Legends of Japanese Pro Wrestling

When I first became a hardcore wrestling fan during the height of the 1990's American wrestling boom, I quickly got the impression that American fans of Japanese wrestling were the wrestling equivalent of the Star Trek freaks who not only learn to speak fluent Klingon but relish every opportunity to correct the grammar of anyone else who has the gall to think they speak proper Klingon. If a normal wrestling fan praised Eddy Guerrero's latest match on Nitro on the internet, for example, a sniggering Japanese wrestling fan would inevitably pull the other fan's ho card by regurgitating the date of a "far superior" Guerrero match in Japan like a poker player unveiling pocket aces. This elite vanguard of wrestling nerd maintained walk-in closets of precisely arranged and meticulously labeled VHS bootlegs, dissected every wrestling match they ever watched for its "psychology," "workrate," and "moveset," and ritually disemboweled themselves in shame if, carried away with excitement, they gave the latest Misawa/Kobashi match a perfect rating of 5 stars instead of the consensus rating of 4 ¾ out of 5 stars.

Once I actually watched Japanese pro wrestling - I believe my first match either involved exploding barbed wire or a wrestling panda bear - I immediately realized how wrong that impression was. In reality, Japanese wrestling for most of its history has been the exact same type of wild, bloody, over-the-top, and hilariously silly popcorn entertainment as American wrestling. In this article, we will take a look at the eccentric personalities that built Japanese pro wrestling and made it a pervasive, mainstream cultural phenomenon in the Land of the Rising Sun.