historical dramas. Born in 1833, Senkichi (childhood name Tetsugoro) Uesaka was the bastard son of a samurai and an Osaka merchant’s daughter. He and his mother wandered Osaka until she married a snowshoe mender, and Senkichi ran away to the east when he was eleven. Learning swordsmanship as a teenager, Senkichi was convicted but acquitted of murder in 1849, after which he tried to go straight and returned home. But two years after that, he left again for Kyoto and joined the Aizu-Matsudaira clan. In 1862, Uesaka was named Aizu-no-Kotetsu for his short stature by daimyo Katataka Matsudaira. It is said that the violent knight-errant eventually bore some seventy scars across his body from sword fights, and that his left hand lost all but its thumb and index finger. He formed his own clan in 1868; later morphing into a yakuza syndicate, the Aizukotetsu-kai still exists today. Uesaka died in 1885, two years after serving a ten-month prison sentence for gambling. — Kotetsu Yamamoto’s serious, stubborn nature was noted even by his seniors at the time: “he was a man who would go all the way through everything”. In the 1979 article, he claimed that he had never been bullied; the anonymous writer suggests that he was spared the rod due to a shift in company culture after Rikidozan’s death, but Yamamoto instead asserts he had had no reason to be, for he had practiced hard and eaten as much as possible “while other young men were sleeping or out playing”. Originally part of Rikidozan’s entourage, Yamamoto was reassigned as Inoki’s first valet and dedicated himself to his tasks. Yamamoto noted that, unlike his own valet—likely Akira Maeda—he had had to wash and dry Inoki’s clothes by hand no matter the season. Yamamoto’s early effort did not go unrecognized. In a 2021 article, Soichi Shibata reported that Kotetsu was the most frequent winner of the “Tospo Award”, a commendation by Tokyo Sports for the most impressive performance on each show by an undercard wrestler; this perhaps influenced how he would later encourage young lions. In October 1964, he was the opponent of a debuting Akihisa Takachiho, the future Great Kabuki. In 1966, Kotetsu worked his first televised match, a loss to Karl Gotch on July 22 in the Riki Sports Palace. That year, his win record was the second-best among the younger wrestlers. The Yamaha Brothers. JWA president Junzo Yoshinosato already wanted to push Yamamoto alongside the other top young wrestler, Kantaro Hoshino. So at the start of 1967, they were sent off for an overseas expedition. While Hoshino remained in California to work for the WWA when they set foot in the States, Yamamoto traveled to Dallas to wrestle solo for NWA Big Time Wrestling. He even lived in Fritz von Erich’s home. Around late June, Yamamoto moved to Memphis, where Hoshino had worked since March. This was the birth of the Yamaha Brothers, named for the small but powerful motorcycles. Often working with Tojo Yamamoto, who was credited with discovering them, Yamamoto and Hoshino were respectively billed as Oki and Great Yamaha. The two did great business—some of the best that Japanese wrestlers on excursion had ever done, in fact—and drew massive heat. An anecdote in which an elderly fan attempted to stab Hoshino in the brain is legendary. Both returned home for the Diamond Series tour that autumn. They would team up intermittently in the years to follow, keeping the Yamaha Brothers name without the associated ring names. The team did gain exposure on the original JWA run of World Pro Wrestling and entered the second NWA Tag Team League together in 1971. But at least in the JWA era, neither man had their most notable matches with each other. Kotetsu’s best remembered early match is his upset win over Gorilla Monsoon in the 1969 World Big League, while Kantaro’s most cited matches are the 1st NWA Tag Team League final and Mil Mascaras’ Japanese debut three months later. Yamamoto remained loyal to Inoki through the winter of 1971, being the only dissenting voice in the vote to fire him after the failed coup. He stood by Inoki’s side “like a bouncer” as he prepared for what would be his final JWA match. He wasn’t dismissed outright, instead being ordered by Yoshinosato to “stay home”, but Yamamoto turned in his notice on December 15. He eventually took the JWA to court over severance pay and got a two-million-yen settlement for it. Puroresu’s most iconic logo was drawn by Yamamoto in early 1972. When the NJPW dojo was built in the garden of Inoki and Mitsuko Baisho’s house on the Tama River, it was Kotetsu who put up the money for the ring. It was during this time that he and Inoki’s young valet, Tatsumi Fujinami, conceived of their new company’s logo. As Fujinami recalled in 2021, they drew its circle by tracing the rim of a rice bowl. They agreed that they wanted a symbol of strength to contrast the JWA’s crown logo, and decided on a lion, although Fujinami’s attempt wasn’t very good, and even Yamamoto was unsure if he had drawn a tiger or a lion. Since the lion was “the king of beasts”, Kotetsu added another touch: KING OF SPORTS. In his 1984 book Ah, chotto mattekudasai (“Ah, please wait a minute”), Yamamoto claimed that neither he nor Inoki earned a cent in the first era of the company’s existence. He tells an anecdote about how he saved money on food by packing a Nori bento for lunch every day. One day, though, he noticed that his lunch was missing a layer of nori (roasted seaweed). When he came home and told his wife that just one layer wasn’t enough, she burst into tears. They couldn’t afford nori anymore. Mr. Takahashi (center) with Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. Yamamoto’s childhood friend and old workout buddy, Terou Takahashi, had given up on entering the JWA after a shoulder injury. In 1963, though, he joined a new organization formed by Hisaharu Kaji, who had wrestled for Toshio Yamaguchi’s All Japan Pro Wrestling Association before a very unusual transfer to sumo in 1956. Takahashi wrestled for him in Korea and Southeast Asia before returning to Japan. In spring 1972, a photo feature in Gong showcased a new martial art that he had created and promoted for bodybuilders, Builder Fight. Gong reported around that time that Takahashi and a couple disciples would work on NJPW shows to make up for the slim roster, but this never materialized. In December 1972, Yamamoto got him hired as a referee. Takahashi would work for NJPW for a quarter-century as Mr. Takahashi, but his legacy is incredibly controversial due to writing a series of business-exposing books in the 21st century, most infamously 2001’s Ryūketsu no majutsu (Bloody Magic). They would cost him his friendship with Kotetsu. In a 2018 book, Takahashi claimed that the “demon sergeant” and “stubborn father” had exaggerated such character traits for a kayfabe persona. You may want to keep this in mind in the third part of the interlude. After completing a two-year excursion, Kantaro Hoshino joined New Japan in the first tour of 1974. The Yamaha Brothers reunited soon afterward against the McGuire Twins.

Sources for this post include: OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #7: SUMMER '74 RETURN OF THE TIGER The Tokyo police’s response to the Itabashi incident had backed NJPW into a corner, and they “banned” Singh after the November 30, 1973 lumberjack match. Now, though, the heat had died down. In kayfabe, Singh approached the NWF through manager Fred Atkins to get a ticket, and they nominated him as a challenger over Inoki’s protests. While a contemporaneous Monthly Pro article quotes Singh’s assertion that he was the one who approached the NWF to bring him back to Japan, and not the other way around, this was framed as the promotion’s attempt to seize back the NWF Heavyweight title. The conspiratorial bent of the kayfabe surrounding his return anticipated future angles; I am particularly thinking of one from early 1976, where Johnny Powers took over the NWF in a corporate coup and tried to force Inoki to relinquish the title after he dropped its world heavyweight designation. Before he arrived, the most notable match of the tour was in Sapporo’s Nakajima Sports Center. New NWA North American tag champions Karl von Schotz & Kurt von Hess defended the titles against the Golden Duo, coming out on top in forty minutes after Inoki was disqualified in the final fall. Singh joined the Golden Fight Series tour at the 60% mark, working the last 11 of its 27 dates beginning June 14. Inoki accepted Singh’s challenge, which took the form of two title defenses. The first was in Tokyo on June 20 and the second was in Osaka on June 26. The first match was held at the Kuramae Kokugikan. It is not currently available on NJPW World, but it is in circulation. After losing the first fall to the octopus stretch in 21 minutes, Singh decided to cut his losses and sacrifice his first shot to do more damage. The act itself is clipped from the copy we have, but according to written recaps Kurt von Hess, who entered the ring to pour beer on Singh as he sat in the corner, surreptitiously handed him an object. When Inoki went to kick him, and was held back by referee Mr. Takahashi, Singh blinded Inoki with a fireball and rolled out of the ring as Takahashi called for the bell. Just over a minute later, he ran back in with his saber, beating Inoki with its hilt as green seat cushions flew into the ring. Sidelined for the next two shows, Inoki vowed revenge. Naoki Otsuka lived in Osaka for over two years until his promotion to sales manager after the Ali fight. As the one in charge of the June 26 show at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Otsuka earns some credit for its excellent turnout, announced at the time as 8,900 people. He also designed the poster, for which he chose to only show Inoki and Singh’s faces against a black, bloodied background. He recalls that Sakaguchi, who arrived at the show early, was disgruntled about it, and Otsuka later thought that it was a rude choice. But the match delivered, culminating in Inoki’s ruthless, vengeful assault on Singh’s arm. The next main event held in Osaka would also be something special, but the western city was soon to be often saddled with tag title defenses. (Otsuka: "[...] I wasn't in a position to say anything about the card yet. But the customers were leaving.") POWERS, GOTCH, AND THE NWA (AGAIN) Inoki and Johnny Powers have their anticipated rematch. [Source: Monthly Gong, September 1974] Spanning 24 shows from July 5 through August 8 (and, as mentioned in the previous post, completely avoiding the Obon Festival), the Summer Fight Series held a handful of significant matches. Johnny Powers made his first appearances since the title switch, joining on July 11 and getting an NWF title rematch on the 30th. Their match at Nagoya’s Fukiage Hall, drawing an announced 9,500, is the only one of Inoki and Powers’ four title matches that does not survive today. That same day, Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz arrived at Haneda Airport. Inoki and Gotch would work a pair of onefall matches with Thesz as guest referee; since Inoki had already defended his title, Yasuo Sakurai had the idea to pitch these matches as a sequel to the World’s Strongest Tag Team match the previous October. The first of these matches on August 1 was NJPW’s return to Osaka. A match recap describes it as “clean, with no penalties”, but Inoki was shrewd and targeted Gotch’s left knee. He almost lost the match when a dropkick was dodged and Gotch capitalized with a German suplex, but Inoki’s foot got onto the rope. Gotch protested to Thesz, and Inoki took advantage, performing an O’Connor roll. The pinfall was Inoki’s first clean singles win over Gotch. After this first match, and the birth of his daughter Hiroko the next day, Inoki took a flight to the States. Tiger Mask, Hulk Hogan, Inoki, Shinma, and Sakaguchi pay respects to Frank Tunney after his death in 1983. The Toronto promoter supported NJPW's second attempt at NWA membership. On August 4 and 5, the NWA held its general assembly, again in Las Vegas but this time at the Dunes. NJPW submitted its application for the second time. According to a 2022 Igapro article, sourced from a 2016 issue of BBM magazine Nippon Puroresu Jikenshi, rumors of NWA president Sam Muchnick’s retirement and the possibility of Eddie Graham taking his seat had led to hopes that the company would be approved. While Graham had recently worked a tour for AJPW, and his booker Hiro Matsuda would work with Baba through the spring of 1977, Graham’s close relationship with Vince McMahon led some to believe that he would advocate for NJPW. But Graham missed the meeting due to illness, and Muchnick remained president. The application was rejected 17 to 8. According to Showa Puroresu (which reported a slightly different result of 17 to 9 with 3 abstaining), one vote in favor came from Ed Farhat, who was thought to be a Baba supporter but had recently expanded his Detroit territory into former NWF markets after purchasing shares from Pedro Martinez. Former JWA president Junzo Yoshinosato, who had been allowed to remain on the NWA board as a condition of the 1973 JWA-AJPW merger, also voted against New Japan, but his allegiances would shift very soon. The tour ended in Tokyo on August 8, where Inoki wrestled Gotch for the final time. Inoki returned in time for NJPW’s August 5 show, and the tour ended at the Nihon University Auditorium. This show saw the debut of Mitsuo Yoshida, a singles match against El Greco. He won in 5:24 with the sasorigatame, a move that he would long be incorrectly credited with inventing in the West. (To be clear, Masa Saito didn’t invent it either. It was a move that Gotch passed down, and there even exists a photograph of JWA-era Gotch trainee Samson Kutsuwada using the move in late 1972.) Contrary to the results on Cagematch, Gotch got his heat back in the main event. This time, Thesz refereed Inoki strictly, to the ace’s protests. The finish saw Inoki lose his temper and attempt to bodyslam Thesz, when Gotch hoisted himself up in the corner to kick Thesz’s back. Inoki came crashing down to the mat, and as Thesz got off, Gotch rolled Inoki up for the pinfall. Outside of a pair of exhibition matches against Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Osamu Kido in 1982, this was Gotch’s last match in New Japan. He returned to Florida with Yoshida in tow. Eight days later, Inoki & Sakaguchi came to Los Angeles to challenge Schotz & Hess again and won the tag titles.

Sources for this post include: OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #6: SHOWS AND TRAVEL (INTERLUDE #2) In the second part of the Strongest Salesman interview serial, Naoki Otsuka walks the reader through the salesman’s process of setting up and promoting an independent show in the month leading up to it. As covered in the first post of this thread, independent shows were set up by the company, as opposed to sales and joint shows which delegated these tasks to local promoters. This post will end with some details on tour travel in the early years. My next post will cover summer 1974, which will see the returns of Tiger Jeet Singh and Johnny Powers, Inoki's last matches against Karl Gotch, a second unsuccessful attempt to join the NWA, and more. Afterwards, a third interlude will look at the young lions of NJPW's early years, and I plan to transcribe an interview with Kuniaki Kobayashi to shed light on that. Then, we can get to Kintaro Oki. ANATOMY OF AN INDEPENDENT SHOW At the office, the first order of business was to decide on the name of the tour and the foreigners that would work it. They decided which photographs would be used and handed them off to a designer, who would be told what size each wrestler would be and the order in which they would be placed. The designer then produced a template, and the date, venue, ticket price, and such were printed later. As covered in the first post of this thread (which will be superseded with more detailed chronological posts when we reach that point in the timeline), it was the general sales manager’s job to “cut the course” and reserve each venue by telephone. Whenever NJPW booked a venue for the first time, they drew a floor plan to determine seat placement. Otsuka had been doing this since his IWE days and would sometimes take measurements on site. It was up to the salesman’s discretion from there, but usually pricing was based on rows, with the more expensive seats starting at around the tenth. The next step was for the person in charge of tickets to have them printed, and then stamped by row, column, and number, although when a show was put together at the last minute a salesman would possibly have to do this themselves. New Japan eventually formed its own printing house, but before that all the tickets, posters, and pamphlets were made at Nippon Sogo Printing in Tokyo’s Ota Ward. After receiving a loan from the accountant for lodging and travel, the salesman loaded their car with the tickets and posters and headed out. They took money to book the venue with them, although many provincial venues were okay with receiving that payment on the day of the show. Once the salesman had arrived, they first booked the cheapest room in the best hotel. The ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn with thin walls and sliding doors, was a poor place to do clerical work. A hotel lent one credibility and had a lobby in which to hold business meetings. Then, they went to the venue and greeted its staff, confirming the date and time that the general sales manager had booked and giving them their card. Then came a trip to the local tax office to stamp the back of each ticket. This was the mark of the Admission Tax, which Japan imposed on entertainment and sporting events for fifty years until the modern consumption tax was adopted in 1989. This was followed by trips to the local police and fire departments (which came first depended on “who was in charge"), who would notify the public and provide security. Otsuka always printed “invitation tickets” to distribute to venue, police, and fire staff, but not actual tickets with prices, “which were unacceptable”. It could also be the salesman’s responsibility to order lunches and prepare waiting rooms for the security group, although city gymnasiums already had such facilities. A poster for NJPW’s March 13, 1986 show at the Onojo City Gymnasium in Fukuoka. The bottom right corner features a list of local businesses that sold tickets. With all these arrangements made, it was now time to sell. The salesman decorated their car with advertisements; they would drive around during morning and evening rush hours, and then through downtown at night. If they did not already have a network established, the salesman went to local businesses to see if they wanted to open a booth for advance ticket sales. Rural areas did not have box offices (or as the Japanese call them, playguides). Otsuka says that in a city with 100 to 200,000 people, they looked for at least twenty places to work with. If a business bought bulk tickets for this purpose, they got a 20% “club discount”, but the salesman received a 10% commission. The night that the advance sellers were set up, salesmen put up posters on busy streets, making sure that NJPW had advertisements on peoples’ commuter routes…whether or not they did so legally. Another task salesmen did early on was visit sponsors in the area, if they knew any. Otherwise, they went to places like local Lions Clubs or merchants’ associations, or visited a local businessman known to be a wrestling fan. The salesman would bring sweets, naturally, but they also had novelty goods to distribute in these cases, such as lighters and handkerchiefs. Otsuka says that Inoki’s autograph, written on stationery with “fighting spirit” (闘魂) on it, was also appreciated. From there, they asked for support. Unless they were searching for advance sales offices, Otsuka stresses that they did not go door-to-door “without introductions”. The sponsors or other people they visited at the start gave them “horizontal connections” to other businesses. “We didn’t push them, we commissioned them.” As for “local people of influence” (I am sure that readers can unpack that euphemism themselves), Otsuka said that he didn’t go to them. If they came to him, he was told to give them a present and ten invitation tickets, but the company did not want him approaching these kinds of people in a local market where the power relations were not known, lest he sell the show to the wrong people. He says he met some “great groups in Hiroshima”, but when he told them he had come from Tokyo on his own, they left him alone. Even when promoted to deputy sales manager, Otsuka says he never got any trouble from that sphere. One to two days before the show, the salesman made their last preparations. First, they went to all the advance ticket sellers and collected the commission and unsold stock. Two places “got away from” Otsuka during his time as a salesman; one of them was an athletics store in Kagoshima that “closed down and disappeared” on the day he came to collect. The salesman had to hire local people to help prepare the venue (arranging chairs, putting seat numbers on them, etc.) and guide people to their seats. If it was a college town, you could apply to the student affairs office; otherwise, you used the connections you had made to find friends of friends, or you went to a local judo club. Depending on the size of the venue, you would hire 10-20 people for this task. Their work began at 10 AM on the day of the show, and the salesman needed to buy them lunch and dinner. The salesman assigned a person to the ticket booth. If it was a big place, you could call a representative from Tokyo, but otherwise you would pick a local person you trusted. “If a sales representative did this job themselves, that meant that they had made no acquaintances…which meant that they had not done their job, right?” They also ordered the bouquets and scouted the bouquet girls. Many of the ones Otsuka worked with were daughters or friends of local people he knew well, although he notes that Osaka’s wing of their network, Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, did business with a model club. (He recalls that Tokyo’s network division, which was “very thrifty”, had asked New Japan to form their own model club.) When the sponsors arrived, you had to keep them happy by holding meet-and-greets, and if they offered to buy drinks for some of the wrestlers, you decided who got invited. Otsuka says this was inconvenient since meals were already prepared at the inns, but they went along with it. It was made clear ahead of time that Inoki would not appear at these gatherings, and at times the salesman would have foreign wrestlers do this. In a time before bank transfers, the money from the show was collected by hand in a briefcase. Each salesman had their own case with the proceeds from their shows. Otsuka did not do calculations after the sales were over, but he did get a total at the counter. However, the company considered the advance sales to be the true measure of NJPW’s popularity in the market. The salesman remained in the town through the next day, when they went to the tax office to pay the admission tax and thanked people for their cooperation. Once he returned to Tokyo, Otsuka had to write a statement of account. This recorded advance and same-day ticket sales—some money had not been collected yet, and Otsuka says that box offices in Osaka, among other places, would send the money later by check—as well as his own “entertainment” and transportation expenses. At the time, a salesman was allowed up to three percent in personal entertainment expenses, and if they went over, they had to pay the margin themselves. Otsuka took sales work very seriously. After a Nagaoka show on April 10, 1974, he vowed that he would only allow himself to sleep on the futon in his inn room if he sold ten special ringside tickets per day and would put up posters all night to remind himself of the day’s failure. Otsuka could offer a 10% discount to those who bought a ticket directly from him, and the company rule was that salesmen could take up to 20% off total (hence the club discount for advance ticketsellers). In the example he gives, this meant that if Otsuka managed to sell ¥30,000 worth of tickets without discounting, he could pocket ¥6,000 of that. He states that he was given a ¥3,000 allowance per day for travel, and that if he sold a lot of tickets “by hand” and provided a receipt, he was entitled to an extra margin. The high standards that Otsuka set for himself and his skill at the job made him able to live solely off of the commissions. Even in a place where NJPW struggled to draw, he could spend a month there and sell 300 tickets, which in a provincial venue wasn’t an insignificant amount. TRAVEL The interview also offers insights into the mechanics of touring. Otsuka says that NJPW was slow to acquire buses because they were expensive, and that he thinks they didn’t get them until after Inoki vs. Ali, though he recalls that “micro buses” for the foreigners came early. Anyway, in the early years most travel was done by train. It was the ring announcer’s job to arrange the tickets. The company rule was that the gaikokujin would go first, with the natives following an hour later. All foreigners got green car (first class) seats, while that privilege was only given to the top Japanese wrestlers. Otsuka says that he was helped by a man who worked at east Tokyo’s Ueno Station, which until the bullet train’s line was extended was the traditional hub for long-distance rides to the north. Interviewer Kagehiro Osano brings up an article from August 1973. The Obon festival, a three-day family holiday in which people return to their ancestral homes, had made it difficult for Otsuka to get the necessary tickets for New Japan’s three shows from August 12-14. Otsuka recalls that it hadn’t been a problem in 1972, since they only traveled to Kyoto and Osaka when the festival took place that year. But come 1973, they were “in a pushy mood” with network support. First they had an August 12 show in Shiojiri. Then, they traveled to Sato Island on the 13th. Finally, they returned to the mainland with a Nakano show the next day. Starting the next year, though, NJPW’s schedule avoided Obon entirely. Masaharu Ito in the roster listing from the first issue of Monthly Pro Wrestling (August 1972). The advance rider’s job was to travel ahead of everyone else and stay in lodgings to assess their ability to accommodate the groups. Natives and foreigners were booked in separate establishments, so the rider(s) would book and assign the rooms in both places while also sampling the meals that would be served. This task was particularly vital in an era before chain hotels had proliferated across provincial areas. They also had to book taxis for all the wrestlers to and from the train station, inn, and venue. Otsuka and Kotetsu Yamamoto both worked as riders in the company’s early years, but eventually, Naoki tracked down Masaharu Ito for the job. Ito was one of NJPW’s earliest trainees but ultimately had never wrestled outside of battle royals. An injury had left him unable to extend his arm. Otsuka and Ito continued to work with each other into the Japan Pro Wrestling period. Another rider was Sugawa no Sadayan, who had worked with the JWA dating back to Rikidozan’s time and joined NJPW with Sakaguchi’s group.

I guess because Choshu-Hamaguchi straddled Ishingun's two eras, whereas Choshu-Yatsu was just the All Japan/Japan Pro era. I think the Yamaha Brothers would be a better nomination. We only have footage from their sunset run but that energetic tag style that Riki and Animal did together had its roots with them. Plus you have Yamamoto's legacy as a coach.

NAOKI OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #4: FIRST WORLD LEAGUE The cover of the program for NJPW’s 1974 World League. Although it suffered from a lack of high-profile foreign talent, the tour did good business and the tournament helped reestablish Seiji Sakaguchi as a top singles competitor in his own right. Two years after the JWA’s final World Big League, New Japan struck first (and likely paid off whichever former JWA official they had to) to revive the branding, albeit with the Big (“Dai”) dropped. The April 1974 issue of Monthly Gong announced a ludicrous lineup for the tournament. Danny Hodge, Baron von Raschke, Bearcat Wright, Bulldog Brower, the Mongolian Stomper, Mr. Wrestling, Killer Karl Krupp, and Sam Steamboat represented America. Sean Regan, Danny Lynch, and Horst Hoffman came from Europe; Jan Wilkens and Albert Hall from South Africa; and Mil Mascaras, El Solitario, and Panthera Negra from Mexico. Showa Puroresu writer Dr. Mick suggests that this spectacular forecast came from an overestimation of New Japan’s budget. Ultimately, only Krupp was booked for the tour. Sister magazine Bessatsu Gong would feature a more accurate announcement afterwards, although it teased that the slot that went to Lord Johnson could have seen NJPW book Wright, Hodge, or Hoffman instead. In the May issue of Monthly Pro, Giant Baba’s response to the World League indicated that he had wished to take the World League branding for himself, but had been beaten to the punch. Baba suggested that he and Isao Yoshiwara could join forces that fall to hold “the real World League”, using Baba’s superior connections. This may have been the germ of the idea that led to the 1975 Open League. Ultimately, the foreign bracket contained the following. Born in Holland, George Momberg entered the business in West Germany in 1957 as Dutch Momberg. He emigrated to the Maritimes in the early sixties but his career remained unremarkable until 1972. Ever since Paul Bowser in Boston had turned the Québécois Guy Larose into Hans Schmidt in 1951, the evil German had become a stock character in North American wrestling. Killer Karl Krupp may have been a late iteration, but he managed to distinguish himself just fine. From the requisite goose steps and stiff-arm salutes to committed costuming decisions like a monocle, riding crop, and Reichsadler belt, Krupp took the well-worn trope to cartoonish heights and quickly found success across several territories. Most relevant for our purposes was his appearances on the JWA’s final two tours, where Krupp won the NWA International Tag Team titles twice alongside Johnny Valentine and Fritz von Erich. After the promotion’s final shows, Krupp had taken the titles to Amarillo, where he and replacement partner Karl von Steiger dropped them to the Funks. At the April 4 press conference before the World League began, Krupp assaulted Tetsuo Baisho [left]. George Stiplich debuted in Montreal in 1958. Originally wrestling as Emile Koverly, Stiplich received the ring name Stan Stasiak during a 1960 stint in St. Louis, taken from 1920s wrestler Stanley Stasiak. Throughout the sixties, Stasiak saw success in Canada and the US. In the former, he held tag gold in Maple Leaf Wrestling and worked a hot Stampede feud with Don Leo Jonathan, whom Stiplich knew from his youth attending shows in Chicoutimi and throwing sucker punches at the wrestlers. (Don had cleaned his clock.) In the second half of the decade, he hit his Stateside stride as a top heel in Pacific Northwest Wrestling. Stasiak also worked for Tokyo Pro Wrestling in 1966, challenging Inoki for the US Heavyweight title he’d won from Johnny Valentine. After an unremarkable appearance for AJPW in early 1973, Stasiak had the most famous program of his career in the WWWF. Managed by the Grand Wizard, he pinned Pedro Morales using a full nelson on a Philadelphia house show to win the WWWF Heavyweight title. The transitional reign lasted just nine days before Bruno Sammartino defeated him in Madison Square Garden, but World League tour program writer Shoichi Suzuki was sure to milk it for Stasiak’s profile. The second incarnation of The Mongols entered the tournament. The team’s origins laid in Stampede Wrestling, when Nova Scotian-born Newton Tattrie met Croatian immigrant Josip Peruzović. Tattrie helped Stu Hart train Peruzović, and the two developed their tag team. Tattrie was Geeto Mongol, derived from the Croatian word for grandfather. Peruzović became Bepo Mongol, which came from the Croatian for baby. The Mongols came to the WWWF in 1968 and won tag gold, as Tattrie became a promoter in Pittsburgh in the early 70s. The original Mongols were first made known to Japanese fans by Tokyo 12 Channel, whose Pro Wrestling Hour program featured syndicated WWWF material; a magazine in the mid-80s called them “the Road Warriors of the 70s” for their powerhouse style. The original Mongols came to the JWA in summer 1972, where Bepo challenged for Sakaguchi’s NWA United National title. But Tattrie sold his Philadelphia promotion to Pedro Martinez soon afterwards, and Bepo left for Georgia to become Nikolai Volkoff. That winter, Tattrie scouted high school teacher Bill Eadie at a Pittsburgh show, and trained him to become Bolo Mongol. Geeto would only make one appearance for NJPW after this tournament, but Eadie would find much more success in the territory, albeit under a different name. The Invader was Bill Dromo. The Manitobian amateur wrestler had gone professional after meeting his future wife, a dental assistant who moonlighted in the ring. After honing his skills for Gordon Mackie in Winnipeg’s Madison Boxing & Wrestling Club, the 6’3”, 255 lb. wrestler worked in the Midwest for a stint before moving to Georgia in 1960. This would be his home territory for the rest of his career, but Dromo worked in many places. In the WWWF, where he was billed as Bill Zbyszko, he was the first opponent for Giant Baba. His boyish looks, size, and solid, believable work made him a versatile talent. Dromo had first worked in Japan back in 1964, but his most notable appearance had been in 1971 as a challenger for Kintaro Oki’s All Asia Heavyweight title. After another NJPW appearance in autumn 1976, Dromo’s last work in the country was for the IWE in 1980, where he had a rematch with Oki. You know Khosrow Vaziri as the Iron Sheik, but his Japanese debut caught him at a time before he began to craft a heel character. In this original, straight-laced incarnation, Vaziri’s amateur credentials were cited front-and-center in the World League program blurb. Born to a working-class family in Damghan, Iran, Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri idolized Olympian wrestler Gholamreza Takhti. He entered the sport himself, trying out for the 1968 Olympics. Early that year, though, Takhti died in a hotel room. It was announced to have been a suicide, but Takhti's pro-Mosaddegh sympathies and activist history led many to suspect foul play. Whatever the case, Vaziri fled for the United States. He won an AAU gold medal in 1971; the following year, he assisted Minnesota Amateur Wrestling Club founder and coach Alan Rice with coaching the US Olympic team. It was then that Vaziri was scouted by fellow Minnesotan Verne Gagne. He trained under Gagne and Billy Robinson in the same AWA training camp that produced Ric Flair. Two years after the World League, Vaziri worked a tour for All Japan, during which he held a seminar in South Korea. Walter Johnson (III) was Cleveland's second pick in the 1965 NFL Draft. The hometown hero had been a triple threat at Robert Taft High School, helping their football and basketball teams win city championships and setting a school record in shot put. First entering New Mexico State University and then transferring to Cal State in Los Angeles, Johnson excelled at football and set another shot put record. At his professional peak in the late sixties, the defensive tackle was a three-time Pro Bowler, and it was in 1968 that Johnny Powers trained him to wrestle on the side. Often wearing his #71 jersey in the ring, Johnson performed football tackles as well as a signature bearhug. Shoichi Suzuki’s program blurb sells Johnson as the potential second coming of Ernie Ladd, who had recently challenged Inoki for the NWF Heavyweight title in Cleveland. Finally, there was Amazing Zuma. Also billed as Argentine Zuma, Manuel Chaij was an accomplished gymnast who started to wrestle in South America and Mexico before working in the Boston area in 1951. He was then scouted by Jack Pfefer and would find particular success working for Ed McLemore’s Southwest Sports, the ancestor of WCCW. Often billed as a junior heavyweight champion, and once even claimed to be an amateur champion in both Argentina and Portugal, Zuma was hyped as a copy of Antonino Rocca. This led to the highest-profile program of Chaij’s career when Pfefer got him booked for Vincent J. McMahon’s Capitol Wrestling Federation. Zuma worked a program with Rocca at the turn of the decade, with the two setting consecutive records at Madison Square Garden. On November 13, 1959, they sold 21,890 tickets for a gate of $64,125; on January 2, they drew 21,950 for $64,680. This feud propelled Zuma for the rest of his career, but by the late sixties he was working undercard matches for Jim Crockett. Chaij retired soon after this tour, working his last matches for Leroy McGuirk in spring 1975. Besides Inoki and Sakaguchi, the native bracket consisted of Kotetsu Yamamoto, Kantaro Hoshino, Katsuhisa Shibata, Haruka Eigen, Osamu Kido, and Masa Saito. Saito was making his first appearances in NJPW. The first part of the World League was set up like a Yoshinosato-era World Big League, as the native and foreign groups wrestled against each other in a preliminary round-robin. The 64 preliminary matches were spread across the first twelve dates of the tour, beginning on April 5 in Korakuen Hall and ending in the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium on the 18th. Wins by pinfall, submission, or countout were worth one point, while wins by disqualification and draws were worth half a point. Then, the tournament entered a unique second phase. The top four of each group worked another eight-man round-robin. Seiji Sakaguchi = 7.5 points Antonio Inoki = 7 points Masa Saito = 5.5 points Kantaro Hoshino = 4 points —- Killer Karl Krupp = 7 points Invader = 6 points Stan Stasiak = 5 points Geto Mongol = 3.5 points Yes, Sakaguchi led the bracket. Inoki had lost his preliminary match against Krupp, who Sakaguchi took to a draw. Outside of the final, the only surviving match from the World League is Inoki and Sakaguchi’s block match, held on April 26 in Hiroshima. They went to a time-limit draw. Monthly Pro devoted three pages to the three-way final in their June 1974 issue. 8,100 filled the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium to see the final show on May 8. Inoki, Sakaguchi, and Krupp were tied with 5.5 points, so a three-way would be held. Krupp, who had defeated Inoki in both brackets and had beaten Sakaguchi in the second one, was allowed to choose his opponent. He picked Sakaguchi. The heel went on the offensive quickly in what turned out to be a thirteen-minute brawl. After an apron suplex and atomic drop only got Sakaguchi a nearfall, he tried to clinch it with a cobra twist. Krupp pulled a weapon from his boot and stabbed Sakaguchi in the throat, leading referee Mr. Takahashi to disqualify him. Sakaguchi and Inoki faced off in the second match, delivering a more intense sequel to their previous encounter: “a standoff between a dragon and a tiger”, as Showa Puroresu calls it. In a callback to the Hiroshima match, Inoki went for a figure-four leglock, but Sakaguchi rolled them to the ropes. Krupp and the Invader then intervened. Dromo, who had been unmasked by Inoki during their league match, handled him while Krupp bloodied and brainclawed Sakaguchi. A doctor and two nurses rushed to Sakaguchi, who tried to get back in the ring but was stopped by Saito and Hoshino. Takahashi awarded Inoki the match by doctor stoppage, but Sakaguchi was put over in defeat. In the final match, Inoki finally pushed through the only opponent who had given him any trouble in the League. Krupp may have claimed that “all he needed was a claw” to win, but Inoki escaped from multiple Bronze Claws with strikes, including a thigh kick years before the Ali match made that an acknowledged part of his repertoire. Finally, Inoki dodged a claw attempt, stomped on Krupp’s hand for good measure, and whipped him into the ropes for a back body drop. A bow-and-arrow got the submission. This show was notable for a special guest. Shortly before AJPW was set to hold the MSG Series with WWWF talent, Vincent J. McMahon was invited to the World League final. In a subsequent interview for Gong, McMahon stated that he had discussed bringing Inoki or Sakaguchi over for the fall or winter, in exchange for booking one of his wrestlers. (Neither man would debut for Vince so soon, but McMahon claims in this interview that he decided to bring Strong Kobayashi back with him on the night of the final.) While insisting that Baba was an old friend, McMahon stated that he was a businessman, and that he was interested in working with New Japan as well. The MSG Series would be the only AJPW tour to use WWWF branding. Over those next few years, Vince would pivot further towards a relationship with New Japan and become the promotion’s greatest Stateside ally alongside Mike Lebell.

— One may point to the World’s Strongest Tag Team match and the NWF title win as important victories, but Inoki and Kobayashi’s first match is the best point to place the start of NJPW’s first golden age. And the primary theme of the first golden age was Inoki’s supremacy amongst Japanese wrestlers and his professions towards a match against Giant Baba. The next post will cover NJPW’s first tournament and the return of Tiger Jeet Singh, but first, it’s worth examining the mythology of this theme, which is crucial to understanding several important events to come. NAOKI OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #4: THE ORIGIN OF "INOKI VS BABA" (INTERLUDE #1 - 1969-1971) From 1959 through 1972, the JWA held the World Big League fourteen times. The format of the tournament was often unclear and inconsistent in the first half of its existence, before the eighth in 1966—the first under the Yoshinosato regime—finally introduced a logical structure. Under the format which it would use for the rest of its life, the World Big League pitted native and foreign wrestlers against each other in a round-robin. The shift may or may not have been influenced by a similar reform to sumo tournaments that began around this time. But outside of its preliminary matches, the early joint shows performed with competing regional promotions, or its original light and junior heavyweight titles, the JWA displayed a bone-deep resistance to booking matches between native wrestlers. Those familiar with the promotion’s early product may chalk this up to early puroresu’s nationalist roots, but this is reductive. That helps explain why the American Great Togo, a second-generation immigrant who brought his heel act to Japanese audiences, struggled to catch on. But surely competition between countrymen has never been mutually exclusive with nationalist pride or politics? It all comes back to sumo. The sport’s culture ran deep within the JWA, and an unspoken rule that has held firm throughout its history is that no two wrestlers from the same stable, who train together and eat from the same pot of chanko, shall ever compete against each other in a tournament setting. In 1969, the 11th World Big League teased a change. At the end of the round-robin, Inoki found himself tied with three-time winner Baba, Bobo Brazil, and Chris Markoff. Two last matches between the natives and foreigners were decided by a coin toss, and if both of either side won their matches, a tiebreaker would ensue. But Baba and Brazil went to a stalemate in a time-limit draw, while Inoki debuted the octopus stretch to defeat Markoff. Inoki’s victory was the result of lobbying by the likes of Kokichi Endo and Yusef Turk, who had a stake in the JWA’s coming program with NET TV. World Pro Wrestling would need a parallel ace due to the exclusivity clauses that Nippon TV had imposed. The way that they booked it gave Inoki a necessary boost as a singles star while protecting Baba. Over the next two years, Inoki accrued credibility in his own right while continuing to defend the NWA International Tag Team titles with Baba. In December 1969, Dory Funk Jr. came to Japan to defend the NWA World Heavyweight title. Both of the JWA’s aces took the champion to the full broadway, but it was Inoki who shone brighter in his Osaka challenge. When the 12th World Big League was held, Inoki choked in a Markoff rematch and fell behind Baba by half a point in the final results, but he defeated runner-up Don Leo Jonathan clean in their tournament match. (Baba had lost to him in his tournament match, and only won the final against him because Jonathan had hit the ropes with his groin on a dodged dropkick.) Inoki and Hoshino with the NWA Tag Team League trophy. In 1970, the JWA designed a tag tournament to accommodate NET. The original idea was to name it the Diamond Tag Team League, after the symbol of the sponsor of their NTV program, Mitsubishi Electric. Unlike the World League, though, this tournament would not be exclusively broadcast on NTV. Thus, the name was changed to the NWA Tag Team League. It would be necessary to split up Baba & Inoki, and so the Japanese teams were determined by a lottery. Baba teamed with Mitsu Hirai, while Inoki teamed with Kantaro Hoshino. With both B-I gun and beloved tag specialists the Yamaha Brothers split up to make the league compatible with both networks, fan dissatisfaction overshadowed the tournament. But its result was another triumph for Inoki. On November 5, Inoki and Hoshino defeated Nick Bockwinkel & Big John Quinn in a 72-minute epic that has been lost to time. Baba was absent for the toast in the waiting room afterwards, as well as the press conference. In that conference, Inoki was quoted in Monthly Gong thanking Baba for helping him come this far. But according to the eighth volume of Baba to Inoki, a series written by Yasuo Sakurai under the pen name Yasushi Hara, Inoki made another comment that went unreported: “Winning a tag team tournament or any other official tournament means that I have beaten Baba-san. I think it's time for Baba to accept my challenge and settle the matter on merit.” If true, it indicates that what Inoki would do the following year had been on his mind for a while. In my earlier tellings of this story, I have misunderstood what exactly happened here. This will correct that mistake. Shortly before the 13th World Big League, Inoki flew to Los Angeles to win the NWA United National title from John Tolos, and subsequently announced his engagement to noted actress Mitsuko Baisho. The JWA would book another four-way tie this year, as Baba and Inoki were set to wrestle Abdullah the Butcher and the Destroyer in bouts with no time limit. Kokichi Endo’s announcement before the first of these, Inoki vs. Destroyer, openly teased the possibility of a Baba vs Inoki blowoff: “In the event that the winner is not decided in the first or second match of the championship, a rematch will be held.” In the final surviving match that Inoki wrestled on NTV, he and the Destroyer went to a double countout. While Baba and Abdullah wrestled their match, Inoki called a press conference. He put the Destroyer over while stating that he had fought with all his might. He hoped that Baba would win against the Butcher because the most important thing was that, whether he or Baba won, the World Big League trophy could not be allowed to be taken to another country. But then, Inoki went into business for himself. He announced that he wished to challenge for Baba’s NWA International Heavyweight title, and that he would submit a formal request to the JWA commissioner the next day. He claimed that he did this not for personal reasons, but because he “could no longer ignore the fan’s voices”. Inoki brought up that his United National title victory meant that Japan now had three champions, counting the IWA World Heavyweight title, but that the country only needed one. (Inoki would continue to trumpet the need for a unified Japanese commission over the next few years.) He went on to challenge the JWA’s unspoken rule, insisting that he and Baba should have been allowed to wrestle a decision match before challenging the top foreigner for the trophy, “but because of the rules of Japanese wrestling, this is how it turned out”. Again invoking “the fans’ voices”, Inoki stated that he had no choice but to challenge Baba “with his life on the line, knowing the unspoken rules of the JWA”. Inoki shakes hands with Baba after the 1971 World League final. After Baba won his match and the tournament, a Gong reporter told him what had just happened and asked for comment. Of course, Baba was surprised. The title was not his property, so he could not simply accept anyone’s challenge. If the commission approved, he would wrestle Inoki anytime, but at the moment he could not say any more. It was a professional response that Baba would return to time and again in the coming years. As the locker room celebrated with a toast, Inoki came out after his shower and shook hands with Baba. This incident was the nucleus of a public perception that would prop up Inoki and haunt Baba for years to come: “Inoki advancing, Baba escaping”. By the time that this incident occurred, of course, there was more than just company culture blocking it from happening. But as fans wrote in to Gong in favor of the dream match, the two men’s responses began to affect their image. When Yoshinosato and Yoshiichi Hirai, the president of the JWA’s shareholders association, announced that they would reject the challenge, Inoki kept his cool but held firm that the company would only continue to develop if it encouraged its wrestlers to defeat Baba. A roundtable discussion in Monthly Gong would conclude that Baba “should have responded positively” to the challenge. Behind the scenes, Baba was reluctant to work with Inoki, and it has been claimed that on-site manager Michiaki Yoshimura had had to beg him to defend the NWA International Tag Team titles with him that June. The second NWA Tag League abandoned the lottery system and booked more satisfying teams, with the reunion of former tag champ duo Baba and Yoshimura, the first major showcase for Inoki and Sakaguchi, and the intact Yamaha Brothers. However, the tournament was hurt by a couple of disappointing teams, to say nothing of what happened with Bob Ellis & Frankie Laine.1 Inoki & Sakaguchi won the final against Killer Kowalski & Buddy Austin. FOOTNOTES

Sources for this post include: NAOKI OTSUKA AND THE EARLY YEARS OF NJPW, #3: TOKYO SPORTS, THE WORLD'S STRONGEST TAG TEAM, AND STRONG KOBAYASHI WORLD’S STRONGEST TAG TEAM Tokyo Sports president Hiroshi Inoue with Inoki on March 14, 1974. Inoue was one of New Japan’s most influential allies. “Hiroshi Inoue [...] saw [my match with Karl Gotch on March 6, 1972] and picked it up in an article saying, ‘This is what professional wrestling should be like!’” · Antonio Inoki, 2019 Founded from the ashes of the Kokumin Times newspaper in 1960, Tokyo Sports dedicated much coverage to professional wrestling. An evening publication could not survive on the morning’s reheated baseball scoops, and by its time, some morning papers had smartened up to the business and ceased wrestling coverage. “Tospo”, as it was often abbreviated, had a readymade niche. Tokyo Sports’ involvement in the business had extended to assigning reporters as color commentators for mens’ wrestling television programs. The first was Takashi Yamada, who had started work for Nippon Television’s Mitsubishi Diamond Hour JWA program in autumn 1967. Yasuo Sakurai followed for World Pro Wrestling. Tadao Monma would represent the paper for IWE broadcasts. The paper had even been weaponized in the industry, such as the case in early 1969 when it was encouraged to print a spurious article that damaged public interest in Great Togo’s rumored new promotion. Tospo president Hiroshi Inoue had proposed that the newspaper support the first Kuramae Kokugikan show of NJPW’s TV era, with a big tag match to showcase the Golden Duo of Inoki & Sakaguchi. Shinma was enthusiastic at the prospect, but there was little time for preparation, and New Japan only had one foreign wrestler with name value. Karl Gotch declined the offer due to a knee injury. On April 20, the Golden Duo had to make do with Jan Wilkens & Manuel Soto, whom they defeated in two straight falls. (Wilkens would later do business with Sakaguchi in his home territory of South Africa.) Later that year, Sakurai suggested that they wrestle Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz. When he went to New Japan, it was rejected for budgetary reasons, but then he pitched it to his boss. Inoue was enthuiastic and consulted Inoki and Shinma with intent to fund the match himself. There was just one problem. They needed to get ahold of Lou. The 57-year old had returned to wrestling. As he explains in the addendum of his autobiography, Hooker, his wife Fredda “was drinking quite a lot at the time and making some stupid deals while she was on the booze”, so Thesz had returned to the wrestling circuit “just to get away from it”. Sakurai consulted his Tokyo Sports coworker Takashi Yamada, who accompanied Giant Baba on his trips to the US to cover the NWA’s major markets. Yamada told him that Sonny Myers knew his whereabouts, and sure enough, Myers provided Sakurai with the living legend’s new contact information. When Sakurai spoke to Thesz, he was apparently reluctant to wrestle alongside Gotch, but was willing to travel to Japan as long as he actually got to wrestle. How did this booking slip through Baba’s fingers? Just barely. While Yamada did not rat out his fellow reporter, Baba had learned that Sakurai had made a call to St. Louis, where Myers worked. Sakurai said that he had only wanted to get in contact with Thesz. He could not reveal that this match was happening, and certainly not who was funding it, but Baba did not press further. Given the nature of Thesz’s previous appearances for New Japan, it is reasonable to assume that Baba only thought he would be brought on as a guest referee. The “World’s Strongest Tag Team” sign autographs. On September 11, Inoki announced the match, which was booked for the Kuramae Kokugikan on October 14. Both Gotch and Thesz arrived two days early. Gotch traveled to the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium to attend the final show of the Toukon Series tour, while Thesz’s flight arrived about an hour after that show ended. Kotetsu Yamamoto would serve as both man’s valet. The following morning, Gotch and Thesz held a public training session at the NJPW dojo, sparring with Yamamoto, Hiroaki Hamada, Osamu Kido, and Katsuhisa Shibata. An autograph session in Shinjuku’s Isetan department store—the same place where Tiger Jeet Singh would assault Inoki a few weeks later—followed. While the media was more focused on Thesz than Gotch, he was coming into this match hurt. Five days earlier, he had dislocated his shoulder while wrestling Jack Brisco for the NWA World Heavyweight title in the Mid-South Coliseum. Thesz disclosed this to Gotch, and the two had a long private sparring session for more practice. But Thesz was in no less pain on the morning of. Lou had wanted to work with Inoki, but Inoki’s focus on matwork would surely take its toll on his shoulder. So Gotch suggested that he take the lead. If Lou left the ace to Karl, then he could concentrate on Sakaguchi, whose tendencies to “stand and fight” would better accommodate Thesz’s condition. While Thesz and Inoki do wrestle each other, this compromised approach does reflect somewhat in the match’s construction. Contemporaneous coverage in Monthly Pro Wrestling magazine notes Thesz’s “peculiar” stance at the start, with his left shoulder slightly slumped. Five days earlier, All Japan Pro Wrestling had brought 11,000 to the same venue to see Giant Baba & Tomomi Tsuruta challenge the Funks for the NWA International Tag Team titles. New Japan would announce that their show drew 12,000, an inflated number. Before the match, in a wrinkle sadly clipped from the copy on NJPW World, a JSDF marching band played renditions of The Star Spangled Banner and Kimigayo. The guest referee was Johnny “Red Shoes” Dugan, familiar to Japanese television audiences for officiating matches taped in the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. In the final fall, Inoki used a maneuver which Gotch had taught him, the Japanese leg roll clutch, to pin his mentor for the first time. — The NJPW New Years Golden Series was a disappointment compared to the tours that surrounded it. Recommended by Steve Rickard, at least according to the Showa Puroresu zine, star gaikokujin Mighty Caramba was a Maltese wrestler who had worked for Jim Barnett’s Australian WCW in the sixties and had also become popular in South Africa. Also debuting in Japan were the “World’s Heaviest Twins”, Billy and Benny McGuire. The McGuires were promoted by NET TV through an appearance on a NET TV afternoon show. On the afternoon of the kickoff show in Tokyo, both the twins and Caramba did PR. The twins rode around on their Honda minibikes and pulled a bus, while Caramba pulled the same bus by his teeth. The brothers would work two more NJPW tours before Billy’s death in 1979, but it was always the first tour of the year due to heat sensitivity. Caramba never appeared again. While the McGuires were successful in some regard as a draw for younger fans, it is revealing that the last third of the tour was supplemented by the last-minute booking of John and Chris Tolos. The former had lost the NWA United National title to Inoki three years before. (He would also work a handful of dates in October.) The first tour of 1974 saw Tetsuo Baisho debut as New Japan’s announcer, and Naoki Otsuka accompanied him on the tour as a “chaperone”. Otsuka would return to the role for a period in 1976 after a car hit Baisho on his bicycle and broke his leg. Outside of that, though, Baisho kept the job until the next decade, when Kero Tanaka took over and allowed him to return to a backstage position. —- GANRYUJIMA 1974 Strong Kobayashi declares free agency. On the afternoon of February 8, 1974, IWE ace Strong Kobayashi called the offices of Gong magazine. He had just told president Isao Yoshiwara that he intended to resign, but his boss had just tried to placate him. The next day, Kobayashi walked into the company’s offices, located in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Takadanobaba, and again tried to turn in his notice. But talks broke down, and Kobayashi disappeared. When Gong interviewed Yoshiwara, he told them that he had no concrete plans for the future, while saying that he “didn’t chase after those who leave”. Three days later, Kobayashi submitted his resignation, which made the front page of Tokyo Sports on the 13th. That afternoon, Kobayashi held a press conference at Luna, a coffee shop on the Waseda University campus. IWE sales manager Toshio Suzuki, referee Taizo Maemizo, and announcer Tamio Takeshita all appeared and asked Kobayashi to wait until Yoshiwara arrived, but Kobayashi started the conference at 2:00 PM, remarking that this was his personal matter. “Strong Kobayashi became a freelance wrestler as of February 2. I have been a professional wrestler for eight years, and thanks to your support, I have become a world champion and have worked hard in the ring of Kokusai Pro Wrestling. However, last year was my lowest year and I could not meet the expectations of President Yoshiwara and the fans. I have reflected on the many ways in which I took advantage of President Yoshiwara's warm hospitality in the name of International Pro Wrestling, and I have made up my mind to start over from the very first step and rebuild myself as a wrestler worthy of the name Strong Kobayashi. I would like to thank President Yoshiwara and the people at Kokusai Pro Wrestling for all the help they have given me, and in order to repay this debt of gratitude, I am prepared to start over as a lone wolf for the next year or two. If possible, I would like to fight against Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki to test my strength. I would like to ask for your continued guidance and encouragement in my endeavors. Strong Kobayashi, February 13, 1974.” During the subsequent Q&A session, Kobayashi maintained that his departure was motivated by a need for personal growth and insisted that his dissatisfaction did not stem from matters of finances or human relations. Fifty years later, we know that he was just being professional. His departure was in fact motivated by the harassment of booker Great Kusatsu, who bullied the ace backstage and knocked him down house show cards, exploiting the company’s unique incentive pay structure to get himself (and Rusher Kimura) paid the same amount. While he couched it in kayfabe during the press conference, late 1973 had indeed been a low point for Kobayashi, between an upset against Isamu Teranishi in the IWA World Series and a title loss to Wahoo McDaniel. McDaniel had ended a dominant two-year reign for little apparent reason, except perhaps to give Kusatsu a title shot in a strap match, before dropping it back to Kobayashi on his way out. In 2019, Hisashi Shinma claimed that Kosuke Takeuchi had let him in on Kobayashi’s discontentment. He claims that he began to visit his home in Ome every night for three months (which would go back to autumn 1973), and that he kept it a secret from all of his coworkers except Otsuka. It was difficult to get Kobayashi to commit to leaving and working with New Japan, as one day he would be on board but on the next he would retract that. Shinma seems to imply that Kobayashi’s hesitation was influenced by his partner. (The July 1973 issue of Monthly Pro covers Kobayashi’s engagement to 23-year-old Mitsuyo Noguchi, but I could not confirm if they had tied the knot by this point.) As the situation progressed, Kobayashi’s family would be pressured to steer him towards a relationship with All Japan. The two men who advocated for this were Matty Suzuki, who had been his trainer, and Monthly Pro editor-in-chief Hisatake Fujisawa.1 By the two-month mark of Shinma’s visits, the Kobayashi household’s eight Maltese dogs had grown quite attached to him and one started sleeping on his lap. (When Shinma got a dog, it was a Maltese.) On February 22, the Big Fight Series started in Korakuen Hall. This tour marked the NJPW debut of Andre the Giant, two years removed from his previous appearances for the IWE as Monster Roussimoff. According to Koji Miyamoto, Inoki and Shinma had begun negotiations with Vince McMahon Sr. through Mike Lebell the previous August. On March 19 in Okayama, Andre would give Inoki his first singles loss since the 1972 matches against Gotch, due to the interference of manager Frank Valois. On February 25, Inoki announced that he accepted Kobayashi’s challenge. On March 1, at 11:30am, Inoki and Kobayashi agreed to wrestle in a press conference. Hiroshi Inoue stood beside them. Yoshiwara dropped his front of passivity. Kobayashi stated that his contract had been for one year, and had expired on February 8, but Yoshiwara countered by showing that the contract did not have an expiration date. (When Yoshiwara pulled this again a few years later with Ryuma Go, a legal analyst told Gong that this was illegal, not least because Go had been 17 when he signed it.) Furthermore, as Kobayashi was signed at the top level of the IWE’s tiered contract structure, any promotion that booked him within a year of the contract’s termination would have to pay a penalty fee of ten million yen. On March 8, Yoshiwara announced that Kobayashi would be expelled from the company at the start of the fiscal year on April 1. Furthermore, he would be forced to drop the Strong moniker, and a provisional injunction would be forthcoming. The next day, Hiroshi Inoue struck. On March 9, he called Kobayashi and Yoshiwara to a meeting at the Tokyu Hotel in Ginza. Kobayashi apologized to Yoshiwara, and Tokyo Sports arranged to pay the penalty fee themselves. Yoshiwara approved with the understanding that Kobayashi was to wrestle as a representative of the newspaper. The IWE could not afford to alienate puroresu’s dominant sports paper, no matter how much the results of Kobayashi’s departure may have damaged their own reputation. Tokyo Sports also drew from their own pocketbooks to promote the match, buying posters and the like in the hopes that it would rejuvenate a business that had been in decline for years. To compensate for their financial investment, the paper permanently raised its price from twenty yen to thirty. — On March 6, NJPW held the first show promoted by Otsuka. He had spent a month in Shimonoseki to promote a show at its City Gymnasium. It was hard getting any tickets sold at first. Otsuka says that he received a lot of help from a local promoter who operated under a company named Cold Water Entertainment, and who had the rights to promote shows by legendary comedic actor Kanbi Fujiyama. The announced number was a relatively impressive 4400, but Otsuka admits that some trickery was involved. Some tickets were sold as two seats, which left one seat empty but could be counted as two in attendance figures. Otsuka also went behind the company’s back to pair tickets with coupons to local drugstores. This was inspired by AJW, which had sold tickets with coupons for Yakult, the popular probiotic milk beverage. (Otsuka was acquainted with AJW’s head salesmen.) When Inoki learned that Otsuka had done this, he was not angry, but asked him not to do it again. But there was one more trick that Otsuka had pulled. Exactly one week earlier, AJPW had held a show in the same building. After it was over, Otsuka drove a sales car outside the venue to promote his show. A decade later, when Otsuka began meeting with Giant Baba, Baba said that he had “been his enemy since Shimonoseki”. Otsuka then pointed out that he had done the same thing six years later when the companies held back-to-back shows in Osaka, which Baba also remembered. It was while in Shimonoseki that Otsuka heard that the Inoki-Kobayashi match had been announced. He got back to Tokyo a few days before, but there wasn’t much he could do to help, so he concentrated on sales and setup for the next tour. — Inoki and Kobayashi’s first match drew a reported 16,500 to the Kuramae Kokugikan. Fearing that he would back out at the last moment, Shinma spent the night at Kobayashi’s house and rode with him to the show. The match was refereed by Umeyuki Kiyomigawa, a former sumo wrestler who had worked in puroresu's original regional independent scene in the 1950s. He decided to work abroad when the JWA became the last Japanese promotion standing. After reestablishing contact with the industry at the end of the 60s, Kiyomigawa had booked European talent for the IWE and had organized training excursions for their talent through his connections with promoters such as Etienne Siry and Edmund Schober. By 1974, Kiyomigawa was 53, and he was ready to return home. Kobayashi had asked if New Japan could give him a job, but Inoki asked Shinma not to increase their roster anymore, so Kiyomigawa was just paid ¥300,000 for this appearance. He would soon get a coaching job with AJW, where he trained Mach Fumiake and the Beauty Pair, among others. Kiyomigawa had left by 1979, when he helped former Black Pair member Shinobu Aso and others with an unsuccessful attempt to form a rival promotion. He died the following year. Toyonobori also made his first appearance for NJPW in a year, as he asked Shinma to bring him there. He had not only played a major role in Inoki’s early career but had also been a mentor to Kobayashi during his IWE run. Toyonobori would officiate another important Inoki match later in the year. The match was a defense of Inoki’s NWF Heavyweight title. It was also a onefall match, which started Inoki’s transition away from the standard ⅔-falls layouts of old. Shinma notes that Kobayashi’s cheer squad was led by Kobayashi's uncle, while Otsuka adds that he had sold a car during his Toyota tenure to another member, who was one of Kobayashi’s old schoolmates. As for the attendance figure, Otsuka cites a rumor that more people were rushed in after all the tickets were gone to beef up the standing-room-only attendance, and that cardboard boxes containing the cash all disappeared, but states that he doesn’t believe it. He estimates that they had about 1,500 SRO spectators. This would indicate that the attendance figure was inflated, but to be clear, the venue was packed. FOOTNOTES