Takashi Yamada

[KinchStalker]

Takashi Yamada (山田隆)

Profession: Commentator (Color), Reporter
Real name: Takashi Yamada
Professional name: not applicable
Life: 5/24/1933-9/8/1998
Born: Kitami, Hokkaido, Japan
Career:1967-1989? (as commentator)
Promotions: Japan Wrestling Association, All Japan Pro Wrestling

Takashi Yamada was one of puroresu’s most reliable commentators in a two-decade career for Nippon Television.

Takashi Yamada was an eight-year veteran of Tokyo Sports when he debuted as a commentator in November 1967. Yamada would spend the next two decades working as an assigned reporter and color commentator. Yamada was not the first wrestling reporter to moonlight as a commentator, but his ability to provide background and overseas information on foreign talent codified the role of the reporter-commentator in puroresu broadcasting. His work for AJPW is his greatest legacy, as besides announcer Takao Kuramochi he was likely the most consistent broadcast presence across its first fifteen years. Takashi’s husky voice will be familiar to any connoisseur of Showa period All Japan, although from personal observation, his voice is sometimes mistaken for Giant Baba’s by Western viewers. While it is hard to find classic calls from Japanese announcers the same way that one might learn about famous soundbites from American ones, Yamada’s shocked reaction to Stan Hansen’s presence in the 1981 Real World Tag League final has been cited by online fans as particularly memorable. Yamada accompanied the promotion on tour, which leads us to another part of his function. His writing was constantly read by active fans of All Japan, whether they knew it or not. This ranged from articles printed in tour programs to contributions to puroresu magazines, which often saw him uncredited or under a pen name. (These can generally be identified by the presence of one of the characters in his family name, 山田.) Yamada was phased out around the end of the Showa period. A one-off return for AJPW’s 20th anniversary show was the end of his broadcasting career. He died of cirrhosis in 1998.

[KinchStalker]

These are some examples of how AJPW fans of the period would have encountered Yamada's writing.

 

In the August 1974 issue of Monthly Puroresu, Yamada writes the second part of a serial about Jumbo Tsuruta. This serial was implied in a 1977 retrospective feature (for the magazine's 300th issue) to have been published to cater to Tsuruta's female fanbase. Yamada also wrote the ten-part 1973 serial "Fly, Jumbo!" and another 1976 serial about Tsuruta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the pamphlet for the 1976 Champion Carnival tour, Yamada is credited for an obituary on Masio Koma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He also likely wrote an unattributed piece from the same pamphlet. It covers medical and physical tests that the rest of the roster undertook after Koma’s death, Tsuruta’s ascetic training before his match against Rusher Kimura, and the AJPW vs IWE show of March 28.