Hideyuki Nagasawa

[KinchStalker]

Hideyuki Nagasawa (長沢秀幸)

Profession: Wrestler, Referee, Executive/Miscellaneous
Real name: Hideyuki Nagasawa
Professional names: Kaichi Nagasawa (長沢日一), Toranosuke Nagasawa (長沢虎之助), Hideyuki Nagasawa, Tiger Chung Lee
Life: 1/2/1924-1/10/1999
Born: Osaka, Osaka, Japan
Career: 1954
Height/Weight: 176cm/85kg (5’9”/187lbs)
Signature moves: unknown
Promotions: All Japan Pro Wrestling Association, Japan Wrestling Association, International Wrestling Enterprise
Titles: none

The last active Japanese wrestler to have been born in the Taisho period, Hideyuki Nagasawa never had what it took to be a top star but had a quarter-century career in and out of the ring.

Nagasawa stands at far left in an AJPWA roster photo.

A Dewanoumi wrestler who left sumo for the military, Hideyuki Nagasawa did not return to Tokyo when he was demobilized. Instead, he became a salaryman in Osaka who competed for a corporate sumo team, but returned to professional sport when he joined Toshio Yamaguchi and Umeyuki Kiyomigawa’s All Japan Pro Wrestling Association. He worked on the AJPWA’s shows as well as on various JWA dates through 1954. As the AJPWA collapsed in 1956, Nagasawa moved with Yamaguchi to wrestle shows out of Toshio's native Mishima. In October 1956, Nagasawa entered the Japan Weight Class tournament, a series of three interpromotional tournaments intended to delegitimize the JWA’s competitors and scout talent worth swiping. As the heavyweight bracket began at the International Stadium on October 23, Nagasawa was eliminated in the first round by eventual winner and former yokozuna Azumafuji. As the story goes, he was watching the show from the back of the venue when Rikidozan arrived and asked how he was doing. Nagasawa admitted that he was contemplating retirement for various reasons, but that if Rikidozan wanted him, he would join the JWA. Nagasawa got a call from Toyonobori, and he was working on JWA shows the following month. He would be one of five regional wrestlers hired by the JWA, alongside Michiaki Yoshimura, Kanji Higuchi, Yuichi Deguchi, and Kiyotaka Otsubo.

Anecdotal evidence paints Nagasawa as a man who could handle himself. During a show in Taiwan, Yoshinosato is said to have suggested to Rikidozan that Nagasawa, instead of himself, fight a local kenpo practitioner who had challenged the JWA. Antonio Inoki and Motoyuki Kitazawa both attested to his strength. Regardless of whether Nagasawa really was as tough as some have claimed, it is clear that he did not have what it took to be a top star, even if that may have been more a function of temperament than talent. That is not to say that Nagasawa did not make valuable contributions. In fact, he was the JWA’s first head coach. The first several years of puroresu were entirely populated by wrestlers had prior experience in sumo, judo, or amateur wrestling, but not long after Nagasawa joined the JWA, those that I call the Second Generation of puroresu began to enter the company. Kitazawa praised Nagasawa as a kind man who could deal with everyone, “from new apprentices to old-timers, without dividing them”. He was also responsible for looking after foreign wrestlers, although it is unspecified as to whether Nagasawa spoke English.

In March 1960, after Mammoth Suzuki infamously chickened out, Nagasawa was brought with Rikidozan on his second and last trip to Brazil. The two wrestled there for four weeks; they also met Kanji Inoki. Speaking of him, it was once reported that Inoki’s first match billed as Antonio was against Kintaro Oki on November 7, 1962. However, a recent revised edition of Team Full Swing’s book of complete Inoki match results corrected this: it was against Nagasawa two days later.

By the mid-sixties, when Otsubo had taken over as head coach, Nagasawa rarely wrestled and was often seen dismantling the ring at the end of shows. Kitazawa recalls that this bothered him, and that he had tried to help his senior, but that Nagasawa said it was okay, and that it was his job. In 1966, in the corporate restructuring after Toyonobori’s acrimonious departure, Nagasawa was named a director of the JWA alongside Giant Baba. He would stay with the JWA until the end, working as a referee.

After that, he got a job with the IWE’s materials department. Like others originally hired for the IWE’s ring crew, namely Ichimasa Wakamatsu and Hiromichi Fuyuki, Nagasawa would find himself back in the ring. By this point, Nagasawa was the last active Japanese wrestler born in the Taisho period. At first, he wrestled under a mask as Tiger Chung Lee, but he would wrestle as himself for most of this stint back in the ring, which lasted until a match against Tsutomu Yonemura in October 1976. After this, Nagasawa remained with the company until shortly before its demise. He died in 1999.