Goro Tsurumi

[KinchStalker]

Goro Tsurumi (鶴見五郎)

Profession: Wrestler, Promoter
Real name: Takao Tanaka (田中隆雄)
Professional names: Takao Tanaka, Goro Tsurumi, Goro Tanaka, Ho Chi Lau, Shito Tanaka, Uchu Power X
Life: 11/23/1948-8/26/2022
Born: Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
Career: 1971-2013
Height/Weight: 181cm/135kg (5’11”/297 lbs.)
Signature moves: Avalanche backdrop, Goro Suplex (teardrop suplex), backhand fist
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise, All Japan Pro Wrestling [freelance], SWS, Kokusai Pro Wrestling Promotion
Titles: IWA World Heavyweight [IWA Kokusai] (3x); IWA World Tag Team [IWA Kokusai] (6x; 1x w/Yoshiaki Yatsu, 2x w/Masahiko Takasugi, 2x w/Super Uchu Power, 1x w/Uchu Majin Silver X) 

IWE veteran Goro Tsurumi found his voice with a heel turn in the promotion’s last days and spent the next thirty years working as a freelancer and indie fixture. 

Born to a Yokohama fruit-and-vegetable merchant, Takao Tanaka pursued amateur wrestling while studying at Tokai University despite his alma mater’s lack of a club. After receiving his bachelor’s in science, Tanaka joined the International Wrestling Enterprise in June 1971 through an acquaintance of Thunder Sugiyama. On July 12, he debuted in Sapporo with a loss to Takeshi Ōiso. He debuted under the ring name Goro Tsurumi in the following spring’s IWA World Series tour; this was to avoid confusion with his senior Tadaharu Tanaka, who returned from excursion at this time. Tsurumi was the name of the Yokohama ward from which he hailed, and according to one profile, “Goro” came from Goro Fujikawa, the protagonist of the 1968-9 Outlaw film series. In late 1972 and early 1973, Tsurumi worked on early tours by All Japan Pro Wrestling in a cooperative display, though this was on a temporary basis rather than the permanent transfers of Sugiyama and Atsushi Hongo. In March 1973, Tsurumi left Japan alongside Hiroshi Yagi to begin a European excursion under the custody of IWE booker Umeyuki Kiyomigawa. Much of Tsurumi’s work was for Nicola Selenkowitsch’s IBV in West Germany, but he also worked in England, Spain, Austria, and even Kuwait. Tsurumi reportedly trained in Billy Riley’s gym while in England. After finishing his European tour in Spain, Tsurumi traveled to Mexico in August 1974, where he would work as Goro Tanaka. During his time with EMLL, he teamed and then feuded with TNT, losing an apuesta to him in October as well as one against Cien Caras the following April. Tsurumi reportedly received a shot at Dr. Wagner’s NWA World Light Heavyweight championship and won the match, but the belt was relinquished by the commission as he had been overweight. (Tsurumi once told an anecdote that, unlike most Japanese wrestlers in his day, he actually gained weight during this period due to his cooking skills.) Tsurumi flew back to Europe to work in Spain and Germany before returning home for the IWE’s Big Winter Series tour in November 1975. Tsurumi plugged away as a midcarder thereafter. In November 1977, he was selected as Animal Hamaguchi’s partner for Kokusai’s first challenge against AJPW’s All Asia Tag Team champions, Great Kojika & Motoshi Okuma. In late 1978, after Mr. Seki was unable to make it, Tsurumi received his spot in the Japan League tournament, which was an IWE tournament held with the cooperation of AJPW and overseas-based Japanese wrestlers such as Mr. Hito and Dean Ho. (This was booked to counter-program NJPW’s Pre-Japan League tournament.)

Left: Dokuritsu Gurentai, left to right: Mr. Chin, Tsurumi, Katsuzo Ōiyama.

It was in the IWE’s last two years, though, that Tsurumi’s career started to get interesting. As Kokusai’s financial difficulties increased, president Isao Yoshiwara conceived of an angle in which one of his own wrestlers turned heel, which would allow him to cut foreign booking costs. On October 3, 1979, Tsurumi was not booked for a match and confronted Yoshiwara, entering a fistfight with IWE’s star exchange student, Jiro Inazuma (better known in the West as “Champagne” Gerry Morrow). Yoshiwara expelled Tsurumi from the wrestlers’ association, and Tsurumi assaulted him. There were certainly Japanese wrestlers who worked heel in Japan before Tsurumi. Generally, though, these wrestlers did not work full-time in Japan, instead being “freelancers” who mostly plied their trade abroad and worked in their homeland on a per-tour basis. Tsurumi was different. He would change his costume from a singlet with a Japanese flag decal to one with a red skull and crossbones, and eventually grew an afro. Tsurumi would be joined by Katsuzo Ōiyama, who returned to the ring after retiring in early 1979. The two would be managed by Mr. Chin, who was probably the one person in puroresu who had worked as a full-time “native heel” before them. The three formed the Dokuritsu Gurentai, or Independent Fool Regiment, on January 4, 1980. Dokuritsu Gurentai did not last to the end of the promotion, as it disbanded when Ōiyama retired for a second time in March 1981. It was also a decidedly midcard affair; hell, "jobber stable" might be more accurate. Nevertheless, it was the first example of an insurgent faction in puroresu, anticipating Riki Choshu’s Ishin Gundan by several years. Tsurumi and Ōiyama are also notable for having been the opponents in Kotetsu Yamamoto’s first retirement match, losing to the Yamaha Brothers on NJPW turf on April 4, 1980. FIve months after Dokuritsu’s disbandment, Tsurumi received the distinction of wrestling and winning the IWE’s last match, a wire-mesh deathmatch on an elementary school’s grounds against Terry Gibbs. (This did not constitute a push for Tsurumi, as Kokusai’s final shows had booked WMDs by a pre-arranged rotation.)

Tsurumi rides the subway with Rusher Kimura.

Tsurumi left Japan after Kokusai’s collapse, working for the CWA in West Germany as well as Stampede. He would return to the Japanese fold for the first AJPW tour of 1982, where he would team up with Umanosuke Ueda as a foreign heel. Through the rest of the decade, Tsurumi would work extensively for All Japan. He continued to be associated with Ueda in the early years of his tenure, before Ueda ended his association with them in 1984. Tsurumi entered the Real World Tag League twice, first alongside the Mongolian in 1983, and then with One Man Gang as a replacement for Buzz Sawyer in 1984. In the mid-80s, Tsurumi joined the Kokusai Ketsumeigun heel faction to reunite with former Kokusai ace Rusher Kimura; as Kimura had arguably been the most physically limited ace in the history of puroresu during his best years (in his defense, this is what happens when Ox Baker breaks your leg in three places and the company is too unstable to ever let you fully heal), it fell to Tsurumi to carry their end on many a tag match. I swear that I have read Tsurumi receive praise in or around this period from Dave Meltzer. What was notable about Tsurumi’s run with All Japan was that he remained a freelancer the entire time, despite offers from Giant Baba to sign a contract. Tsurumi had a wife in the States, and a contract would have had AJPW hold on to much of his money. (As was revealed in documentation from a lawsuit filed by AJPW talent who left for SWS, Tsurumi’s freelance status saw him paid three times as much in the 1989 fiscal year as Genichiro Tenryu.)

Tsurumi was about to receive a spot in the comedy six-mans that AJPW was developing in the early 90s; he would have been a member of Baba & Kimura’s Family Gundan stable. However, Tsurumi decided to leave for what would become SWS and contacted former IWE coworker Shogun KY Wakamatsu to get in. Tsurumi would remain with SWS until its closure, as part of its Dojo Geki contingent. In the promotion’s last days, he became one part of its two-man booking committee, wherein he would draw up cards representing its anti-Tenryu contingent, present them to pro-Tenryu counterpart Takashi Ishikawa, and reach a compromise for each show from there. After SWS imploded, Tsurumi joined NOW.

This is where the last act of Tsurumi’s career begins. After leaving NOW in 1993, Tsurumi joined forces with fellow IWE alumnus Masahiko Takasugi and Ho Death Minh, formerly of the Takano brothers’ Pro Wrestling Crusaders, to form the International Wrestling Association, a union of independent promotions. The three men formed their own promotions under this umbrella: IWA Kakutō Shijuku, IWA Shonan, and IWA Nagareyama, respectively. As I know that IWA Shonan ran shows both in Takasugi’s hometown and Yokohama, Tsurumi’s IWA Kakutō Shijuku may have ran in his business partners’ markets as well, though I did not confirm this. The Union was dissolved and renamed Union Pro Wrestling in 1994, shortly before IWA Japan ran its first show. Ho, who would change his ring name to Poison Sawada, apparently struggled to run shows outside of his hometown, and Union Pro held its last show in April 1995 before dissolving the following year. While Takasugi would rename his promotion Shonan Pro Wrestling, Tsurumi renamed IWA Kakutō Shijuku to Kokusai Pro Wrestling Promotion with the permission of Isao Yoshiwara’s family. For about a decade afterward, KPWP ran small-scale but steady operations while Tsurumi managed gyms in Yokohama’s Tsurumi and Chigasaki districts. In 2005, though, KPWP suspended its activities, and his gyms closed the following year. Tsurumi continued to wrestle until a 2013 retirement show, held at the 600-seat Shinjuku FACE hall in Tokyo with the cooperation of DDT and Pro Wrestling FREEDOMS. He spent much of his last eight years hospitalized for various conditions and had been supported by t-shirt sales from DDT and FREEDOMS. Tsurumi died of sepsis on August 26, 2022.