Great Kojika

[KinchStalker]

Great Kojika (グレート小鹿)

Real name: Shinya Koshika (小鹿信也)
Professional names: Shinja Koshika, Raizo Koshika, Great Kojika, Dory Boy, Kung Fu Lee, Masked GK
Life: 4/28/1942-
Born: Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Career: 1963-1986; 1995-
Height/Weight: 185cm/115kg
Signature moves: Knee drop, sleeper hold
Promotions: Japan Pro Wrestling/JWA, All Japan Pro Wrestling, Big Japan Pro Wrestling
Titles: NWA World Tag Team [CWA] (1x, w/Motoshi Okuma); NWA Beat the Champ Television Title [NWA Los Angeles] (2x); NWA Americas Heavyweight [NWA Los Angeles] (1x); NWA Americas Tag Team [2x, w/John Tolos]; All Asia Tag Team [JWA/AJPW] (4x; 1x w/Gantetsu Matsuoka, 4x w/Motoshi Okuma]; NWA Western States Heavyweight [Western States Sports] (1x); Sea of Japan Certified World 6-Man Tag Team [DDT] (1x, w/Riho & Mr. 6); UWA World 6-Man Tag Team Title [DDT] (1x, w/Riho & Mr. 6); Jiyūgaoka 6-Person Tag Team [DDT] (1x, w/Riho & Mr. 6); KING OF FREEDOM World Tag [Pro Wrestling FREEDOMS] (1x, w/The Winger); Yokohama Shopping Street 6-Man Tag Team [BJW] (1x, w/Kankuro Hoshino & Masato Inaba); Niigata Undisputed [Niigata Pro Wrestling] (1x); Niigata Tag Team [Niigata Pro Wrestling] (1x, w/Shima Shigeno)

Great Kojika’s six-decade career brought him from one of the most decorated tag wrestlers in 1970s puroresu to an unlikely elder statesman of the Japanese indie scene.

Shinya Koshika was forced to peddle to support his family from an early age after his father went blind. After graduating from junior high, he got a job at a canning factory, but left at 17 after unsuccessfully striking for better wages. As he tells it in a 2019 article, he was on a ferry to visit his uncle in Saitama when he had a chance encounter with Chiyonoyama. Koshika joined Chiyonoyama’s Dewanoumi stable, which at this point had bloated to 120 members and three stablemasters, and debuted in September 1959. He originally intended to stay for just two years but was convinced to wrestle for three so that he would be eligible for a ¥20000 (¥100000 in 2022) retirement package. After this, Koshika worked at a store until he became interested in joining the JWA, which he eventually did around November. Early in Koshika’s training, on February 4, 1963, an accident in a sparring session fractured Tokio Kido’s seventh cervical vertebrae and left him paralyzed for life; however, Kido reportedly did not blame Koshika for the incident and cited his own carelessness. Koshika’s earliest recorded match was on October 13, 1963, in which he lost to Kakutaro Koma. In 1964, he was rechristened Raijo Koshika for a time by Toyonobori. In his early career, Koshika served as the valet of Michiaki Yoshimura.

Kojika during his time in Los Angeles.

In 1967, shortly before he and Motoshi Okuma were sent on an American expedition, Koshika took a fan’s advice that “Kojika” was easier for a Japanese fan to chant than “Koshika” and changed his ring name. The two would work in the Tennessee and Georgia territories as the Rising Suns before Okuma left in 1968 due to homesickness. Kojika would remain abroad. He wrestled as a heel in the Florida, Detroit, and Los Angeles territories, and won multiple titles in the latter; in December 1969, he defeated Mil Mascaras in a cage match to win the territory’s top title for a month. Kojika has frequently recounted a night in May 1970 when he and Antonio Inoki went drinking in Los Angeles, and Inoki told him about his ambition to reform the JWA, over a year before the attempted coup. Kojika has also claimed that he was responsible for getting Abdullah the Butcher in touch with Mr. Moto to make his first Japanese appearances that same year.

Kojika returned home for the JWA’s first NWA Tag Team League tour that autumn, teaming with Michiaki Yoshimura in the eponymous tournament. He would remain with the company for the rest of its life, and according to Dave Meltzer's Mr. Pogo obituary, he was running its dojo by the time that Sekigawa and the future Gran Hamada visited in 1971. While sympathizing with Inoki’s intentions and supporting a managerial reform, Kojika did not approve of the attempted coup d’etat that the reform proposal wound up just being pretense for. Early in New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s life, Kojika stormed their office with a katana to threaten Inoki. While Giant Baba asked him to make sure that those who wished to follow to start All Japan Pro Wrestling were not harassed, Akio Sato has claimed that Kojika sabotaged the fledgling promotion by going to Fritz von Erich to ensure his loyalty to the JWA, which would have forced Baba to align with Dory Funk Sr. [As a personal note, Fumi Saito expressed suspicion of this claim when I brought it up to him once, asking how Sato would know such a thing. Also, while Terry Funk's autobiography suffers from some errors when it comes to the Japanese side of things, he does not mention this as a factor in Baba's decision. I thought it was worth citing here but do treat it with a grain of salt until I can find more corroboration.] He would also order Kazuo Sakurada to shoot on Daigoro Oshiro on the last show before Oshiro left with Seiji Sakaguchi to join NJPW. In the promotion’s last days, Kojika won the All Asia Tag Team titles with Gantetsu Matsuoka, for what wouldn’t be the last time.

As one of the nine wrestlers who remained with the JWA until the very end, Kojika signed a three-year contract with Nippon Television. Baba had been forced by the network and AJPW board of directors to acquire them (so that the failed NJPW-JWA merger would not have another chance to succeed) and regarded them as an impediment to his plans for All Japan. Kojika endeared himself to Baba both by rallying the talent and by voluntarily becoming his chauffeur. He and Okuma reunited for a handful of tag matches. However, he was soon “shocked” by Baba’s order for him to go on another excursion. Kojika arrived in Amarillo as Kung Fu Lee in September, which I suspect was done to fill Tomomi Tsuruta’s spot. (We know that Tsuruta’s training had been sped up from what was originally planned, in order to sell him as a prodigy worth pushing above the ex-JWA talent.) This run included a Western States Heavyweight title victory against Terry Funk in October, as well as multiple shots with various partners at the Funks’ NWA International Tag Team titles.

Kojika returned to AJPW in autumn 1974. Upon Okuma’s return in 1975, the two reformed their tag team, now the Gokudō Combi. Kojika claimed in the 2000s that, in May 1975, he had secretly sought out Kintaro Oki to see if he was still under contract to NJPW, thus facilitating Oki's switch to an AJPW partnership. In March 1976, after former JWA president Junzo Yoshinosato announced that the All Asia singles and tag team titles would be revived with the NWA’s approval—an obvious attempt to delegitimize NJPW’s Asia League tournament—Gokudō accompanied Yoshinosato on a trip to Korea. As Oki and Kojika had been the last champions of their respective titles, both were given the right to challenge for the vacant belts again. On March 25 in Seoul, Kojika called on his experience as a heel to give Oki a worthy challenge for the singles title. The following day, also in Seoul, Gokudō defeated the young Korean duo of Oh Tae-kyun and Hong Mu-ung for the first of four All Asia tag reigns together. As his Nippon TV contract ended with the fiscal year on March 31, Kojika signed an AJPW contract. While this has never been confirmed (and likely never will be), journalist Kagehiro Osano noted in 2017 that Kojika was very likely responsible for booking All Japan undercard matches for several years, between the tenures of Masio Koma and Akio Sato.

Kojika & Okuma’s first reign ended in October against Jerry & Ted Oates, who served as transitional champions towards Akihisa Takachiho & Samson Kutsuwada. Gokudō won the belts directly from the native team in June 1977, but would be forced to defend them in interpromotional matches against the IWE that fall. They handily defeated the team of Animal Hamaguchi & Goro Tsurumi on November 3, but when they entered enemy territory on the 6th, they lost to Hamaguchi & Mighty Inoue. The IWE held the titles until Gokudō won them back in the AJPW/IWE/Kim Il mini-tour of February 1978. This reign would end in vacation when the team failed to defend the belts, but in May 1979, they beat the Kiwis for their fourth, last, and longest reign. Kojika & Okuma held the titles for two years until a loss to Kevin & David von Erich.

Kojika continued to wrestle for AJPW for five years. From what he says, the inciting incident behind his 1987 retirement came in July 1986. When the Summer Action Series I tour ended with an outdoor show in Kyoto, Kojika hurt his neck in a Gokudō tag against Mighty Inoue & Samson Fuyuki. While X-rays showed that Kojika had been nearly paralyzed by a piledriver, when Kojika told Baba the pain he was in, Baba allegedly responded coldly with “You can go home then.” If true it suggests that, as much of a chosen family atmosphere as All Japan may have developed, the ex-JWA talent who hadn't left alongside Baba never fully endeared themselves to him. Kojika officially retired with a 1987 ceremony and began working in his hometown as an event promoter, a side hustle he had already begun during his active career.

A 1997 trading card of Kojika during his "Cosplay President" phase.

The second phase of Kojika’s career began outside the ring, when Genichiro Tenryu tapped him to become a sales representative for WAR. This made Kojika responsible for booking venues. While I do not know if Kojika left because of this, his departure lines up chronologically with the internal backlash to Tenryu’s appointment of brother-in-law Masatomo Takei as company president, which led Takashi Ishikawa to break away. In December 1994, Kojika convened with Kendo Nagasaki (that is, fellow JWA remnant Kazuo Sakurada) and Eiji Tosaka, the president of the recently collapsed NOW, to form Big Japan Pro-Wrestling (Dai Nippon Puroresu) in Yokohama. Building a roster with the cooperation of Ishikawa’s Tokyo Pro Wrestling and IWA Japan, the organization held its first show on March 26, 1995. According to Kojika, Michiaki Yoshimura stepped in to help his former valet by making sure that Big Japan would not run into any trouble booking shows. Kojika initially stayed out of the ring, but due to sluggish attendance he started to wrestle again, beginning with an angle against Tarzan Goto. Kojika would garner the nickname “Cosplay President” for his penchant for wrestling in costumes (Iron Chef and Golga 13 being a couple). He would even appear in NJPW’s annual January 4 Tokyo Dome show in 1997, donning a tuxedo and tactical vest to wrestle Masa Saito.

Kojika would step away from the ring as BJW developed, focusing largely on side ventures such as a chanko restaurant in Sendai, but BJW general manager Tosaka disliked these pursuits and obstructed them. As Kojika approached his seventies, he transferred BJW ownership to Tosaka and began to work dates across a variety of promotions, trading on the novelty of being Japan’s oldest wrestler. He has won a variety of indie titles in this period. Most of them are tag titles, naturally, but in August 2018 he won BJW’s own Niigata Openweight title to become the oldest Japanese wrestler to win a singles title.