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Ali vs. Inoki. Josh Gross
Читать онлайн.Название Ali vs. Inoki
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781942952206
Автор произведения Josh Gross
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Rikidōzan’s improbably important pro wrestling journey began in construction. According to Robert Whiting’s book, Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan, a sumo fan, tattooed yakuza gambler Shinsasku Nita, maintained “special connections inside the GHQ.” Those relationships led to projects at U.S. military camps, some of which Nita hired Rikidōzan to supervise. The wrestler’s English improved and he enjoyed the nightlife in Ginza. One evening, according to Whiting, Rikidōzan found himself on the wrong side of an altercation with a Japanese-American Olympic weightlifter, Hawaii’s Harold Sakata, who earned a silver medal at the 1948 Games in London, and, later, appeared opposite Sean Connery’s version of James Bond as Auric Goldfinger’s hat-throwing henchman Oddjob. Sakata and Rikidōzan quickly worked out their differences, and the former sumo wrestler was integrated into a touring group of American pro wrestlers who had been sponsored by the Torii Oasis Shriner’s Club of Tokyo. Before heading to the Korean Peninsula, where fighting was underway between U.S.- and Chinese-led forces, former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis joined seven wrestlers, including Sakata and Iowan Bobby Bruns, in entertaining U.S. servicemen while seeking to raise $50,000 for crippled children during a three-month tour of Japan.
Like the Imperial Japanese Army, Americans usurped the old sumo venue, which had been repaired after U.S. firebombing destroyed its huge iron roof. Rather than testing weapons, Occupation forces renamed the building from Ryōgoku Kokugikan to Ryōgoku Memorial Hall and staged events—the first bits of Americana introduced to the Japanese that hadn’t fallen from the sky. American-style pro wrestling, the kind “Toots” Mondt had established in the 1920s, was officially introduced to the Japanese on Sunday, September 30, 1951, the same month the country returned to the League of Nations after signing a peace treaty in San Francisco.
Rikidōzan debuted in late October, feeling his way through a ten-minute time-limit draw against Bruns. Sergeant Clarkson Crume, for Stars and Stripes, noted that Rikidōzan had lost six inches off his waist since meeting Sakata and the boys, and was “surprisingly good for someone who has been wrestling only three weeks.” The squat Japanese grappler hung around the tour through December 11, karate chopping and running over the opposition—a sampling of the hard style that became his trademark. Winter’s harshness cut the wrestling program short, but the expedition paid off because Bruns had found a twenty-year-old, 265-pound man who would spearhead the rapid expansion of the “sport” in Japan.
The following February, as a naturalized Japanese citizen—important since status as a North Korean would have made travel to the U.S. problematic—Rikidōzan departed in good shape, down thirty pounds, ready to learn the pro wrestling business. He landed in Hawaii, one of the nearly thirty territories encompassing the National Wrestling Association, and was coached by Bobby Bruns. The NWA-affiliated promotion in San Francisco also gave him plenty of opportunities to step into the ring. Rising from the ashes of the Gold Dust Trio, the NWA attempted to control and organize talent, produce strong champions the public would support (despite knowing that wrestling was more show than competition), and seize the larger space of wrestling. NWA representatives in Honolulu (Al Karasick) and San Francisco (Joe Malcewicz) arranged the historic “Shriners” tour of 1951, and envisioned Japan as a place well worth expanding to.
Rikidōzan made them look smart.
Intent on establishing a lasting pro wrestling promotion, Rikidōzan returned to his adopted country after a year and a half on the road. 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