Too Sweet by Keith Elliot Greenberg

Author:Keith Elliot Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2020-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Six years after the end of World War II, boxer Joe Louis led a contingent of boxers and wrestlers to Japan to stage exhibitions for the American military personnel still stationed there. No one remembers if the boxing matches had any impact. Wrestling was a different story. Perhaps it was the country’s fighting arts traditions. Perhaps it was something genetic. But within a month of the tour, Japanese athletes from the judo and sumo worlds began changing their lifestyle choices and training instead to become professional wrestlers.

Among them was a former sumo wrestler named Rikidozan, who made his debut in October 1951, wrestling American Bobby Bruns to a 10-minute draw. After more training in Hawaii, he began wrestling on the islands, then in San Francisco. Rikidozan returned home in 1953, starting his own promotion and positioning himself as the country’s top babyface, avenging the country’s wartime losses by taking on a succession of American heels.

It was precisely what the Japanese needed to lift their spirits. What no one bothered to mention was that Rikidozan wasn’t even Japanese, but a member of the country’s marginalized Korean community.

Nonetheless, Rikidozan remains a national hero to this day, a status he also enjoys in North Korea, where he was born. In a country that takes its history seriously, Rikidozan’s matches with Freddie Blassie, The Destroyer and Lou Thesz are remembered fondly. So are Rikidozan’s escapades outside the ring. In addition to building his own arena, he owned nightclubs, apartment buildings, hotels and golf courses. He was also known to travel in the same circles as members of the yakuza, or Japanese mob, and thrived in this precarious environment until December 1963, when he was stabbed by a mobster in the restroom of a Tokyo nightclub. According to folklore, he made it to the stage and cut a profane promo on his assailant before being carted off to the hospital.

An initial surgery was successful. But then, Rikidozan made some bad choices. He began gorging himself on sushi and sake, developed peritonitis and died.

Still, the 39-year-old father of puroresu — the expression is based on the way the Japanese pronounce “pro wrestling” — had prepared for the future and was already grooming his successors: Shohei “Giant” Baba and Antonio Inoki, who started All Japan and New Japan Pro Wrestling, respectively, in 1972. The two promotions would dominate Japanese wrestling until 1999, when Baba died from complications of colon cancer, a month and a half after his final match.

Inoki was retired at this point, but, in a nation populated with death match promotions, women’s promotions, lucha promotions and other companies tailored for fans with very specific tastes, he’d transformed New Japan into the country’s best-known wrestling organization, primarily due to his flair for self-promotion. In addition to battling Muhammad Ali in a well publicized but disappointing boxer versus wrestler match in 1976, Inoki staged numerous bouts against other combat sports figures, combined with WCW to pack more than 150,000 spectators into a stadium in the hermit

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