In lieu of Riki Choshu: Part Three, which will air next week, Write That Down! presents The Life & Times of Jumbo Tsuruta, a super-cut of the two episodes Fumi Saito & Justin Knipper did on Tsuruta last year.

Part One: Fumi & Justin went in deep on the early days of Tomomi “Jumbo Tsuruta, from his early days growing up in Yamanashi prefecture on his parents’ grape & peach farm, playing basketball in high school, and his quick transition to amateur wrestling which led to him competing at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

They also talked about Tsuruta’s move to pro wrestling shortly after the Olympics. Both Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki were courting the young phenom before he decided on joining All Japan Pro Wrestling, where he’d go on to become a company legend over the next few decades. They also touched on Jumbo’s early training days with the Funks in Texas, his 1984 AWA World title run, his very special rivalries with Bruiser Brody and Stan Hansen, the unique PWF ruleset, and his subsequent image change in the late ’80s ahead of the Super Generation Army era of the ’90s.

Part Two: This episode picks up in 1985–1986, which is when Riki Choshu turned heel on Tatsumi Fujinami and left NJPW for AJPW with the rest of his ISHIN-GUN crew. It was around this time that Jumbo evolved into a type of enforcer for All Japan, as his character from the ’70s and early ’80s became bigger, gruffer and meaner.

They also talked about Jumbo’s relationships to Stan Hansen and Genichiro Tenryu, two of his most important rivals, his use of the power bomb, Tenryu leaving AJPW to help form SWS, and his truly legendary Nippon Budokan match vs. a young Mitsuharu Misawa.

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