Animal Hamaguchi

[KinchStalker]

Animal Hamaguchi (アニマル浜口)

Profession: Wrestler, Trainer
Real name: Heigo Hamaguchi (濱口平吾)
Professional names: Heigo Hamaguchi, Mr. Hamaguchi, Hyogo Hamaguchi, Higo Hamaguchi, Animal Hamaguchi
Life: 8/31/1947-
Born: Hamada, Shimane, Japan
Career: 1969-1995
Height/Weight: 170cm/103kg (5’7”/227 lbs.)
Signature moves: running neckbreaker, diving back elbow drop, airplane spin, diving foot stomp
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Japan Pro Wrestling [1984-87], WAR
Titles: NWA International Tag Team [Stampede] (1x, w/Mr. Hito), WWC North American Tag Team [WWC] (1x, w/Gordon Nelson), IWA World Tag Team [IWE] (4x; 2x w/Great Kusatsu, 2x w/Mighty Inoue), All Asia Tag Team [AJPW] (2x; 1x w/Mighty Inoue, 1x w/Isamu Teranishi), World Six-Man Tag Team [WAR] (1x, w/Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara)

Animal Hamaguchi defied his size to become one of the IWE’s most respected alumni, prominent for his work as a tag wrestler and later a trainer.

One of nine children, Heigo Hamaguchi and his family entered great hardship when his once-rich father’s business failed. Heigo has recalled that, since he could not pack a lunch to school, he would spend his lunch break drinking as much water as he could to endure his hunger. In fifth grade, he moved to Osaka with his mother and younger sister, but after moving from place to place in the big city he returned to Hamada in his second year of junior high. While living with an elder brother, Heigo continued to attend school in Hamada, but it was difficult for him to make it on time due to his early-morning job as a milkman. He cites the compassion and encouragement he received from his homeroom teacher, who he would later learn had quietly come to see him wrestle, as an important moment in his life. Hamaguchi would graduate from junior high, but high school was not affordable. In 1963, he ran away from home to begin a “journey of self-discovery”, performing odd jobs in construction sites across various cities while living in bunkhouses. He claims that this ended on December 8, 1963 - by coincidence, the same day Rikidozan was stabbed - when he reflected on his life and decided to return to Osaka. He found work at a steel mill, earned a heavy machinery license, and worked diligently to support his family. While on holiday, Heigo saw the 1958 Steve Reeves film Hercules and was inspired to take up bodybuilding. He began to work out at the Naniwa Bodybuilding Gym.

The Naniwa Gym would become a source of recruitment for the International Wrestling Enterprise in 1967, with Sueo Inoue and Onizo Murasaki joining the company. Hamaguchi stuck with bodybuilding until a 1969 runner-up performance at the Mr. Hyogo contest, after which he was scouted. He joined in August and debuted the following month, losing by forfeit to Atsushi Hongo. Hamaguchi would succeed Hongo as Great Kusatsu’s valet. It has been noted that he might be the only living IWE alumnus who speaks fondly of Kokusai’s most divisive figure. Hamaguchi took after Isamu Teranishi and former gym buddy Mighty Inoue in his early career, imitating their technical styles. In early 1970, he adopted the ring name Mr. Hamaguchi, and then switched to Hyogo Hamaguchi that October. Finally, he would wrestle as Animal Hamaguchi, after he was given the nickname Animal by Olympic gold medalist freestyle wrestler Osamu Watanabe. During the IWA World Series in March 1971, Hamaguchi approached Karl Gotch and asked to be trained; this mostly amounted to being a warm body for him to perform holds on, but he claims the experience made him stronger. Hamaguchi is the rare Japanese wrestler who is considered a Gotch disciple despite neither being an early NJPW dojo product nor a JWA wrestler during Karl’s one-year coaching contract.

Left: Hamaguchi suplexes Kurt von Hess on March 26, 1977.

Hamaguchi got his first excursion in 1972, when he worked for Dick the Bruiser’s WWA in Indianapolis. As Higo Hamaguchi, he played the stock Japanese heel as partner to one of the gimmick’s great journeymen, Mitsu Arakawa, grappling in knee-length tights and wooden geta against the territory’s top stars. Hamaguchi returned home in mid-1973, where he spent three years in the second tier of the pecking order. This meant that he got to wrestle the top stars who came to the territory, but he failed to break through and win any titles. A second excursion in 1976 saw Hamaguchi work in Calgary and Puerto Rico, winning tag gold in both. He returned home for the 5th IWA World Series, where he changed his outfit to a one-shoulder singlet. The IWA World Series tournament was paralleled by a tournament for the vacant IWA World Tag Team titles, and Hamaguchi established himself as a major force through it. He and Teranishi reached the finals before they lost to Big John Quinn & Kurt von Hess on March 25. The next day, Hamaguchi teamed up with his senior Kusatsu to win the belts. Outside of a temporary loss to the Wild Samoans, the duo held the belts for nearly two years. Kusatsu’s final reigns with the championship whose lineage he dominates was the one that established Hamaguchi as one of the autumnal IWE’s top wrestlers. This was further cemented late that year, when he teamed up with Inoue to win AJPW’s All Asia Tag Team titles from Great Kojika & Motoshi Okuma for three months, before Gokudō won them back. In early 1979, after Kusatsu & Hamaguchi lost the IWA tag titles to the Yamaha Brothers, Animal & MIghty reunited to bring the belts home. While defending the titles eight times over the next year, Hamaguchi also appeared at the August 26, 1979 Tokyo Sports show, where he teamed with future tag partner Riki Choshu to wrestle Gokudō to a DQ victory.

Hamaguchi was struck with bad luck on March 31, 1980. In a tag title defense against the NJPW team of Haruka Eigen & Kengo Kimura, Animal slipped on the beer-wetted floor while taking a Kimura plancha and hit the back of his head on the concrete, causing him to faint and spraining his right angle. They would win the match by foul play, but Hamaguchi was sidelined and the team was forced to vacate the titles two weeks later. Three months later, they worked a program with Eigen and Strong Kobayashi to lose a match for the vacant belts and then regain them, suggesting that the March match’s finish had not been the planned one. In spring 1981, Hamaguchi was struck with a liver condition and the belts were vacated again, with Ashura Hara taking his place in the company’s last two tours. A liver condition may sound like a coverup for backstage shenanigans (see: AJPW referee Jerry Murdock’s “stomach ulcer” cover story for getting fired in 1976) but by all accounts, this was a legitimate condition.

When Kokusai's "fifteen years of hardship" finally came to an end, Hamaguchi joined Rusher Kimura and Isamu Teranishi in a move to New Japan on Isao Yoshihara's orders. It was Hamaguchi that accompanied Kimura when he took the ring on September 23, 1981 to challenge Inoki for October 8. In fact, it was Hamaguchi who covered for him. The long-taciturn Kimura’s first word when asked for comment was a polite “konbanwa” (good evening), which punctured the tense mood and drew laughter from the crowd. Hamaguchi was aggressive in his comments, provoking IWE traitor Ryuma Go at ringside, and salvaged the segment.

After the Inoki/Kimura match ended in Inoki’s disqualification, Kokusai Gundan would form. From breaking into shows in plain clothes to challenge New Japan again and assaulting play-by-play commentator Ichiro Furutachi, to even abducting and assaulting Inoki in the waiting room, the faction drew massive heat and became the most hated heels in the country. During an Inoki-Kimura match on September 21, 1982, Hamaguchi crossed a line, taking a pair of scissors from Strong Kobayashi at ringside and cutting Inoki’s hair during a brawl on the outside. The team is also remembered for a pair of three-on-one handicap matches against Antonio Inoki. Hamaguchi would later say that he blossomed as a wrestler during his New Japan tenure, and that Kokusai Gundan was the peak of his career. However, he would break from the faction in 1983 to join Riki Choshu’s Ishingun faction. Hamaguchi was not Choshu’s only tag partner during Ishingun’s New Japan run, but the two were a great pair, with an energy and penchant for spike piledrivers which pegged them as a 1980s update of the Yamaha Brothers.

Right: Hamaguchi wrestles Jumbo Tsuruta on March 13, 1986.

In summer 1984, New Japan terminated its alliance with New Japan Pro Wrestling Entertainment, a company run by former NJPW sales manager Naoki Otsuka, after Otsuka contracted a Denen Coliseum show to AJPW. In response, Otsuka threatened to pull out New Japan wrestlers. Hamaguchi was one of thirteen wrestlers to join what would become Japan Pro Wrestling, and after an angle near the year’s end, Japan Pro entered All Japan’s rings for what would become a two-year “interpromotional” feud. Often working as Choshu’s tag partner on b-shows, Hamaguchi made numerous television appearances during this era. In July 1985, he and Teranishi won the All Asia Tag Team titles. On March 13, 1986, in a best-of-five series between the two factions at Budokan, Hamaguchi faced Jumbo Tsuruta in possibly the most famous singles match of his career.

As Japan Pro crumbled in 1987, Hamaguchi decided to retire. He had once promised that he would retire if his transfer from New Japan to All Japan caused any problems, and his friendship with Choshu did not override the debt he felt to Baba for having kept him on the payroll while he missed dates due to illness. In the ceremony, he said: "I found my soul in this square ring. Thank you, pro wrestling. Goodbye, pro wrestling." This wasn’t the end for Animal Hamaguchi, though. In Tokyo’s Asakusa district, he opened the Animal Hamaguchi Wrestling Dojo after his retirement. In the following decades, many would train at his gym to build up the conditioning for professional wrestling before they sought employment; notable Hamaguchi Dojo alumni include Shinjiro Otani, Takao Omori, Satoshi Kojima, Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, and many, many more. Hamaguchi would also return to the ring, first for New Japan in 1990 and 1991 as a part-timer, and then with WAR in 1994 and 1995. The most notable match from his New Japan return was his participation in the main event of its show on the 30th anniversary of Antonio Inoki's debut, where he teamed with Big Van Vader against Inoki & Tiger Jeet Singh. In his WAR run, meanwhile, he held its six-man tag team titles alongside Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara for three months.

Hamaguchi with one of the 21st century's most successful Hamaguchi Dojo alumni, Shingo Takagi.

Miscellaneous

1. No profile of Animal Hamaguchi can go without acknowledging his daughter, Kyoko Hamaguchi (seen at right with Choshu as a child). Kyoko originally pursued amateur wrestling with the ambition of following in her father’s footsteps, but joshi’s decline ultimately discouraged her from going professional. Instead, she became one of the most successful women in Japanese amateur wrestling. While her record-three Olympic appearances “only” brought her two bronze medals, Kyoko won five gold medals at the FILA Wrestling World Championships. Animal’s loud cheering of his daughter at the Olympics made him a celebrity in his own right.
2. When Hamaguchi’s family came to see him wrestle a cage match against Intern #2 (Tom Andrews) in Hamada on March 30, 1975, his older brother got a punch in.
3. Hamaguchi was the opponent against whom Riki Choshu debuted his Rikilariat, as he lost to the move on New Year's Day 1982.
4. During his wrestling career, Hamaguchi’s only other notable media appearance appears to have been a bit part in episode #17 of Toei’s legendary 1978 Spider-Man series. He picked up the pace afterward, with a couple small appearances in television dramas and a small role in Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom. He has also appeared in several commercials over the years. (See also: a cameo in the music video for Hitomi Shimatami’s 2007 single “Neva Eva”.)