Katsuzo Oiyama

[KinchStalker]

Katsuzo Ōiyama (大位山勝三)

Real name: Katsuzo Matsumoto (松本勝三)
Professional names: 
Life: 3/5/1945-
Born: Yamasaki (now Shiso), Hyogo, Japan
Career: 1971-1981; 1995 (one-off return)
Height/Weight: 180cm/115kg (5’11”/254 lbs.)
Signature moves: Headbutt
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise
Titles: none

Katsuzo Ōiyama was an ex-sumo who wrestled for a decade in the IWE and is most notable for his late-career participation in the Dokuritsu Gurentai heel stable.

Katsuzo Matsumoto joined the Mihogaseki sumo stable upon graduating junior high in 1960. Originally taking the shikona of Mihonomatsu, Matsumoto briefly retired for family reasons in 1961 but was allowed to return because his master had not submitted his notice to the Association. Returning in March 1962, and receiving a new shikona of Ōiyama, Katsuzo showed growth in the late decade but ground to a halt upon promotion to makushita. He retired in 1970.

Matsumoto was working at a bar in Tokyo’s Kinshicho district when he began visiting the International Wrestling Enterprise’s dojo in Shibuya. Matsumoto used a bench press there in the presumed hopes of being noticed, but he was not allowed into the dojo proper. That is, until trainee Takao Tanaka told him the reason he hadn’t been accepted: he hadn’t come to the gym every day. Matsumoto began to do so, and in June 1971, he passed an exam by sparring with Tanaka. He became an attendant of IWE ace Strong Kobayashi and made his debut in September against Atsushi Hongo. In June 1972, Matsumoto embarked on an excursion to the CWA in Tennessee, where he wrestled alongside Tojo Yamamoto. 

Upon his return home the following June, Matsumoto became Ric Flair’s first opponent in Japan. It would be on the following tour, the 5th IWA World Series, that he adopted a ring name that incorporated his shikona: Katsuzo Ōiyama. Over the next few years, Ōiyama failed to break through the midcard. By 1979, he had had enough of the company’s booking and retired, finding work with a shabu-shabu restaurant and a fish processing company. He would return to wrestling for about fifteen months in the new decade to join the man who had helped him get into the IWE, now long since known as Goro Tsurumi, in his Dokuritsu Gurentai heel faction. However, Ōiyama retired for good in March 1981 due to the promotion’s terminal financial state. He claims that Tiger Jeet Singh asked him to work in South Africa in 1987, and that he could have been the one to take the flight that killed Haru Sonoda. Eight years after that, though, Ōiyama made a one-night-only return to the ring, wrestling his old friend and partner for Tsurumi’s IWA Kakutō Shijuku promotion.

Ōiyama (right) with Shigeo Miyato and Shogun KY Wakamatsu in 2019.