In short order, a pipeline of mostly large white men, presumably Americans but not always, journeyed overseas to lose—delighting Japanese audiences, most of whom remained ignorant that outcomes were predetermined. Rikidōzan’s affiliation with the NWA quickly lent credibility to him and his organization, the Japanese Pro Wrestling Alliance.
More important than NWA ties was the timing of his venture. As it had for wrestling and “Gorgeous” George in the States, television became an enormous driver for Rikidōzan and pro wrestling in Japan. Within a month of the JWA starting operations on July 30, 1953, commercial broadcast networks began distributing programming to Japanese households, which, no different than postwar Americans, purchased televisions in increasing numbers.
Rikidōzan’s first puroresu event hit airwaves on two networks, NHG and NTV, live from Tokyo, on February 19, 1954. Joining forces with Masahiko Kimura—a pioneering judo and mixed-style fighter three years removed from breaking Hélio Gracie’s left arm with a joint lock that was later named in his honor in front of 20,000 Brazilians—the pair competed in a tag-team match against the big-and-tall Sharpe brothers of Canada (to the Japanese, Ben and Mike Sharpe passed just fine for Americans). Three days of pro wrestling, all live on television, served as quite an introduction for Rikidōzan, the “ethnic hero” of Japan, whose ring formula evoked memories of the Second World War. With a twist.
“I get phone calls, letters telling me hit back when American wrestlers hit me,” he told the United Press during an interview in San Francisco in 1952. “Finally, when [they] hit dirty, I hit dirty, too.”
In the U.S., that was easy enough to understand because for years this had been wrestling at its core. The Gold Dust Trio played off stereotypes—religious, ethnic, or nationalist—and casting the likes of Rikidōzan as a villain was simply how it worked. But in Japan? He couldn’t accept such humiliation from gaijin. Surrender instead of victory meant reminding people of the Empire’s failure. Of the Americans’ bombs. The sun hadn’t set on the Japanese, Rikidōzan intended to say through his karate chops; that’s how he wanted to make people feel when he wrestled.
Pro wrestling and television produced prideful and harrowing moments for the Japanese. In the fall of 1955, a couple years after Rikidōzan captured the public’s imagination, an eleven-year-old schoolboy was reportedly killed when a fellow student landed a dropkick while imitating the American style of wrestling. Networks, which were saturated with wrestling at the time, created public service announcements essentially telling kids to cool it.
A growing fervor around Rikidōzan, and Kimura’s cemented reputation as one of Japan’s best fighters, prompted the media to speculate about what might happen if they were matched as opponents instead of teammates. The wrestlers paid attention and agreed it was a good idea to entertain this question. There was money to be made, and for the advancement of Japanese pro wrestling the match needed to happen. So on December 22, 1954, the first pro wrestling heavyweight championship of Japan was contested at the Kuramae Kokugikan, the home of sumo from 1950 until 1985. Without nationalist overtones, the contest between Rikidōzan and Kimura turned out to be a straight power play. Shifting from work to shoot, the former sumo man chopped the judoka to the floor, a double cross apparently justified by an errant kick from Kimura to Rikidōzan’s groin.
“The first bout was going to be a draw,” Kimura told Sports Graphic Number, Japan’s Sports Illustrated, in 1983. “The winner of the second will be determined by the winner of a rock-paper-scissors. After the second match, we will repeat this process. We came to an agreement on this condition. As for the content of the match, Rikidōzan will let me throw him, and I will let him strike me with a chop. We then rehearsed karate chop and throws. However, once the bout started, Rikidōzan became taken by greed for big money and fame. He lost his mind and became a mad man. When I saw him raise his hand, I opened my arms to invite the chop. He delivered the chop, not to my chest, but to my neck with full force. I fell to the mat. He then kicked me. Neck arteries are so vulnerable that it did not need to be Rikidōzan to cause a knockdown. A junior high school kid could inflict a knockdown this way. I could not forgive his treachery. That night, I received a phone call informing me that several, ten, yakuza are on their way to Tokyo to kill Rikidōzan.”
A strain of thought exists that suggests Rikidōzan’s stabbing death in 1963 was the yakuza catching up with him for the betrayal of Kimura, who, to the surprise of no one, never received a chance to wrestle or fight the former sumo stylist again. As with most things having to do with Rikidōzan, who he was and what he did relative to his public perception were very different.
Rikidōzan and American Lou Thesz wrestled to a sixty-minute draw in Tokyo’s first-ever “world title match” in 1957, scoring a record 87.0 rating on Japanese television—two of his matches rank in the top ten most-viewed programs in the country’s history and tens of thousands of people packed the streets to watch. His matches against Thesz, the only American wrestler Rikidōzan admitted to having respect for, represent the crowning achievements of his enormous ring success.
When Rikidōzan visited Los Angeles a year later to face Thesz—the best shooter in the world, a man chiseled from granite like Ed “Strangler” Lewis—the message was clear: If Rikidōzan could put up a fight against a man like Thesz, if he could beat Thesz and claim the NWA international heavyweight belt, which he did in L.A., well, he could do anything.
So too could the Japanese.
Not only had the face of Japanese strength adopted the American manner of wrestling, he adopted the American way of life and business. In L.A., Rikidōzan asked Gene LeBell, then twenty-six, to hold $15,000 cash in crisp $100 bills. “He said keep it until the match is over,” recalled LeBell. “I could’ve gone down to Mexico.” No matter what happened at the Olympic Auditorium that night, a top-of-the line Rolls-Royce was going to be purchased afterwards. Big money. Big cars. Big homes. Big deals. He operated in the legitimate and illegitimate consumerism that permeated Japan following the war. Rikidōzan put his name on nightclubs, hotels, condominiums, and bowling alleys. He also circulated among gangsters, and in some ways was one himself. When he drank too much he could become belligerent, a bully who ignored police summons.
Rikidōzan indulged in money, power, and influence. He was not who he was portrayed to be, and after his sudden death ten days before “Gorgeous” George Wagner passed away in Los Angeles, the pro wrestling business in Japan was left in shambles. It is testament to Rikidōzan’s massive influence that his death didn’t bring down pro wrestling altogether. Instead, his protégés rode the tidal wave and established important legacies of their own.
ROUND FIVE
More than a few Cassius Clay watchers suggested that because he moved around the ring so much, the sleek twenty-year-old might not trust his chin.
Due mostly to his locomotion, it’s true, the attention-grabbing fighter hadn’t been hurt during his first sixteen months as pro. The man’s legs, so long as they were strong underneath him, were his first line of defense in that they got him to where he wanted to be faster than he could get touched. And yet this is where some critics conjured questions regarding Ali’s potential.
Ali breezed to a 10–0 record and received more than enough press to justify a debut at the old Madison Square Garden to begin his 1962 campaign—but that wasn’t successful or quick enough. A hold-the-reins development plan buffered against the Olympic champion’s heavy competitive drive. On the subject of his tenth opponent, Munich-born Willi Besmanoff, Ali declared shame at having fought an “unrated duck.” While Ali talked up champions Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston he got in rounds with pugs like the squat Besmanoff, who finished his fifteen-year career with ninety-three bouts and a ledger of 51-34-8. The fight with Ali in Louisville was the German’s seventy-ninth, and it marked one of eleven times he was stopped.
No
