Trivia / Jumbo Tsuruta

• Executive Meddling: Jumbo's 1982 retooling was part of Nippon TV's plan to transition him into the company ace. This saw Tsuruta switch the red, white and blue trunks (evocative of Amarillo and the Funks) for black trunks, to connect him to Rikidozan, and also adopt the signature moves of Lou Thesz, in order to directly connect him to the golden age of puroresu.
  • The fan contest that gave Jumbo his ring name was itself the suggestion of a television executive, who had come up with a similar contest in 1969 to name the new submission finisher developed by Antonio Inoki, which foreshadowed Inoki's singles push.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: While much of Tsuruta's acclaim in subsequent years hinges on his work in the late 80s and early 90s, he himself made statements which heavily implied that he wasn't completely comfortable in that style of wrestling. He had been trained in the old mat-based tradition of American wrestling, and considered himself a technician by nature.
• Missing Episode: Jumbo and Giant Baba's tag match in Seoul against Kintaro Oki and Kim Duk, in which they dropped the AJPW tag team titles, is the highest-rated wrestling match of all time, drawing an 88.0 rating in South Korea. As with most Korean wrestling from the period, however, no tape has surfaced.
  • A Trial Series of ten singles matches against prominent wrestlers was held from 1976-9. The ninth of these, against Kintaro Oki, surfaced on YouTube in 2020, but the fifth, against Bobo Brazil, is still missing.
• What Could Have Been
  • A 2020 Japanese biography revealed that Tsuruta was just one of four Japanese Olympian wrestlers who were scouted by AJPW, and courted by their political allies (particularly the president of the manufacturing company that produced the equipment of the Japanese amateur wrestling association). The others were Tsuruta's teammate and Chuo team captain Makoto Kamata, Tsuruta's rival (and eventual three-time Olympian) Yorihide Isogai, and Mitsuo Yoshida, a Zainichi Korean who had been barred by the International Olympic Committee from competing for Japan, but was graciously allowed by the South Korean team to join them. Kamata and Isogai would never go pro, but Yoshida eventually would for the other side...as Riki Choshu. If AJPW had gotten all four men, there's a good chance that Jumbo wouldn't have been considered nearly as special, and they very well might have not had room for Genichiro Tenryu to join a few years later.
  • NJPW booker Hisashi Shinma, most famous in America as the Kayfabe WWF President before Jack Tunney took the role, attempted to lure Jumbo to New Japan in 1975, and made another offer in the early 80s. (Shinma would end up signing Olympian wrestler Yoshiaki Yatsu in the early 80s, as an attempt to create a Tsuruta proxy for NJPW.)
  • Now-forgotten Japanese wrestler Samson Kutsuwada had plans to start a new promotion with Jumbo AND Tatsumi Fujinami as his top stars, a reoccurrence of Toyonobori's attempt to start Tokyo Pro Wrestling in the 1960s with Antonio Inoki. However, when Baba caught wind of this, he not only fired Kutsuwada, but sent messages to his competitors on what Kutsuwada had been planning, completely blacklisting him. As a result, Kutsuwada never wrestled again after 1977.
  • Jumbo's feud with Choshu arguably never got a conclusive finish, as Choshu returned to NJPW in 1987.
  • Before the murder of Bruiser Brody, Baba allegedly had plans to book him and Jumbo as a tag team against Tenryu and Stan Hansen. This was the most desired tag match (with Brody vs Hansen being the most desired singles match) in the fan vote held for the August 29, 1988 Budokan show. This show would be retooled into the Bruiser Brody Memorial Night, although the Tenryu/Hansen tag team would happen the following year.
  • The one chance that Jumbo might have gotten to work against Fujinami (they had previously worked alongside each other in a six-man tag for the same 1979 event on which Baba and Inoki reunited for one night only) was the February 1990 NJPW Dome show on which he performed as a guest. However, Fujinami was still out with a hernia he had suffered the previous year.
  • The 1990 departure of Tenryu likewise ended their rivalry due to circumstances beyond the control of booking.
  • Finally, the timing of Jumbo's hepatitis also ended his career as a meaningful main-event participant. The logic of All Japan's booking philosophy in this period dictated that there was going to be a singles match in the future wherein Jumbo put Mitsuharu Misawa over clean (no surprise pin, in other words): a match that we never got. Jumbo never got the opportunity to put over Toshiaki Kawada or Kenta Kobashi either. It's plausible that Giant Baba's last big push as a tag wrestler in 1993-4 was an adjustment made to adapt to this, giving AJPW one last Showa-period main eventer to help smooth the transition into the Four Pillars era. A 2020 biography implies that Stan Hansen was shifted into the role that Jumbo would have played: a wall that Misawa could get past, but not Kawada or Kobashi.
  • Weekly Pro Wrestling reporter and AJPW creative consultant Hidetoshi Ichinose pushed hard to include Tsuruta in the Bridge of Dreams Tokyo Dome show, and the poll the magazine held included Jumbo in the most-wanted six-man tag. Baba shot it down due to Tsuruta's health and Ichinose was forced to falsify the results of the poll so that Steve Williams took his place. (Then Steve got busted for drugs, and Johnny Ace had to fill in.)