Ryuma Go

[KinchStalker]

Ryuma Go (剛竜馬)

Profession: Wrestler, Promoter, Trainer
Real name: Hiroshi Yagi (八木宏)
Professional names: Hiroshi Yagi, Ryuma Go, Mr. Go, Ninja Go, Super Ninja
Life: 3/23/1956-10/18/2009
Born: Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Career: 1972-2009
Height/Weight: 185cm/108kg (6’1”/238 lbs.)
Signature moves: Armbar, various suplexes (German, "side"/gutwrench, back), lariat (later career)
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, UWF, All Japan Pro Wrestling, Pioneer Senshi, Oriental Pro Wrestling, Atsugi Pro Wrestling, Samurai Pro Wrestling
Titles: NWA Americas Tag Team [NWA Hollywood] (2x: 1x w/Black Gordman, 1x w/Rusher Kimura); WWF Junior Heavyweight [NJPW] (1x); NWA Beat the Champ Television [NWA Hollywood] (1x); CIWA Tag Team [Championship Wrestling USA (Portland, OR)] (2x, w/Jesse Barr)

A fair number of wrestlers in puroresu were more successful than Ryuma Go, but few were as liminal. From the early rival of Tatsumi Fujinami to the baka of the indies, Go became one of pro wrestling's great cult figures.

The son of a chef, Hiroshi Yagi and his younger sisters were abandoned by their mother in his teens. He had wrestled and played baseball as a child, and he left for Tokyo before completing junior high, intent on joining the JWA to support his family. (Eventually, he would pay his sisters' way through college.) Yagi trained with the promotion for several months, reportedly meeting future rival Tatsumi Fujinami in the process, but failed to debut. One source claimed that this was because JWA officials wanted him to complete junior high, but after his death, future Pioneer Senshi partner Masahiko Takasugi would claim in a G Spirits interview that Yagi told him he had been forced by a senior wrestler to consume alcohol, which had caused internal damage. Yagi joined the International Wrestling Enterprise in a 1971 recruitment call, debuting the following September. Alongside Devil Murasaki and Goro Tsurumi, Yagi helped fill early AJPW cards in a gesture of goodwill between the two organizations. In 1973, Yagi and Tsurumi left to begin a training expedition under the custody of IWE booker Umenosuke Kiyomigawa. While he would sometimes be barred from working shows until he turned 18 in 1974, Yagi remained abroad for three years. By the end of March 1974, by which point Kiyomigawa had turned his back on the IWE in his role in Strong Kobayashi’s match with Antonio Inoki, Yagi was in Calgary…in time for fellow Kokusai wrestler Tetsunosuke Daigo to suffer his career-ending injury. 

Go stands at ringside during the 6th IWA World Series final between Rusher Kimura and Mad Dog Vachon.

Yagi's return was hyped up through a fan contest for a ring name. According to IWE reporter and color commentator Takashi Kikuchi, the top names that came through were Concorde Yagi, a reference to the French airliner, and Hiro Yagi, a reference to Hiro Matsuda. He would get neither, instead receiving the much better Ryuma Go. Well, he actually received the name Go Ryuma—that is, recognizing Japanese naming order—but “Go” caught on so much that the naming order was often informally reversed. While I had suspected the contest was more intended for fan engagement, and that the name was decided independently of the submissions (like how Monthly Pro Wrestling coverage was nicknaming Tomomi Tsuruta “Jumbo” as early as their December 1972 issue, almost a year before the autumn 1973 fan contest), the name was credited at the time to a submission by one Mitsuyoshi Goto of Mie prefecture. Regardless, when NJPW repeated this tactic with a returning Mitsuo Yoshida, Yoshida had begged the company to give him a name "like Ryuma Go". (It would take him some time to warm up to Riki Choshu.) Yagi was rechristened on July 4, 1976. As cool as his new name may have been, though, he did not receive any substantial push from Kokusai. His return match, a twenty-minute draw against IWE’s premier ‘exchange student’ Jiro Inazuma [aka Martinique-Canadian wrestler Gerry Morrow], was considered a success. He also received a taste of the promotion's trusty gimmick, the wire mesh deathmatch, in a loss to Gypsy Joe that autumn. However, contrary to claims in Dave Meltzer’s 2009 obituary that Go had been pushed as a top prospect, Japanese sources assert that his performances were lackluster in this era, as his matches were monotonous, and he was prone to botches which drew little but laughter from crowds. He was not a priority of IWE booker Great Kusatsu, and he never received a shot at Isamu Teranishi's light heavyweight title. In March 1977, Go would be the native jobber in Kokusai's fifth and final IWA World Series tournament. On that same tour, he reached the semifinals of a tournament for the vacant IWA World Tag Team titles. Working alongside Thunder Sugiyama, the early-70s IWE ace who had left AJPW over money the previous year, Go fell to Big John Quinn & Kurt von Hess in the semifinal. As the IWE began to court former rugby player Susumu Hara, and especially as the company’s financial situation worsened in early 1978, Go began secret talks with NJPW sales executive and “radical instigator” Hisashi Shinma.

Tatsumi Fujinami's return to Japan in March 1978 began the Dragon Boom. It rejuvenated puroresu, bringing an influx of younger fans to NJPW shows. A match pitting Fujinami against Go had the potential to recreate the Inoki-Kobayashi match of four years past. Go began secret talks with Shinma in 1978, and aroused his coworkers’ suspicions with his refusal to embark on a Maritime excursion. Mighty Inoue has claimed that he sniffed out Go’s intentions. On May 11, 1978, AJPW ran the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. In a response to the Dragon Boom that somewhat missed the point, they booked NWA World Junior Heavyweight champion Nelson Royal to defend his strap against Al Madril. Go made a shocking appearance at the show to declare his resignation from Kokusai to the press and stated his wish to wrestle as a freelancer. At this point, what “freelance” usually meant in puroresu was a wrestler who was probably based overseas, and only worked for a single Japanese promotion at a time due to the political landscape. (Examples from the period include Masa Saito, Umanosuke Ueda, Mr. Hito, and Yasu Fujii.) Go left for the States on a JAL flight on May 18, joining Hiro Matsuda in Tampa, Florida on Shinma’s orders. On June 9, Go appeared alongside Matsuda in the Olympic Auditorium to see Tatsumi Fujinami defend his WWWF Junior Heavyweight title against Mando Guerrero. In an effort to avoid legal troubles from Kokusai, Shinma asked NWA Hollywood promoter Mike LeBell to sign Go to a contract, which would allow him to take NJPW bookings as a “representative” of LeBell’s territory. While this did not really work, as the IWE saw through it and unsuccessfully petitioned the Tokyo District Court to get involved, Go spent much of the rest of 1978 working for LeBell, at one point winning tag titles with territory stalwart Black Gordman. During this time, he also got Mach Hayato in touch with Goro Tsurumi.

Go first wrestled Fujinami on July 27, 1978. The previous year, Kosuke Takeuchi had used his connections to fan clubs to sweeten the crowd for Jumbo Tsuruta and Mil Mascaras' famous match at the Denen Coliseum, arranging cheer squads for each man. Takeuchi would contribute to this match by manufacturing crowd support for the IWE invader. (Notice the sign on the photo on the right which reads "The Maniax"; this refers to a specific club of Gong superfans and part-timers.) The match made Go's name and led to a program which lasted into the following year. Remaining “freelance” for the time being, his next dates with New Japan that November saw him associated with fellow "lone wolves" in Hiro Matsuda's Okami Gundan faction, which entered the Pre-Japanese League tournament. A second Fujinami title shot came in December. On October 2, 1979, six thousand fans packed the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium to see Fujinami defend his title against Go for the third time in the main event. Go became the one to end an almost two-year reign, even if he dropped it back two days later. (According to Killer Khan's autobiography, Masa Saito was the one who had lobbied for this title switch.) While Jumbo Tsuruta's rivalry with Kim Duk arguably preceded it, the Fujinami/Go series deserves credit as an early example of native vs native programs in puroresu.

Five months after the Fujinami switcheroo, Go returned to the IWE as an invader, getting disqualified in a singles match against Ashura Hara on their Match 31, 1980 show. (This was a challenge for Hara’s WWU World Junior Heavyweight title.) Two days later, Go lost a final junior title match against Fujinami in Osaka, after which he officially joined New Japan. Despite his opportunities, Go was sidelined in a saturated talent pool. Kengo Kimura was pushed that year as a major junior talent, winning the NWA International Junior Heavyweight title and taking Fujinami to a double knockout in a title vs title epic, while Go barely crawled past the MSG Series tournament’s preliminary block before playing the jobber in the tourney itself. Beginning that October, Go was hospitalized due to "tetanus-like symptoms" in his leg. This lasted for about six months, according to NJPW sales manager Naoki Otsuka.

In 1981, Go landed a role in a TV Asahi police drama Keishi Chō Satsujinka. In all but the last of its thirteen episodes, Go acted as murder detective Takeshi Kubo alongside such Toei heavyweights as Bunta Sugawara and Koji Tsuruta. Outside the ropes, Go apparently worked as a coach in the NJPW dojo; an uncited passage in his Japanese Wikipedia page claims he had some involvement instructing Nobuhiko Takada and Kazuo Yamazaki. When his former IWE coworkers Rusher Kimura and Animal Hamaguchi invaded New Japan, Go was mentioned in Hamaguchi’s end of their promo segment, but his history was not capitalized on by joining the Kokusai Gundan stable. However, Go accompanied Kimura on an excursion in May 1982. As the Rising Suns, “Mr. Go” and “Mr. Toyo”, they ended the last of Black Gordman & El Goliath’s 22 NWA Americas tag title reigns, in a brief run transitional to Hector & Mando Guerrero. 

In January 1984, Go was the first New Japan wrestler to disappear and join the UWF. As Hisashi Shinma claimed in a 2009 G Spirits interview, he had invited Rusher Kimura due to their shared past in Tokyo Pro Wrestling, and Rusher then invited Go; when Shinma asked if Go was sure, Go affirmed his decision as he felt indebted to Shinma for giving him his earlier opportunity. After Shinma resigned from the UWF that summer, he claimed in a Hawaii press conference that Go, Kimura, Gran Hamada, and Akira Maeda would all leave in turn to join AJPW. In a gesture intended to dissociate the UWF from Shinma, UWF officials convinced Go, Kimura, and Maeda to declare unity with the company in a press conference. Alongside Kimura and Mach Hayato, Go helped the company on their second tour by using his connections to book talent after Shinma’s departure cost them a possible WWF partnership. He is credited with booking Canadian wrestlers Leo Burke, Frenchy Martel, and The UFO. Maeda would become a lynchpin of the promotion but Go and Kimura would both leave the promotion before the year’s end. While Japanese Wikipedia cites something called “The Nostalgic Story of Rusher Kimura” to claim that Go had done it out of a sense of loyalty towards Shinma, G Spirits magazine offered a less idealistic and more realistic story in 2018. Go had booked foreigners for the promotion, but the talent he brought were incompatible with the shoot-style direction that the UWF prepared to go in with Satoru Sayama.

Kimura and Go joined All Japan Pro Wrestling for the 1984 Real World Tag League tour. Go did not enter the ring until the last four dates of the tour; after Kimura and Giant Baba’s tournament team broke up in a December 8 angle, Go wrestled alongside Rusher (and in one singles match against Yoshihiro Momota) as the nucleus of what would become Kokusai Ketsumeigun. The second incarnation of the ex-IWE heel stable also featured Goro Tsurumi, Masahiko Takasugi, and Apollo Sugawara, and a returning Ashura Hara also wrestled alongside them. While they did get television time, and Kimura was starting to show the promo skills that would serve him so well in the many years to come, Ketsumeigun were decidedly minor players in the mid-80s AJPW shuffle. Go would ultimately be cut at the end of the fiscal year to make room for the Calgary Hurricanes, alongside Takasugi, Sugawara, and referee Mr. Hayashi. Go’s Japanese Wikipedia page claims that he had “offended” Baba and the company’s referees in his attempts to call attention to himself in the ring.

After his dismissal, Go briefly found work outside the wrestling sphere. Retired NJPW wrestler and future RINGS referee Motoyuki Kitazawa hired him for his construction firm. As April 1986 ended, though, Go found wrestling work again. He was booked for the AWA by Masa Saito, where he would wrestle as Ninja Go. During his time in the territory, Go worked as the partner of Super Ninja (that is, Calgary Hurricane Shunji Takano), and that duo as well as a Go-Bill Irwin team received shots at Scott Hall & Curt Hennig’s AWA World Tag Team titles. Go’s first work back in Japan was a brief return to All Japan. In the Summer Action Series tour, Go and Takasugi were hired on a freelance basis; my guess is that they were brought aboard to fill space left by the last of the Japan Pro Wrestling talent to jump ship back to New Japan (Kuniaki Kobayashi, Hiro Saito). Go would not impress enough to get a contract. According to the aforementioned G Spirits Vol. 46, his cardio was no issue, but he was considered stiff and clumsy. He would manage an okonomiyaki restaurant owned by a patron.

In late 1988, when now-JWP sales manager Hisashi Shinma made plans to restructure the organization into the mixed-gender Martial Arts Union (Kakutōgi Rengō) promotion, Go was poised to join alongside JWP salesclerk Atsushi Onita, as well as Gran Hamada. However, this was not how he would step back into the ring. A patron of Masahiko Takasugi had asked if he wanted to start a small wrestling promotion, and Takasugi approached Go and Sugawara to join him. Takasugi and Sugawara’s original name for the promotion, Shin Kokusai Puroresu, was shot down by Go due to his own shame over how he had left the IWE. On November 15, 1988, they held a press conference at Animal Hamaguchi’s gym and announced their new enterprise, which had been given a name by Takashi Kikuchi: Pioneer Senshi. While Go had not initiated the plan to start the promotion, and his partners were concerned that he may take control of the organization, he was made its ace due to his greater name value. He used his friendship with his old rival, Tatsumi Fujinami, to receive a ring on loan from New Japan and help secure Korakuen Hall for their first show. Go also secured and opened the Pioneer Gym Popai gym in Urayasu, where he would train aspiring wrestlers such as Yukihiro Kanamura and Hiroshi Itakura.

Go and Atsushi Onita enter a backstage scuffle at the first Pioneer Senshi event.

By the time Pioneer held its kickoff show on April 30, 1989, none of the trainees were deemed ready to wrestle, although they did hold open training sessions and arm-wrestling tournaments to “make up for it”. The show only had two matches: Takasugi vs. Sugawara, and Go vs. Onita. Go dislocated his shoulder when he took a bump off the apron; he had instructed his seconds to move the floor mats several inches back in case Takasugi performed a tope but had forgotten to tell them to move it back. While the show was profitable, Sugawara would leave when Mitsuo Endo hooked him up with Koji Kitao; he was replaced by former Japan Pro wrestler Fumihito Niikura. The promotion held its second show on October 26, less than a month after FMW’s first show. Go wrestled Masashi Aoyagi in the main event. Due to the last-minute card change and the main event—which was thrown out after an Aoyagi kick broke Go’s nose (Go also claimed his eyeball popped out and he had to push it back in), before an enraged Animal Hamaguchi dragged both back to the ring to restart the match—a riot almost broke out. The two would have a rematch the following April, and although Pioneer Senshi provided lousy pay, their partnership with NJPW proved fruitful for Aoyagi.

In 1990, Go wrestled thirteen dates for NJPW between May and December as the leader of the invading Pioneer Legion faction. Go and Takasugi would win the first of these matches, a tag against Riki Choshu & Kensuke Sasaki, but Go’s ring rust earned him strong criticism from Fujinami and a cold shoulder from booker Choshu. In October, Go was injured in a traffic accident, but he got a singles match against Fujinami that December: his first since the 3rd MSG Series a decade before. It was in a Weekly Gong interview building up to this match that Go first called himself a puroresu baka. While I do not know if this was deliberate, it cannot help but recall Jumbo Tsuruta's statements in the 1970s that he "didn't want to be a pro-wrestling idiot". Their match hardly lived up to their late-70s feud, and World Pro Wrestling commentator Yoshinari Tsuji made a cutting remark that Go was more of a “pro wrestling hippopotamus” than a pro wrestling idiot. With this match ended New Japan’s relationship with Pioneer. The company almost had itself absorbed into SWS afterward; the plan was that it would have been the parent company of a new stable for Koji Kitao, and owner Hachiro Tanaka had already paid an advance. The SWS wrestlers’ association unanimously opposed the merger, though, and Go was left to languish until June 1992. With the help of Tsunekichi Mochimaru, who had been JWP president until its dissolution that February, Pioneer Senshi was revived and rebranded as Oriental Pro Wrestling. Oriental Pro went reasonably well at first, but financial mismanagement and friction with either younger wrestlers or the company’s PR and sales departments got Go kicked out of the organization that November.

Go showed up in Portland, Oregon’s Championship Wrestling USA promotion and won its tag title with Jesse Barr twice. Back in Japan, he wrestled some novelty matches for local organization Yataimura Pro Wrestling, and even started his own local promotion, Atsugi Pro Wrestling. In 1994, Go began to develop his puroresu baka comment into a proper character and rejuvenated his career with promos and promotional appearances. He also made frequent calls to Weekly Pro Wrestling’s editorial department, and at the April 2, 1995 Bridge of Dreams Tokyo Dome show, Go got the loudest cheers of the night in his match against Uchu Majin Silver X (Hiroshi Shimada). The rest of the decade saw Go appear for WAR, Takashi Ishikawa’s Tokyo Pro Wrestling, IWA Japan, FMW, and DDT, as well as various independent shows. He also formed the Samurai Project production company, which ran shows as Samurai Pro Wrestling. Samurai only lasted a year, but I cannot let one of its gimmicks go unmentioned: a tour of free shows in the Kanto region that came with a free lunch.

Go in February 2005.

Go’s financial condition bottomed out in the early 2000s. He had married in 1987 and had had two children, but his wife had been forced to become the sole provider since none of Go’s wrestling enterprises were profitable, and by this point they had separated. Besides Goro Tsurumi, he got few offers from promoters, and in late 2001, he may have even burned that bridge. Tsurumi arranged a retirement show for Go that December, but the money wasn’t good enough, so Go no-showed at the last minute and the retirement ceremony (with ten-count and all!) was held without him. One way that Go made ends meet in the early 2000s was by performing solo scenes under pseudonym in gay pornographic videos. (A sad 2019 interview with video producer Samson Takahashi claims that Go talked him up from ¥50,000 to ¥70,000, which when accounted for inflation amounts to about a $150 difference in 2022.) This would become front-page news in Tokyo Sports after Go was arrested on suspicion of theft in 2003. While denying the charge, as Go that he only wished to return the wallet he had picked up to the woman who dropped it, he admitted to his other endeavor and showed no shame: “What’s wrong with making money with your own body?” He returned to wrestling in 2004, but back pain would soon cause him to miss matches. As reported by guest Tarzan Yamamoto in a column, Go booked Korakuen Hall on December 28, 2004 for a show in which he promised to see fans "no matter what", but on the day of the show, he could not even sit up, much less perform. So, as customers shouted for refunds, he was brought out on a stretcher to do his famous "Showa!" cry. After a period of inactivity, Go came back from semi-retirement to work for DDT in 2006, and continued to wrestle for the next three years. One month after a final tag match against Tsurumi in September 2009, Go injured his wrist in a bike accident. The wound became infected, and due to years of alcoholism, his immune system was not strong enough to keep it from spreading. Go died of sepsis on October 18.

Miscellaneous 

1. Both puroresu.com and Cagematch credit Ryuma Go as having worked on NJPW’s October 9, 1975 show at the Kuramae Kokugikan. This is clearly incorrect, between promotional allegiances, the anachronism of his ring name, and the absurdity of calling a wrestler from another promotion across the Pacific to work an undercard tag. His supposed partner was Kang Sung-Yung, so I am presuming that another Korean wrestler was in his place; my guess is either Oh Tae-Kyun or Tian Ren-Hsiu (latter transliteration may not be perfect; I went off of DeepL and I have never seen his name actually transliterated), both of whom worked this tour according to the Showa Puroresu fanzine’s issue on 1975-6 New Japan. (Showa Puroresu would definitely have mentioned it if Ryuma Go had worked on this show.) If I can find a full card in a contemporaneous issue of Monthly Pro Wrestling, which I hope will eventually be added to the Weekly Pro Wrestling website’s subscriber archive, I will submit the correction to both parties.

Edited March 16 by KinchStalker
added Killer Khan's claim that Masa Saito had lobbied for Go's 1979 junior title win