One of the most talented, popular, intelligent, and respected wrestlers in the history of Japan, Tomomi "Jumbo" Tsuruta, passed away at 4 p.m. on 5/13. It took 10 days, but I was finally able to finish this tribute to him.
Tsuruta was born on 3/25/51 in the town of Makioka, which is in the Yamanashi prefecture. He was the youngest of the three siblings in the Tsuruta family. He didn't like the name Tomomi because it was a girl's name, which led to the kids always teasing him about it. It was particularly bad on the first day or whenever there was a substitute because they would be looking around the room for a girl only to find an oversized boy. One can only imagine the other kids reaction while this was going on. He also got stuck with the nickname Deka (?), which he hated as well.
In his first year of junior high school, he had to play gym in rubber Japanese sandals because his foot was so big that there weren't any sneakers he could fit into. By his second year of junior high, he was already 180cm tall (the same height as a full grown El Samurai). He would ride his bike to high school because riding the bus was too uncomfortable since his head would hit the ceiling.
The first sport he was into was basketball, where he was obviously helped by his well above average size. He participated in the national basketball convention three years in a row. At the convention, he met a kind shoe manufacture who sent him a pair of shoes that fit each month. Tsuruta was such a gifted athlete that with one week of practice, and I don't mean one week to train like a boxer who takes a fight on short notice, I mean this was his second year of high school and he apparently tried the sport for the first time one week before the tournament, he was able to place second in his prefecture in sumo. Aside from being a basketball star, he also stared in swimming during his high school years and dabbled into a few other sports as well. However, in college it was amateur wrestling, which he never tried before, where he made his big name. Despite people wanting him to stick with basketball and the other wrestlers, led by the future Mr. Pogo, pretty much keeping him off the wrestling team initially, Tsuruta wrestled on a the Self-Defense Forces Athletic School team that was based in the Saitama prefecture and had no affiliation with the college. In no time he was running over all the competition, which led to the forces against him being on the college team changing their tune. At the college level, Tsuruta won the All Japanese Championships in 100kg in both freestyle and Greco Roman in both 1971 and 1972, which was remarkable because these were his first two years as a wrestler. His initial goal was said to be competing in the 1976 Olympics, but he made the team for the 1972 Munich Olympics and even placed 7th in the super heavyweight division. Due to this background, he earned the nickname "Mr. Olympic." When he returned to Japan, all the wrestling promotions in Japan wanted him in a bad way because he was a gifted athlete and already had a good deal of name value from the Olympics. It was Giant Baba, who had just started All Japan, that got the prize, announcing Tsuruta had signed with his company on October 31, 1972.
After training in the All Japan dojo for a four months, Tsuruta was sent to Amarillo, Texas to train with wrestlers like Stan Hansen and Bob Backlund under the great Dory Funk Jr. They billed him as Tommy Tsuruta and threw him in the ring with El Tapia for his debut match on 3/24/73. Tsuruta was said to be a "natural wrestler," which means he's one of the few like Owen Hart or Jun Akiyama that are good workers from day one. He challenged Dory Funk Jr. for the NWA World Heavyweight Title on 5/20/73. This was just amazing progress. I mean, this was the most prestigious title in the world at that time, and a guy that debuted less than two months ago not only got to challenge, but won a fall (it was the standard 2/3 falls title match). Tsuruta wrestled about 150 matches in Funkville before returning to Japan on 10/1/73.
All Japan immediately gave Tsuruta the role of Baba's protégé, practically debuting him in title match (it was his 3rd match, but over the years, the legend has grown to it being his first since it was on live network TV while the other two were dark matches) where he teamed with Baba to challenge Terry Funk and his trainer Dory for the NWA International Tag Titles. Although they didn't win, they battled to a 60:00 with each team winning a fall, so the youngster Tsuruta didn't have to do the customary job in the 3rd fall. It was a really big deal for a native to be in such a high profile match right off the bat, and Tsuruta's performance erased the doubt on whether or not he belonged.
Tsuruta's career was defined by the role that he was playing, and his first was as a shooting star under Baba. Baba was never that good of a wrestler and about the only thing they had in common in the ring was size, but even that is hard to compare because aside from the oddest looking chest in the business, Baba was like a giant stick figure that in the back of your mind you expected to eventually snap, while Tsuruta wasn't nearly as tall but looked more imposing because his weight was fairly proportionate. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I doubt Baba taught his student much about the technical aspects of wrestling, but he did teach Jumbo about the business aspects, so with Tsuruta's stock in the company and whatnot he probably could have retired 15 years ago if he wanted to. Anyway, protégés in All Japan and New Japan for the most part aren't about anything more than glory by association, and although he was the far superior wrestler and was carrying the team in the ring both when it came to logging ring time and actual ring work, being associated with the huge star Baba definitely helped the Tsuruta's star rise during the early portion of his career.
Due to Tsuruta's Olympic background, and probably partially him being in a company that just started, Tsuruta didn't have to work his way up the ranks like almost all the other Japanese wrestlers do (Naoya Ogawa is the most recent example of someone that didn't). He was basically a top guy for his whole serious wrestling career, and even though he didn't have a roided up muscular physique, he definitely used his size and strength to his advantage to the point where many Japanese fans considered him to be their "strongest" wrestler.
Aside from being Baba's partner, Tsuruta was quickly pushed in singles as well. A contest held by the promotion to give Tsuruta a ring name to replace the girlish Tomomi culminated on 10/27/93 with Jumbo winning. His first match as Jumbo was a win over K.V. Steiger on 1/4/74. Actually, he beat everyone they put him up against, leading to a shot at Jack Brisco's NWA Heavyweight Title on 1/30/74 where he suffered his first defeat.
As early as his second year, Tsuruta was already recognized by the Japanese wrestling media as All Japan's best technical wrestler, if not the best technical native in the country. Most likely due to Dory's influence, he was more toward the technical American style of the NWA, which meant he matched up well with the best American technicians of the time like Funks and Jack Brisco. At this point it hardly matters if a native can work with an American, but for the first 15 years of their existence, All Japan was mainly native vs. gaijin, so it made a huge difference.
Even though Tsuruta was behind the times moves wise when he was having his best matches toward the end of his serious career, he was clearly ahead of them in the 70's, maybe because few wrestlers had his combination of power and athleticism. Although many if not most people that just started watching wrestling would find his 70's matches boring due to the length and the ratio of submissions to high spots being off the chart in comparison to today, they are at least less boring than mostly anything else from the 70's. A few reasons for this are that the technique was better, while certainly not a daredevil, Tsuruta did do some flying like his diving knee bat off the top rope and a missile kick, and he wasn't afraid to adopt other wrestlers holds. Due to the latter, he wound up using a lot more moves than most of his peers, and this was probably the reason he got over in the US as a face instead of having to play the disgraceful stereotypical racist evil Jap role that even 20 years later almost all the other Japanese were still playing when they wrestled in the US. In addition to the aforementioned flying moves, and a dropkick that even in the last 80's was impressive for a man of his size, Tsuruta used a lot of suplexes. I don't mean in a non-washed up Scott Steiner kind of do nothing but suplexes way, but in a have a bigger arsenal than your peers and use two or three a match kind of way. He learned the doublearm suplex from training with Dory. He also trained with the legendary Lou Thesz for a while, which led to the backdrop becoming his finishing move and he would also win with the Thesz press sometimes. At some point he began doing a variation of the backdrop called a backdrop hold where instead of releasing his opponent on impact, he would bridge and hold onto them for the 1-2-3. Prior to training with Thesz, his finishing suplex was the German suplex hold, which apparently no one in the U.S. was doing at that time.
Initially Baba alternated between teaming with the upstart Tsuruta and the famous gaijin The Destroyer, but it didn't take long for Tsuruta to edge Dick Beyer out and become Baba's regular tag partner. Baba & Tsuruta took the NWA International Tag Titles from the Funks in their own Texas turn on 2/5/75, and went on to hold them for 18 months before briefly losing them to Kintaro Oki & Umanosuke Ueda on 10/28/76 in Tokyo. In total, Baba & Tsuruta held these belts 6 different times from 1975-84.
Baba created the Sekai Saikyo Tag League in 1977, and he would team with Tsuruta every year up to 1982, alternating between coming in first and second. The native side in All Japan at this time was Baba & Tsuruta, so their challenges would come from the top gaijin teams of the time like Funks, Abdullah The Butcher & The Sheik, and Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka/Stan Hansen. Their first win came in 1978 when they topped Abdullah & Sheik in a match that was awarded the promotions match of the year.
Baba made 1976 Tsuruta's biggest year to date by putting him in singles matches with the top Americans, Korea's biggest star (or rather the biggest star that admitted to being Korean since even Rikidozan pretended to be Japanese because Korea and Japan didn't exactly get a long and the feeling was the Japanese wouldn't accept a Korean as a national hero) Kintaro Oki, as well as a rare interpromotional match between IWE's top star Rusher Kimura, which believe it or not won match of the year. Tsuruta's first big push in the Champion Carnival also came in 1976, as he finished tie for third with Kintaro Oki & Mario Milano, one point behind Giant Baba and winner Abdullah The Butcher. His biggest win of the year came on 8/28/76 when he beat Jack Brisco for the first time in a decision match for the NWA United National Heavyweight Title (currently 1/3 of the triple crown). Tsuruta owned this belt for the next 7 years. Although he lost it to Bill Robinson, Dick Murdock, Abdullah, & Harley Race, in each case he was the guy that won the belt from them.
Tsuruta outpointed Baba by one in the 1977 Champion Carnival, but Baba beat Abdullah The Butcher (they were tie for 2nd with 20 points) then Jumbo Tsuruta to win the Carnival as always. Tsuruta was right in the hunt in 78 & 79 before outpointing Baba, Abdullah, and Terry Funk then beating Dick Slater in the finals to win the Carnival for the first time in 1980. Although they won the tag league that year and Tsuruta had finally topped Baba in the singles league, in the 80's being Baba's protégé started working against him. His role had clearly changed to being the established superstar, but no matter how good he was in the ring and how good Baba wasn't, he could never fully escaped Baba's shadow. Even when Baba stepped down from the main events in the mid 80's, while Tsuruta was the guy on top having the big world title matches, he never achieved the stardom or popularity of Baba. Of course, being in the second tier with of the all-time biggest names in Japan with Tatsumi Fujinami, who never escaped Inoki's shadow, Riki Choshu, Akira Maeda, & Genichiru Tenryu is hardly something to look down upon.
Baba started easing himself out of the top matches as early as October of 1981 by giving Tsuruta the NWA world title matches when Flair came to Japan. However, Baba easily meant more than Tsuruta at the gate and the same could be said of Hansen in relation to Flair or Tsuruta's other opponents with the exception of perhaps Brody, so the Baba vs. Hansen program was their top draw regardless of whether Tsuruta happened to go on before or after them.
Tsuruta's star just kept rising, and a combination of Baba quietly trying to let Tsuruta surpass him for the good of the company (not that NTV didn't have something to do with this) and Baba's first ridiculous consecutive match streak coming to an end when he hurt his neck lead to Tsuruta finally being the promotions top star. Probably the win that made him the man was when he beat Bruiser Brody by ring out (meaning Brody wasn't pinned, as usual) on the 8/31/93 Terry Funk "retirement" show to win the NWA International Heavyweight Title, which was the only title in the promotion above the United National title that Tsuruta had controlled.
Although they were in the midst of their 6th and final run with the International Tag Titles, 1983 was the first year that Baba & Tsuruta didn't team in the annual tag league, which allowed Tsuruta to lead a regular team for the first time. Baba had Dory Funk Jr. as his partner, while Tsuruta teamed with rising star Genichiru Tenryu, who would beat Ricky Steamboat in a match to crown a new United National Heavyweight Champion now that Tsuruta has moved on to the International Title and David Von Erich had died suddenly in the dressing room. Tsuruta & Tenryu couldn't quite overtake the monster gaijins Brody & Hansen, but they did have an excellent fast-paced match with them and finished tie with Baba & Funk for second place.
On 2/23/84, a little later in the show that saw Tenryu win his first UN title, Tsuruta became the first Japanese wrestler to capture the then prestigious AWA World Heavyweight Title when he pinned Nick Bockwinkle. This wasn't a case where the outsider dropped it at the beginning of a tour and won it back at the end, Tsuruta actually came to the states and put the title on the line in the main event of AWA shows that drew. He made 16 successful defenses before dropping the title to Rick Martel on 5/13/84.
Tsuruta received several shots at the more prestigious NWA World Heavyweight Title, but that was the one accomplishment that always alluded him. This was long before All Japan switched to all clean finishes, so Tsuruta would win one fall from the champion to make it look like he was finally going to win the title (this went for the AWA title as well) and then he'd often be protected with some form of screw job in one of the two falls he lost or they would each win a fall and then go the distance. The fans were always into his matches, especially the big ones like these, yelling his name when he was losing to try to instill some life in him then really coming to life when he'd make his comeback.
When Baba vacated the NWA International Tag Titles due to injury in May of 1984, Tsuruta switched and Genichiru Tenryu officially became a regular team called Tsururyu. The duo quickly showed they were the promotions top team by beating Bruiser Brody & Crusher Blackwell to win the vacant titles on 9/3/84 and edging out the tougher duo of Brody with Hansen to win the '84 tag league. For the first time, a native team that wasn't led by Baba had won the tag league, but just as Tsuruta had firmly grasped the top, there were huge changes in the landscape.
New Japan's top heel, Riki Choshu, got several New Japan wrestlers to jump to All Japan. The Seikigun vs. Ishingun feud in New Japan had revolutionized puroresu because a group of natives were finally the top heels instead of the usual assortment of evil foreigners. Tsuruta continued having the same style matches he was having before against the usual foreigners like Hansen, and they were definitely quality matches, but the faster paced matches with Genichiru Tenryu facing Choshu were fresher and more exciting. Tsuruta was better all around than Tenryu, but when they teamed Tenryu seemed to be the more impressive of the two even though he didn't get the glory because he'd be doing good work while getting beat on, leading to Jumbo making the hot tag and coming in all fired up with his dropkick, jumping knee bat, Jumbo lariat (he'd raise his hand and run at you, but as he was running he brought it forward until it was back at his hip. By the time his opponent got close, he'd cock his arm back and wallop you with his arm curved like a sickle), etc.
Choshu never beat Tsuruta for the International Heavyweight Title or took his top spot, but for a little while Choshu vs. Tenryu was a hotter program than Jumbo vs. gaijin. Tsuruta stepped up his game after he started getting involved in the Choshu feud more. Jumbo and Choshu met in singles for the first time on 11/4/85, battling to a 60:00 draw, but it was the Tsuruta & Tenryu vs. Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu tag matches that were by far the most memorable. In fact, they supposedly produced the best tag match of the 80's. Choshu & Yatsu defeated Tsuruta & Tenryu in a tag title match on 2/5/86 in Sapporo, but Tsuruta & Tenryu beat them out in '86 to win their second tag league and in the same building exactly one year after they had lost the titles to Choshu & Yatsu, they recaptured the tag titles from them. About two weeks later Choshu and co. jumped back to New Japan, which seemed killer at the time and definitely made a huge difference in New Japan business for the next decade plus, but from a wrestling fans perspective it was one of the best things that ever happened to All Japan because Baba was forced to turn Tenryu heel and have him feud with Tsuruta, and when Tenryu left in 1990, Baba was forced to elevate Mitsuharu Misawa and co. to feud with Tsuruta. If Choshu would have stayed, the match quality of the main events wouldn't have been nearly as good because he never showed any interest in updating his game, just stuck with a lariat and backdrop that wasn't on the level of Tsuruta's or many others and a sasorigatame (scorpion deathlock) that had been exposed as being fake, plus age and injuries were slowing him down and so many other guys had stepped up the pace of their matches that Choshu's advantage of working faster paced matches was long gone. Of course, the reason he became so big was his fire and charisma, and the fans still loved him so it didn't really matter. Anyway, aside from the match quality, Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, and Kenta Kobashi most likely wouldn't have reached the level of stardom they did if Choshu had stayed around.
Although Tenryu had defeated Tsuruta on 8/11/87 to help establish him as being on Tsuruta's level, they didn't start a singles program until a classic match on 10/28/88. For the past few years Tsuruta had traded the International Heavyweight Title with Hansen & Brody. His feeling was there were too many titles in the promotion, so he talked to Baba about it and got him to unify the three heavyweight belts, NWA International, PWF, & NWA United National Titles into a triple crown and combine the NWA International & PWF tag titles into a world tag title. Tsuruta was now teaming with Choshu's ex partner Yatsu, and the duo had beat out Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka, Hansen & Terry Gordy, Tenryu & his pre-Jumbo partner Ashura Hara, and Funks by 1 point to win the '87 tag league. In a 6 day span, they went from having no tag titles to unifying both, as they captured the PWF titles from Tenryu & Hara on 6/4 then beat International tag champs, The Road Warriors, on 6/10/88 to unify the titles. They feuded over the titles with Hansen & Terry Gordy and Tenryu & Hara for the next year plus, with Tsuruta & Yatsu holding the titles 5 different times during that span. In singles, Tsuruta had lost the NWA International Heavyweight Title to Brody on 3/27/88, ending a virtually uninterrupted 4 1/2 year reign with that title (Hansen held the title for a little less than 3 months in 86 before losing it back), but he regained it on 4/19/88. The PWF & UN titles had already been combined when Tenryu, who held the UN title at the time, beat Hansen on 3/9/88, but Hansen won both titles from him on 7/27/88. The big unification match took place on 4/18/89, with Tsuruta following up what he did with the tag titles and becoming the first holder of the unified belts, as well as the first 5 crown king, when he pinned Hansen at 17:53. It's kind of ironic that it wasn't that good of a match because Tsuruta & Tenryu quickly turned it into the symbol of excellence for great world heavyweight title matches. Tenryu put the titles on the line just two days later, and while they tried to have a great match, this was the one time they came up short because Tsuruta pinned Tsuruta at 16:03 when he injured Tenryu with a high angle powerbomb. This made the powerbomb one of the hottest moves in the country, and they more than made up for only having a very good match by making their 6/5/89 title match the heavyweight match of the decade.
With the times changing and brawlers like Hansen, Brody, & Choshu as some of his main opponents in the mid 80's, Tsuruta had started moving away from the submission holds and weardown in the body of his matches and started roughing people up more and doing more spots before the finishing sequence. This change was nothing revolutionary, but the style he started wrestling with Tenryu was. In a way, it was a combination of the technical style Jumbo had excelled in during the 70's and the rougher style Jumbo had adopted in the 80's, but what really made it exceptional was the structuring. Really, it didn't matter what moves they were doing, although in later years the moves would be state of the art as well, but that they knew how and when to use them so they'd get the most out of them. This style that was steeped in storytelling and psychology and also known for it's stiffness, precise execution, build, and timing became the style of not only the triple crown matches, but really most of the big matches in the promotion. The thing is that not that many wrestlers could do it because of what it required physically and mentally, and the toll on the bodies of ones that could was steep because of the impact, but I don't want to give Jumbo & especially Tenryu (since he bailed) too much credit here because Misawa, Kawada, and in some ways Kobashi took it to new levels after Jumbo & Tenryu were out of the picture.
Getting back to 6/5/89, this is where Tenryu finally beat Jumbo for a singles title. He followed it up with two successful defenses before losing the title back to Jumbo in an excellent match on 10/11/89. Tenryu formed a team with Hansen and the two kicked ass and took names in the tag league, culminating with a win over Jumbo & Yatsu on the final night in a match that was excellent when it was Jumbo vs. Tenryu, but nothing special when Yatsu, who had declined a lot for seemingly no reason after a couple of strong years in the mid 80's, was in. Although Tenryu had finally enjoyed some success against Jumbo, he was never going to be the man as long as Jumbo was around, so he decided to leave the promotion when he was offered more money and the top spot in the new Super World Sports promotion that Super Megame was opening up. A lot of All Japan undercarders as well as a few from New Japan, Naoki Sano for instance, joined the new promotion as well. This was unfortunate because Tenryu & Tsuruta would have had several more classic matches. Instead, Tenryu had no quality opponents in SWS, so his output went to hell even quicker than that league did. Tenryu had one last title match with Tsuruta on 4/19/90, losing a 12:32 sprint. As furious as Baba was about Tenryu leaving, in this regard he died angry, Baba was very classy, as always, about losing his #2 wrestler. Instead of embarrassing Tenryu or whatever, he simply took all the focus off him by having Hansen run in and attack Jumbo. This set up a series of big matches against Hansen, but luckily we weren't back to native vs. gaijin for too long.
Tiger Mask Misawa was a strong worker that Baba always protected because he was grooming him for stardom. Baba actually teamed up with him in the '86 tag league, but Jumbo pinned Tiger when their teams met and it was one of the worst showings a Baba team ever made in the tag league. Tiger teamed up with Jumbo sometimes in 1987, beating Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase for the PWF World Tag Titles on 7/3/87 only to lose them back 8 days later. There was also a famous match on 3/9/88 where no one gave Tiger much chance to win and even Tiger himself knew he was overmatched, so he just tried to keep Jumbo in check. This sounds somewhat boring since Tiger was holding Jumbo in a headlock just to stay in control, but after Jumbo finally hit his devastating backdrop it turned into a really hot match with Tiger showing off his flying and the fans getting behind him. There may be a few other matches worth mentioning, but anyway the point is Misawa wasn't close to Jumbo's level, but after Tenryu left Baba had to find a native to replace him, and Misawa was his choice.
Jumbo turned heel for the first time in his career, filling Tenryu's role and started the third stage of his career as grumpy old Jumbo. Jumbo wasn't the kind of heel you would boo, in fact all he had to do was raise his arm in the air like he did earlier in his career when he won the match and the whole building would go "ooh." Just because Jumbo was cool, that doesn't mean he wasn't a mean and nasty old bastard. He made it look like he was having fun beating the shit out of his opponents, and poor Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, he just tortured that kid. As great as some of Jumbo's matches with Misawa were, and 6/8/90 and 9/1/90 are likely to come up in match of the decade conversations (although if you are just picking one match, it certainly wouldn't be either), Jumbo vs. Kikuchi in tag matches (since Kikuchi wouldn't have stood a chance in singles) was probably the most fun of the Jumbo & Akira Taue & Masanobu Fuchi & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Misawa & Kawada & Kobashi & Kikuchi feud because they were both great wrestles that were exceptional in their roles. Kikuchi would never back down from Jumbo no matter how much punishment he took, really he'd be asking for Jumbo to put him in his place, and Jumbo would stretch and contort Kikuchi's body in ways I didn't know it even bent and lay him out with a suplex or a lariat. Of course, if it wasn't for the first Jumbo vs. Misawa, this feud may never have turned out as well as it did.
A little more than two weeks after Tenryu left, Toshiaki Kawada removed Tiger Mask's hood during a tag match, and he was Mitsuharu Misawa from that point forward. Misawa faced Jumbo in the main event of the 6/8/90 show at Tokyo Nippon Budokan. If I had to pick the most important match of the 90's, I'd say it was this one because Jumbo putting Misawa over worked perfectly, setting the promotion on fire and turning Misawa into an overnight sensation. Although Misawa failed to win the rematch on 9/1/90, which was better than the previos match and *****, what was important was that they played up that the two were equal and the crowd bought it. I don't know if they really believed that Misawa would win, but Misawa's near falls were getting a huge reaction, well everything was because the heat was off the charts.
Jumbo worked hard in tag during these years because he teamed up with The Great Kabuki to win the tag titles only to have Kabuki jump to SWS like two weeks later and then mainly teamed with Akira Taue, who like almost anyone else was better than Kabuki, but pretty much sucked at the time. His regular unit like I said before also had Fuchi & Ogawa. Fuchi was a solid wrestler that was smart and could play heel well, but like Jumbo he was getting up in years, while Ogawa was maybe a pretty good worker, but had no size or move set. Wrestling against all these hot young workers seemed to light a fire under Jumbo like wrestling against Tenryu had, so he was usually up for the challenge and this feud seemed to produce a **** match on every TV show. Wrestling against gaijins at this point was a different story though.
When the Champion Carnival was revived in 1991, Jumbo beat Stan Hansen to win it for the second and final time. Like most of his matches against the gaijins at this time, this match was nothing special. Jumbo had always worked better against the technical gaijins than the tall guys that Baba liked so much, but by the early 90's they were already a dying breed and All Japan was mainly booking a bunch of big guys in hopes of finding the next monster to replace the late Bruiser Brody. These matches just didn't have much in the way of dynamics. They were slow with a lot of strikes, but not much in the way of bumps or sequences. Jumbo & Stan were playing a similar role at this point, and really needed a hot young worker to make it exciting because they didn't really bump, even when he was young Stan never did any sequences, and they didn't hit each other hard enough to have an excellent match on stiffness alone. Still, the matches against Stan were better than what Jumbo was doing with the other pushed gaijins like Gordy or Williams, but really boring in comparison to what he was doing against Misawa & co.
Despite turning 40 in 1991, Jumbo was not about to turn over the #1 spot in the promotion anytime soon. There was really no reason for him to because he was having as many excellent matches than ever before and he was still very over and a strong draw. Aside from the win to make Misawa, Jumbo pretty well handled him in singles, beating him with the backdrop in their lone match for the Sankan Heavykyu Senshuken on 4/18/91. Kawada and Kobashi never beat Jumbo in singles. Kawada challenged him for the title once, on 10/24/91, but it was similar tot he 3/9/88 Jumbo vs. Tiger Mask with Kawada just trying to maintain the advantage because he knew he was overmatches. Of course, it was an excellent match, but the point is that Hansen was still the only guy that beat Jumbo in singles with any regularity. Jumbo's second reign with the Sankan Heavykyu Senshuken was ended by Terry Gordy on 6/5/90, but Hansen won the titles from Gordy twice within a six week span and Gordy never held them again as they went back to Jumbo on 1/19/91 and then back to Stan on 1/28/92. What nobody expected at the time is that Jumbo would never appear in this title history again after this loss to Stan.
It's weird how things work in sports. Tsuruta was one of the best for close to 20 years, but seemingly overnight he became one of the worst. He was stricken by Hepatitis B during the summer of 1992, and although he tried to come back quickly, he was never the same physically. After always modernizing his style to stay on top, with his lack of stamina and muscle mass there didn't seem to be anything he could do this time. His career as a serious performer was over, but because the illness is chronic, his "hospitalization life" was just beginning. After missing the '92 tag league, he came close to a year later. However, his role was totally different. Tsuruta gave up his top spot and his job training young wrestlers. The fourth and final stage of his career was upon us, and it was a sad one at that.
From 1993-98, Tsuruta wrestled in the comedy matches on some of the big shows. His role was nostalgia. He would tag in, do a lower trajectory version of his jumping knee bat than he'd done in his prime, raise his hand in the air so the fans could go "ooh," and that was just about it until the finish. He'd only work very brief stretches because he didn't have the stamina to go any longer due to his chronic illness. He'd probably win the match with his famous backdrop, but the outcomes of these matches didn't matter. To me, these matches were more sad than anything else because it was Jumbo, but it didn't seem like him because he was shriveled down and couldn't go anymore.
Being away from the ring gave him more time to spend on his hobbies;tennis, golf, movies, songwriting, musical composition, and listening to music. However, he wasn't content to just sit on his ass and live off all the money he'd made from wrestling. In 1995, he went back to college taking graduate courses in Tsukuba University on scientific methods of sports training. In 1996, he began teaching at Keio Daigaku (university), Kirikage (?) Yokohama University, and his alma mater Chou Daigaku, as a part time lecturer on athletics, specifically wrestling and basketball training. He tried to teach his students to win, of course, but he also stressed the importance of losing with dignity. On 11/1/97 he released Muscle Training That Jumbo Tsuruta Can Do By Himself for Fujitsu Personal Computer Systems. His motto was a healthy spirit dwells in a healthy body.
Tsuruta had been a company officer since 1985, but soon after Baba died he was forced out of power. With Baba gone there was really nothing left for him in the company and his debt of gratitude had been paid, so it was time to move on. Tsuruta, who hadn't wrestled since a comedy match on the 9/11/98 Tokyo Nippon Budokan show that was headlined by his old partner Taue carrying Kobashi to a **** title match, announced his retirement on 2/20/99. He never had a retirement match, just came back for a ceremony on 3/6/99 show at Tokyo Nippon Budokan. He flew to the United States on 3/10/99 and soon began researching and teaching sports physiology at University of Portland. Unfortunately, Tsuruta didn't get to accomplish what he set out to there because his health once again took a turn for the worst.
The cancer in Tsuruta's kidney had spread to his liver. He was hospitalized in Gifu for the middle 10 days of April, but he couldn't get a transplant there and also wanted to keep things quite, so leaving the country he was famous in gave him a lot better chance than staying on of their hospitals. He traveled to Brisbane, Australia, where he had an operation to remove the cancer in his liver. Unfortunately, he still needed a kidney transplant and couldn't get one there, so he had to move on to Manilla, Philippines for the organ. On 5/13/00, he was able to get a transplant in Manilla's national kidney research laboratory from a 20-year-old Filipino male that had just been killed, but he went into shock and died during the operation from heavy internal bleeding. He left behind his wife, Yasuko, who he's been married to since fall 1984, and their three boys.