Shogun KY Wakamatsu

[KinchStalker]

Shogun KY Wakamatsu (将軍KYワカマツ)

Profession: Wrestler, Manager, Promoter
Real name: Ichimasa Wakamatsu (若松市政)
Professional names: Ichimasa Wakamatsu, KY Wakamatsu, Shogun KY Wakamatsu
Life: 1942/01/01-
Born: Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Career: 1973-
Height/Weight: 181cm/105kg (5’11”/231 lbs.)
Signature moves: KY Special (abdominal stretch)
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, SWS, Pro Wrestling Crusaders, Dosanko Pro Wrestling Dojo Geki (as promoter)
Titles: none

A thirty-year-old roadie who trained to wrestle for the IWE, Shogun KY Wakamatsu found his greatest success as a heel manager in the 1980s.

Wakamatsu tries to sell an IWE ticket to a Tokyo traffic cop on March 23, 1980.

After graduating junior high, Ichimasa Wakamatsu had spent fifteen years working as an electrician and stevedore before he joined the International Wrestling Enterprise. His primary job was and would remain as a member of the ring crew, but he trained to wrestle part-time, filling up the company’s undercards as a second-string wrestler. He debuted on September 29, 1973, in a singles match against Katsuzo Oiyama. Judging by Cagematch records, he worked roughly 20 to 35 dates per year for the rest of the decade, as he left his family in Hokkaido to live alone in the IWE’s Omiya dojo. On September 13, 1976, Wakamatsu made national news when he drove the IWE truck by a family whose house was caught in a landslide. He stopped and helped them gather their belongings as, unbeknownst to him, an NHK news crew broadcast his efforts live. On August 26, 1979, he entered the Pro Wrestling Dream All-Star Match show’s opening battle royal, in which his future client Junji Hirata also competed. By that time, he was sharing his truck rides with Hiromichi Fuyuki, a ring crew employee who would pivot into his own wrestling career.

Wakamatsu was scheduled to go overseas in the summer of 1980, after a last match against Nobuyoshi Sugawara. This instead ended up being his last match for several years, as Wakamatsu refused to leave the company in its most vulnerable state. He pivoted into sales work to help keep Kokusai afloat. After their last tour with full network backing, Wakamatsu was hospitalized for pancreatitis, but he was soon putting up posters for the next tour. IWE television producer Motokazu Tanaka has stated that Wakamatsu is “one-third” of the reason that the company survived as long as it did during its death rattle. His Japanese Wikipedia page claims that he could not return to Hokkaido after the company went under because he had received a parting gift from the supporters’ association in Ashibetsu. Whatever that means, he returned to electrical work, punching the clock for TEPCO until he had enough money to travel to Calgary.

Wakamatsu began work for Stampede Wrestling in 1982. Stu Hart gave him the ring name KY Wakamatsu, in reference to an unspecified Canadian general. (I would appreciate it if any Canadians could explain the reference, as I could not find a name with those initials.) While he would wrestle for Stampede, his most notable work was managerial, as Wakamatsu offered his services to Bad News Allen. KY played a part in Allen’s 1983 feud with the Dynamite Kid, and was part of the mix late that year, when a Bruce Hart angle in which Allen broke the neck of the Stomper’s kayfabe son would derail Stampede.

Wakamatsu returns to Japan in August 1984.

Junji Hirata, who had worked in Stampede as Sonny Two Rivers, was called back to New Japan in the summer of 1984. As he was told, the plan was to license a Kinnikuman gimmick, in an attempt to replicate the success of Tiger Mask after the Cobra had not caught fire. Wakamatsu was invited to join NJPW by his old boss, Isao Yoshiwara, who had taken a consulting position with the company. Due to the Kinnikuman anime being broadcast on AJPW’s Nippon TV, negotiations proved difficult, and were still underway when Hirata and Wakamatsu made their first appearance on World Pro Wrestling. Hirata wore shoulder pads under a white t-shirt, and a blue balaclava over his Kinnikuman mask, while Wakamatsu wore a bowler hat, surgical gown, and Geordi La Forge-esque visor, while also donning a whip. One week after this first appearance, amidst Naoki Otsuka’s announcement that he would pull wrestlers out of NJPW, the two appeared again at a Minami-Ashigara show. This time, Hirata had selected a new mask inspired by the manga Laughing Mask. As Wakamatsu claimed in a 2016 G Spirits interview, he improvised his client’s new ring name on the spot: Strong Machine. A singles match with Inoki was set for September 7, and on that day, the gimmick kicked into second gear. Wakamatsu recalled in G Spirits that he had been inspired by the Assassins, the Jody Hamilton tag team, to create “an army” of wrestlers with the same masks and costumes. For his official debut, “Strong Machine #1” was seconded by Wakamatsu and thirded by Strong Machine #2 (Korean wrestler Yang Seung-hee). Phil Lafon played a third Strong Machine for a single November appearance, but skipped out on wrestling due to a cold, which led a maskless Hiro Saito to take his place.

In January 1985, the Machine Army reached its full form, as NJPW’s connections to Polynesian Pacific Wrestling saw them book the original IWE trainee turned overseas journeyman Yasu Fujii, and Ratou Atisano’e, the younger brother of Samoan rikishi Konishiki Yasokichi, as #3 and #4 respectively. (Atisano’e had no wrestling experience, but hardly wrestled anyway.) By then, Wakamatsu had developed his costume. He had switched out the visor for sunglasses, and the surgical attire for black and red outfits, which read KAERE (“Get out!”) on the back. As the gimmick was that these wrestlers were under Wakamatsu’s direct control (which led play-by-play man Ichiro Furutachi to throw out nicknames like “the Dr. Ochanomizu of Hell” and “Evil Shotaro-kun”), he used a red megaphone to shout orders to them while also talking to the audience. This predated Jimmy Hart, and as has been alleged, may have inspired him.

Wakamatsu with Bill Eadle and Andre the Giant in August 1985.

The Machine Corps angle kept New Japan afloat after the devastating pullout of Riki Choshu and Ishin Gundan, as World Pro Wrestling ratings did decline, but remained over 15%. However, NJPW saw the gimmick as a time-filler, and when Bruiser Brody was swiped from All Japan the following spring, the Machine Army suffered. In an April singles match against Tatsumi Fujinami, Strong Machine #1 was accidentally blinded by Wakamatsu’s powder attack and lost to a Dragon Suplex. This led Hirata to split from the Army and become Super Strong Machine, and disagreements with an office that wanted him to unmask and return to the company’s main unit—which infamously manifested in a Fujinami promo where he broke kayfabe and called SSM by his real name—would eventually lead Hirata to leave New Japan. While the Strong Machines soldiered on without SSM for a few months, and Wakamatsu released a novelty single in the meantime, Hirata’s August departure led to their disbandment. In a desperate, last-minute measure, Andre the Giant was given a Machine mask to wrestle as Wakamatsu’s new client, Giant Machine. Even if his bare face had not already been advertised on tour posters, the Giant Machine’s identity would have been obvious. But it meant more work for Wakamatsu, as Bill Eadle also donned a Machine mask. When the WWF ran their own version of the Machines gimmick, Andre would even offer to get Wakamatsu work overseas. However, he was under contract with TV Asahi, and refused out of loyalty to the late Yoshiwara and TV Asahi executive Takahei Nagasato. On May 1, 1986, during Andre’s final NJPW tour (where they didn’t bother with the Machine gimmick), Wakamatsu wrestled his first match since Stampede, teaming with the Giant against Antonio Inoki and Umanosuke Ueda in a Ryogoku Kokugikan main event; he took the pinfall in eight minutes after receiving an Inoki enzuigiri. The heel manager remained in rotation through 1986, with clientele ranging from Kendo Nagasaki and Mr. Pogo, to Madd Maxx and Super Maxx, to Konga the Barbarian and “Super Mario Man” (Ray Candy in a white mask).

In the late 1980s, Wakamatsu became acquainted with Megane Super eyewear magnate Hachiro Tanaka, and the two watched Newborn UWF shows together. As the decade came to a close, Tanaka prepared to enter the wrestling business himself, and Wakamatsu was one of his closest allies. In the summer of 1989, Wakamatsu traveled to Calgary to work a handful of dates for the dying Stampede, and to attempt to secure the support of Mr. Hito. After this, he made stops across the United States, where he worked with the USWA in Texas, and helped Kazuo Sakurada attempt (nearly successfully) to court Keiji Mutoh towards signing with Tanaka’s new company when he finished his WCW excursion as the Great Muta. After a stop in Germany, he returned home in November. Wakamatsu continued to recruit talent as SWS took shape. He was responsible for signing the biggest ex-NJPW star that the company would feature, George Takano. (According to an uncited passage on Japanese Wikipedia, Wakamatsu had intended to sign his brother Shunji instead, and had asked George for his contact details, but George lied and claimed that he did not speak much with Shunji in order to get himself a better position in the company.) Wakamatsu officially joined SWS in May 1990. In the promotion’s sumo-inspired room system, he was made the leader of the Dojo Geki stable. He wrestled on the company’s second-ever show, beating Fumihiro Niikura in the third match. Although the following year would see Wakamatsu work a handful of tag matches, he would leave the company after the death of his wife, with Yoshiaki Yatsu taking his place as Dojo Geki head.

Wakamatsu and Super Strong Machine reunite for the latter's 2019 retirement ceremony.

Wakamatsu returned to wrestling in 1993, working with Shunji Takano’s Pro Wrestling Crusaders promotion as the leader of the Space Power Corps. In keeping with PWC’s wackier tendencies, he would use supernatural abilities such as telekinesis in the ring, and once even made an opponent faint through his “great cosmic power”. In 1994, Wakamatsu formed a small promotion in his native Hokkaido, Dosanko Pro Wrestling Dojo Geki. In 1999, he transitioned into local politics when he was elected to the Ashibetsu City council. Outside of a couple appearances in FMW and DDT at the start of the new millennium, Wakamatsu apparently stepped back from significant wrestling work until a tag team battle royal at a 2007 independent show in Tokyo, which he won alongside Great Kojika. In the 2010s and beyond, he has made appearances for shows promoted by the Hokkaido indies Hokuto Pro Wrestling and Asian Pro Wrestling, as well as a couple of Shonan Pro Wrestling shows promoted by former IWE coworker Masahiko Takasugi, and Keiji Mutoh’s 2019 Pro-Wrestling Masters show. At the time of his matches in September 2023, Wakamatsu was the eldest active wrestler in Japan.