Daigoro Ogiyama

[KinchStalker]

Daigoro Ogiyama (扇山大五郎)

Profession: Wrestler
Real name: Tamio Takahashi (高橋民雄)
Professional names: Daigoro Ogiyama
Life: 3/27/1938-
Born: Kurihara, Miyagi, Japan
Career: 1969-1970
Height/Weight: 178cm/105kg (5’10”/231lbs.)
Signature moves: unknown
Promotions: International Wrestling Enterprise
Titles: none

Former rikishi Daigoro Ogiyama wrestled a short stint for the IWE.

Tamio Takahashi was a teenage baker scouted for sumo. From his debut in 1955, he wrestled for the Tokitsukaze stable for thirteen years. Takahashi, who would take on the shikona of Ogiyama (with various first names) in 1957, was a smaller rikishi who compensated for his frame with agility and technical skill and was particularly noted for his left-hand upper throws and komata-sukui (leg-scooping throws). A narrow defeat in the January 1958 tournament’s sandanme division earned him a promotion to makushita. Three years later, Ogiyama won that division in the last tournament of 1961, and was promoted to juryo. Most of the rest of his career was spent in this division, although he clawed his way up to the top makuuchi division for nearly a year starting in autumn 1962. He would reach that rank two more times in his career. However, as Ogiyama reached his thirties, he fell back down to makushita, and would retire in the fall of 1968. Ogiyama was managing a Chinese restaurant when he was scouted by Toyonobori in early 1969. While Ogiyama was hardly the first man with a sumo history to join the International Wrestling Enterprise, no new recruit had had nearly as much experience as him. Perhaps that mileage on his body was his downfall, as Ogiyama would barely spend a year with the company. His recruitment did garner some attention, and his name was considered for a European excursion, but Ogiyama retired in early 1970. The timing suggests that it may have been connected to Toyonobori’s own retirement. As Mighty Inoue recalled in a 2016 interview with the Showa Puroresu fanzine, Ogiyama was a gentle and kind man, albeit with a weak temperament and a love of gambling, and not a very good wrestler.