I want to fight a bear

I started working at Steak Shima in Hirai, Edogawa-ku, Tokyo in April 1996 to get a new job. I have recovered from the stressful time that caused me to start missing time in FMW, but my passion for professional wrestling had already diminished and I didn't really want to do it anymore.

However, Shoji Nakamaki occasionally called me and asked me, "why don't you come to Big Japan? Just think about it for a moment."
The reason I went to Big Japan Wrestling, was because at that time, there was a story about them bringing in a wrestling bear to Big Japan, and I instinctively said "this is for me!"

I immediately contacted Nakamaki and said "A bear? I'm joining. Are you joining also?" and Nakamaki was happy and said "I'm joining. I'm joining."
Nakamaki brought me to the Big Japan office in Yokohama, where President Kojika was. "Have I really fallen this far?" is honestly my first thought when I entered the office.

There was Kojika's office with other offices above his and then and next room was a warehouse where the wrestlers trained in the ring which became their dojo. There was a shower in the corner of the dojo, and the mezzanine floor was their training camp.
Aside from that, I was also worried because President Kojika didn't know who Nakamaki was. However, he said "Matsunaga is good. Lets take them both."

However, Kojika did not really know about my success in W*ING because he was away from professional wrestling when W*ING was at its peak. Then in a story that is difficult to summarize, I told Kojika I wanted to fight a bear, and I didn't want to sign a contract, but I had no choice if I wanted to fight the bear. Then when I went to the dojo to watch the bear video, Ryuji Yamakawa, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Yuichi Taniguchi, and Gennosuke (Abdullah) Kobayashi were at the training camp at the time. They asked me if I was going to wrestle full time for Big Japan, and I said no I am just going to fight a bear.

I ended up talking to the young Japanese wrestlers and I felt sorry for them, practicing at the dojo. All four of them told me what normal training life was like, and they all practiced normally and they all wrestled smoothly. They thought that going through the same training every day was a good thing, but I told them the hard truth, that if you guys stay this way the rest of your life, and if Big Japan were to close down, other groups that pay high guarantees to wrestlers won't call you. You won't be able to survive unless you change something.

I told them how if I hadn't changed my style than none of them would know who I am. They all listened to my story seriously. W*ING does not have a dojo like Big Japan so I couldn't practice using a ring except when we were on tour. Instead we would come up with different ideas and how to sell that. Practice is important, but it's not everything when it comes to professional wrestling.

Yamakawa then showed me the bear video, but it was more of a bear working with the foreign wrestler and doing a match. This is not what I expected. I thought about if I could kick the bear, he will want to fight me, but my heart didn't burn so much for it anymore if I was just going to wrestle it.

I also didn't know what kind of match Big Japan was expecting to have with it, so I asked President Kojika questions. "Will there be customers?" "what would the temperature of the building be during the match?"

I heard if you hit or kick a bear, it would become cruelty to animals so all we could do is push each other or I would get in trouble with the animal welfare association.

However, the audience would definitely yell for me to kick the bear during the match regardless. When I asked President Kojika about kicking the bear he told me it would be a bad idea to kick the bear, "your leg will break".

I could tell my questions about fighting the bear were getting colder and colder responses from Kojika. Meanwhile while I went to the office, they were getting protest calls and faxes from the Animal Welfare Association and Kojika was too busy responding to them all for about 5 hours a day.

So the story of the bear in a wrestling match did not go much further after this and while Kojika was busy dealing with the phone calls, he told me to go get something to eat and come back, but I decided to go eat with Yamakawa and the others in the dojo. There I saw the young wrestlers preparing meals and having lunch and I thought "oh this atmosphere is nice". This was like a true indie.

When I was in FMW, I got a good guarantee and I was paid 2000 yen ($20) a day for meals, but that caused an atmosphere like this to disappear.

The men who support professional wrestling from the back

After all of that, Mr. Nakamaki continued to continued to invite me to join Big Japan even contacting Steak Shima where I was working as an apprentice. I remember telling him I was working at Shima and he bothered to look up the phone number of the store.

I remember listening to Nakamaki and thinking he was very enthusiastic and would say "the bear was no good, but you should join."

I ended up promising him I would go to Big Japan, but I didn't want to lose my Mr. Danger reputation. I wanted to do a scaffold match for my first show.

There was a lot of work put in to putting the scaffold together and I saw it first hand. I saw the work that Eiji Tosaka put in to making the match work and I thought "Big Japan might be interesting."

On July 19, 1996 I went to the ring for Big Japan for the first time. The construction site scaffold death match was the last match I tried to do in FMW on May 5, 1996 at Kawasaki Stadium. I tried to do it like a W*ING era scaffold death match where it would be an aerial platform with barbed wire and glass underneath.

As you can see, there aren't many people in the world of professional wrestling, but there are many men behind the scenes who support professional wrestling. Is it these professional wrestling sale people who have supported professional wrestling. Shinya Endo of W*ING, Hideki Takahashi in FMW.

They don't show up at all, but if they were lost, the promotions would collapse right away. In the W*ING era, Mr. Pogo said "Even if Pogo quits, W*ING will not close down, but if Mr. Endo quit it would." It was Mr. Endo's power that W*ING managed to keep going even though they were having to borrow three months ahead of their funds to pay everybody.

He was more regretful of the failure of the W*ING Fire Death Match than I was, saying, "We lost our great chance to ever surpass FMW".

FMW Director Takahashi also had a number of misconduct that benefited FMW thanks to his hand sold ticket handling while having a difficult time with FMW. Now in reality, both FMW and Big Japan have an advance, but if a big match show will require 1000 tickets that need to be hand printed with a majority of them not being sold, and if it is a local tour, creating just 20-30 tickets hand tickets every night can be rough.

After all, the people selling the tickets and doing this hard work are not in the limelight at all, even though professional wrestling is such a powerful industry.

There are a lot of people and offices setup in rural areas. In Big Japan, Great Kojika sells his own tickets. A good thing about that is that it means Big Japan does not give out any free complimentary tickets. This was the first promotion that did not give away any free tickets. Every other promotion besides Big Japan and Battlarts give away complimentary tickets for Korakuen Hall shows and other wrestlers don't care and I don't understand it.

When I was in FMW, I met Mr. Takahashi at the entrance of every show and asked "How many tickets were sold by the ticket agency today? How many did you sell?" However there were no other wrestlers asking these questions in FMW. Even if a wrestler himself promoted the show, they wouldn't ask how much was actually sold.

It seems that FMW wrestlers have started to ask since I have left, but this was the case when I was there.

By the way, when I was in FMW when Mr. Onita was still there, I was talking to Mr. Arai and he said "I don't know much about professional wrestling, but being the president of a professional wrestling organization is stupid".

Therefore, when Mr. Arai assumed the position of FMW President, I thought "What?" at the very least, with some advice, I told Mr. Arai "it's definitely better to not borrow." I told him that many times, as I know that professional wrestling organizations are not profitable. When FMW was reborn and filled Korakuen Hall, FMW had a lot of star wrestlers and the box office expenses were too high.

Still, on the sales side, Mr. Takahashi worked hard and managed to do a difficult situation, and finally DirecTV said "FMW is interesting".

Mr. Arai now must be paying high broadcasting fees to be able to air FMW on television for a fee. Mr. Arai thought he could bet on his life on what he thought was impossible.

W*ING tried to do the same thing, but in the end it was too expensive to find such a service. So when I think about it now, I am watching Mr. Arai on FMW become very diligent.

There are two ways of managing an independent promotion. Mr. Arai's method and President Kojika of Big Japan way of low cost management. He thoroughly reduces expenses in both the premises and offices giving only pocket money to the wrestlers who can not attract customers.

President Kojika thinks that if you keep the cost down, then we won't be in the red, and we will all be able to eat. To put it simply, it's stingy, but he feels that's exactly what he needs to be.

I'm an incomprehensible fighter

The traces of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and Vale Tudo go back in Japan as far as the The Perry Expedition (aka Arrival of the Black ships when in the 1850's the US Navy came over and try to force the end of Japan's 220 year policy of isolation to Japanese ports for American trade) there were people that said when the black ships invaded Japan and that battles in the street took place.

Once upon a time professional wrestlers would fight fighters of other genres and often various excuses were made for the result of the fight. "I would have won if there was no rope escape" or "I would have won if there no time limit of 30 seconds or less on the ground fighting."

At that time there were many people who advocated "the strongest style is professional wrestling" but they were asked what is the basis of this?

Because professional wrestling had the least restrictions of the rules of all martial arts. Before Vale Tudo began, martial arts were broadly divided in striking and martial arts, each of which was self sufficient.

Because of martial arts you could use techniques that were professional wrestling, it was said to be called mixed martial arts.

However, since the advent of the 1st Ultimate Fighting Championship on November 12, 1993 in Denver, Colorado, USA, professional wrestling is no longer the most rule free martial art. It was everything goes besides biting, blinding, and groin attacks.

Ultimate Fighting Championship received a lot of attention and was compared with professional wrestling. In the end, various wrestlers challenged Ultimate Fighters, but at that time it can be said that they were completely defeated besides Ken Wayne Shamrock and Dan Severn.

However, when the Japanese martial arts world had found itself in a situation, and for some reason I was asked to participate in Vale Tudo.

The offer came from "U-Japan" Japan's first Vale Tudo tournament in August 1996 for a match, as I was asked "Please compete in Ultimate Fighting. When I asked "why me?" I was told "they wanted a person who does dangerous death matches to enter the octagon". I mentioned the names of various wrestlers that could do it instead of me. He replied "I can't sell tickets with them because they don't have name recognition".

Of course, if you think of it just for box office purposes, that would make sense. However, I thought it would be impossible to do it without a practice period of half a year first so I told him no. He asked again, but it was the day after I had signed my contract with Big Japan, so I refused again.

I ended up withdrawing from Big Japan because of the New Japan Great Muta Tokyo Dome situation and in October U-Japan came calling again. "Matsunaga you withdrew from Big Japan. Can you please think about it as we don't have an opponent for Dan Severn?" I couldn't say anything so I agreed to do it.

Of course I didn't want to do it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought when will I ever have a chance against Dan Severn in Vale Tudo again?

I thought it doesn't matter if I get injured as long as I don't die and the referee will stop the fight before I die. The guarantee pay was also attractive as just one fight was 1,000,000 yen ($10,000 dollars) as that will help fund my new steak house store.

I knew I had no chance of winning. but I didn't think it was a bad thing for professional wrestling when I didn't win.

I like the challenge of the unknown so competing for U-Japan on the spot was that. I also presented my conditions for the fight. The use of fire and barbed wire pads would be allowed. My conditions were politely rejected, and I understood and accepted.

The problems were President Kojika who opposed my contract for the fight. I can't write any behind-the-scenes battles I had with him about it, but in the end, President Kojika refused for me to participate in U-Japan like a stubborn father who wouldn't break.

I decided not to listen to him and the fight was officially announced three weeks to the day of it. Severn knew it would be no battle so he did not mind. I trained in Sambo and worked on my guard position with Noboru Yaguchi of God Fighting Crusaders.

The fight took place on November 17, 1996 at the Ariake Coliseum and I symbolized W*ING as I came with a iron wire bat in one hand with the support of the fans I headed to the octagon. But the power of Dan Severn is out of the standard physical strength and he has strong ground fighting. As far as arm strength, one of his arms has the strength of both of my arms.

I tried to get some offense in with my student level sambo skills, but I was just overwhelmed by the power and magnitude.

If the other person has superhuman strength, you can't win even if you're a sumo wrestler unless you have experience as Makuuchi (top division in sumo) and in the end I was humiliated by losing via KO in the octagon.

However, although Severn was definitely strong, he is the type that will not play along with his opponent, he played along in our fight, so fans said "the fight he had with Mr. Matsunaga is the best fight Severn has had in Japan as it was interesting".

I also heard an interesting story as Severn has a personality that no matter who his opponent is, he seems to check the past records of his opponent when the match is scheduled. Of course, I had no previous fights, so to study video of mine, he watched my W*ING death matches and it seems that Severn was creeped out by me before our fight.

He must have though "Does Matsunaga feel no pain? Will he give up his even if his arm is broken?" Severn had unprecedented aggressive behavior because he was afraid of me. Apparently I was thought by Severn to be a "incomprehensible fighter".

In the end, the bear's visit to Japan was largely opposed by the animal protection groups, but it was scrapped for good when the wrestling bear suddenly died and the contract Big Japan had signed for the bear returned to a blank state.

Barbed wire is the answer to the problem in a Ultimate Fighting contest

After that, people misunderstood how I lost to Severn so easily. So I want to write it clearly to the W*ING freaks. The rules stated barbed wire could not be used in the match. Also, it was not a fight, but it was a competition.

In his book "Fun Friends in Professional Wrestling" Sambo Asako wrote "Mitsuhiro Matsunaga appeared with a barbed wire bat, but I wonder why he didn't use it. If he would have, Dan Severn would have been in a blood festival with that weapon. He didn't do that though, so he wasn't in the octagon not as a professional wrestler, but as a fighter. It's a little disappointing to me as someone who was in the same organization as him. He did have his barbed wire around his forehead though, as you could feel him represent the indies with his enthusiasm."

Also, while I was shooting "The Soul of the Ring", I was told by Asakusa Kid, "I wanted you to use the barbed wire bat. Why didn't you hit him with the barbed wire bat?"

Please think calmly. For example, in karate or a sumo match, if you hit with a barbed wire bat before the start of the match, you will be disqualified immediately and you will permanently banished.

I also don't like when wrestlers say they would try Vale Tudo, but then never take any action. I have respect for Yoji Anjo who fought against Rickson Gracie at Rickson's Dojo in Los Angeles, and Kendo Nagasaki who fought against Zane Frazier in a shooting competition. Katsumi Usuada of Battlarts also might have lost, but he fought in a Vale Tudo match. Therefore, there is something about a wrestler who lies and the repeat the act of trying to sell his name using the Ultimate Fighter name that I can not forgive.

In IWA Japan, Tarzan Goto said "I'm going to the Ultimate Fighter Tournament", and Yukihiro Kanemura said "I'm interested in Ultimate Fighting, I am the Ultimate Weapon". If that's the case I would like to see him take on Nobuhiko Takada to the death. Mr. Onita also said, "Vale Tudo and professional wrestling have different rules," but that excuse is strange. In that case, I would like Mr. Onita to fight a Ultimate Fighter with different rules. The only difference in the rules of professional wrestling and the rules of ultimate fighting is whether or not a foul within 5 seconds is allowed or not, even if a foul within 5 seconds is allowed, there's a reason for it in professional wrestling. It is established because there's a understanding on why it's allowed. If you tell a Ultimate Fighter you are allowed to foul within 5 seconds, then they will definitely kill their opponent in 5 seconds.

For professional wrestlers, what Kodo Fuyuki said was the opposite. Fuyuki said Vale Tudo is "not different rules, but different dimensions", and he does not say he does not say professional wrestling is the strongest, but he says professional wrestling has elements of show so it's strange to compare.

If you want to say you are the strongest, then I look forward to your Vale Tudo appearance The Demon and The Ultimate Weapon.

Pros and Cons of Living Creature Death Matches

After entering Big Japan, I had matches with piranhas, scorpions and all kind of radical creatures. However, it was a regret that I couldn't fight the crocodile. To be honest, I planned on entering Korakuen Hall on January 2, 1998 with a crocodile with a muzzle on my shoulder.

However, the crocodile suddenly died the day before. It was my own crocodile after all, no one would lend me a crocodile to use for a death match. So I got the crocodile and he was raised by my me.

By the way, the piranhas came from the aquarium and the scorpions in a container at my store, but when waiting for the crocodile get big enough to be used for a death match, I had him in the back of the store where it was cold. I was thinking about leaving a little space in the front so customers could see it.

However, in the end the crocodile did not seem to grow as expected, if it would have grown over 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) I would have fought it, but it never did. It seems that it was not kept in a cold enough environment to grow. I thought about having a poisonous spider death match with a tarantula after the very successful scorpion death match. However, an accident could occur using living creatures for a death match I received a letter saying that import restrictions could occur, and I was thinking I was going to have to stop having living creatures for death matches.

I admit the death matches I did wasn't right in the spirit of animal welfare, but again, I can't give up my romance. I never kept the crocodile to kill it. I wanted to challenge it after understanding how dangerous it was. It's not likely I am going to beat the crocodile.

To be honest, I observed the ecology of the crocodile and it seemed like a reckless challenge. The crocodile I kept was originally wild, and I never got used to its habits. If I were to fight it underwater, I wouldn't win at all, and even on land, if you take into account the power of the crocodile, the probability that I can win at most is 5%.

But I still want to fight the crocodile. It may seem like a silly act to people around me, but I definitely don't want to give up this fight. I have some ideas for a match with a crocodile. I will announce it some day, but there is no doubt that some time I will fight a crocodile. I declare it here. I don't know if there will opposition of an animal welfare group, but if you think deeply, is keeping an animal really that selfish?

If you are a person that is looking out for what is right of it and keeping it protected, is it really bad to keep it as a pet? By the way, even the pet shop owner who loves animals would ask me, what kind of death match with his animals was I planning on doing this time? "How about an electric eel?", he would ask happily.

"Mr. Matsunaga, the end of a professional wrestler is pathetic"

When I thought about writing this book, I wanted to mention Mr. Chin. While we were in FMW I would see wrestlers mess with him.

When I joined the regular FMW team, I went to over to shake his hand and said "Nice to meet you, I'm Matsunaga." and he said "call me Chin" and our relationship started from there.

Tarzan Goto targeted Chin though. During a tour there was a three story inn we stayed at, and Mr. Chin was given the third story which had no no elevator and would he would have to go up the steps. He said "I have bad legs, why do I have to stay in the third floor?" and he would end up eating his meal on the first floor lobby instead of going up the steps to his room.

I was the only wrestler that Mr. Chin would talk to. He told me, "Mr. Matsunaga, the end of a professional wrestler is pathetic. I made 50,000 yen ($500) a night during the Rikidozan era." Mr. Chin's FMW salary was 20,000 yen  ($200) a show and 2,000 yen ($20) for a day for a meal.

He lived with his wife, daughter, and son. However, he was only a part time jobber in FMW so he was only making 200,000 yen ($2,000) a month. He wouldn't eat anything in the morning and would only eat a cup of ramen for lunch. At night, he ate yakisoba while drinking a bottle of beer and said "this will save 1000 yen ($10) out of the the 2000 yen ($20) for meals". When Mr. Chin was fired from FMW, he didn't seem to have any insurance or pension, so I was worried what would happen to him after that. About a year later, Mr. Chin died.

Rather than being said about his death, I thought "Mr. Chin doesn't have to live a hard life anymore. Many fans thought that Mr. Chin was still doing professional wrestling as a hobby while he was in FMW, but in reality he wasn't.

There was another wrestler that I spent time with during the end of their career and that was Dick Murdoch in W*ING. He was very fond of me. Before the shows he would help train me, Kanemura, Miyake, and Tokuda in the ring and would say "Matsunaga and Kanemura are the only two that will make."

As expected that would upset Tokuda who would say "Why should I have to do this?". Murdoch was no longer being called by New Japan so he began working for W*ING. Each tour though his guarantee would go down. It started at $5,000 a tour, then went down to $3,000 a tour, then eventually $2,000 yen a tour therefore Murdoch didn't seem to have a very good life during W*ING and he would end up passing away suddenly a couple of years afterwards.

Kim Duk would often say "I made $3,000 dollars while working for New Japan" and he would say he wouldn't come in to W*ING for less than $3,000 but at that time W*ING could only offer him $2,000 dollars and said "if you don't take that offer, we won't use you." and Duk would take the offer. Recently Duk has gotten divorced and sold his American house and had moved to South Korea and lives alone and only does wrestling in South Korea.

By the end of my time in FMW I was very depressed mentally. Mr. Chin, Dick Murdoch, Kim Duk all three of these professional wrestlers ended their careers unhappy. It made me think after that my second career in professional wrestling was going to be doing to do what I dreamed of doing and not just do it for the money.

I was able to gain a certain degree of name recognition and I began to get bored to continue wrestling for a living, so I gradually started to dislike wrestling and wanted to stop for the time being. So I tried to get a side job when my contract was due, but I couldn't find a side job as the search didn't go well.

The first step to a second life

At the time I happened to enter into popular steak store in Tokyo called Steak Shima. The steaks were so cheap there I was surprised at how good the steaks were, and while I was at the restaurant, I gradually began to wonder if I could open a steak shop myself.

At that time, I started talking to Keiichi Takahashi, president of Steak Shima. One day I said to President Takahashi "Actually I am thinking about my second life. Can I work here?" and got President Takahashi's consent.

However, I wondered if President Takahashi wasn't serious as he didn't get in touch with me for a few days so before the staff came in one day I went to the store and started doing the work.

I came in and put up the signboard, cleaned inside the store, cleaned the toilet, lined up the tables, and arranged the sauces. When I first started working there as an active professional wrestler that was cleaning the toilet, it was like I was admitting I was crazy, but I had to start from scratch in a different profession, no matter what my previous job was.

I was still a professional wrestler that was doing well, but I wanted to take the next step in my new life with Steak Shima. Eventually, I was gradually able to help with the work in the laboratory. I peeled the shrimp, I scraped the carrots, and finally touched the meat. For the time being, it became a daily routine to help with the preparation work from the opening of the store to 1:30, and then after that it became coming in at 2:30 after lunch until the store would close.

However, it is standing work. I didn't think it would be so painful to stand all day long. Wrestling is 10, 15, 20 minutes at the longest but in the general society if you work a day, that's the end of the day I completely forgot about such a natural matter of course. However, even if it was hard, I couldn't go back to professional wrestling, so I pushed myself into it, so I dyed my trademark blonde hair black, and when I think about my year at Steak Shima, I was able to overcome the difficult time I had in FMW.

"If I lose here, I will never be able to have a public job again and I would have to go back into professional wrestling and I will be stuck. That was my support to keep going. One day I had a conversation with President Takahashi said something like "I want to start my own store, but I don't have enough capital, and if I continue to work here, I won't ever make the money, so I would like to make another profit with professional wrestling."

I had savings from the FMW era, but it was apparent that it was not enough to have a store. That's why I came back to Big Japan, but I was still in training and continued to work there on Saturdays and Sundays so that I wouldn't lose the skills.

Road to opening Mr. Danger's Steak and Grill

After one year of training, I finally decided to set up my own shop but when I consulted with President Takahashi to find a shop and he told me he did not use a real estate agent, he used his own eyes. He told me I should look around for it. I went around the vacant buildings with a signboard and found the current store. The inside of the store is quite large, the price is cheap, there is parking and it is easy to park on the street. I also liked the fact that there was a Steak Shop B close by. Steak Shop B is popular with young people because it is open until midnight, and it is a long established store with many chains in Tokyo for 20 years. I also liked the steakhouse liked the meat of B when I would go there as a professional wrestler.

I decided to rent the building and turn it into a restaurant with the ambition to make my restaurant a steak shop more popular than B. The location was a low traffic place in the downtown so it I could open the store for 7,000,000 yen ($70,000) at that time, I had around 3,500,000 yen ($35,000) and the rest was from the bank. I was going to borrow it all from the bank but I stumbled on some cash flow first. Banks and financial institutions didn't like paying me because they would say "what if a professional wrestler gets sick or gets injured falling down?"

Normally when a professional wrestler opens a store, there is always a wrestler Tanimachi (sponsor) who will provide financial support for it, but I am not the type of person to flirt with someone because they have money. There was no tanimachi for my store. On the contrary, the people who supported me were the people who came to my store to help, they didn't give me financial help, but they helped me behind the scenes. That was the only type of help I had gotten. In fact, I once angered a promoter who ate with me, because I said "Don't worry. I'll will pay for the both of us."

Around that time, when I had a problem financially because all my cash flow went towards opening the store, I became acquainted with a professional wrestling fan and decided to go out with them for a meal. That person had a lot of relationships with wrestlers, but he just got to know me and we didn't have such a deep relationship, so when I paid, he said "Oh, that's okay, I will pay for it". He told me I had treated him well by talking with him, so he didn't mind paying and then a few days later he called me and told me he would lend me money to help me start up the restaurant.

He ended up transferring 5,000,000 Yen ($50,000) to me which really surprised me. I hurriedly put on a guarantor, prepared a loan book with a stamp and went to pay the bill, but the person said I didn't need a loan book. They told me to please keep the money. I don't know if I could have opened the store without that person giving me the 5,000,000 Yen. I was full of feelings that I couldn't thank the person enough. On April 15, 1997, the sister store of Steak Shima called "Mr. Danger's Steak and Grill Shop" was opened.

The world that crosses is not sweet

When the store opened, a wreath arrived from Director Aoyagi. I had been isolated from the director for some time, so I was happy and thought "Hey, he cares even when I am far away" I was a wrestler running a restaurant and for reference I would contact former New Japan wrestler Killer Khan who runs the "Tavern Khan-chan"

What I learned from Killer Khan was that because the store is sold as a professional wrestler store, it would be meaningless for professional wrestling fans to come to see me and me not be at the store. Customers came in the first six days the store was open as I prepared the meat and cooked it, but it was harder than I had imagined. In order to reduce the cost of starting up the store, I used the same fan that the building came with from the previous tavern, and it barely made any wind. I couldn't stand the heat of grilling the meat anymore. It took 8 hours to prepare the meat the day before the opening, and after that I prepared the meat for 2 to 3 hours every day, but because it was so crowded, I couldn't ever catch up and had to keep preparing and did not get to go to sleep. After the first six days, I finally ran out of meat. I got mad at the main store Steak Shima. I asked if they could help me out, and Takahashi got very angry, I had no choice but to bow my head.

When I started working for Steak Shima, all I had to do was cut and bake the steak. However, it is difficult to get good meat at a low price, and if it is sirloin or fillet, you only have ti buy steak shaped meat and cut it out, but because the meat we use to keep the cost low, it takes a lot of time to prepare, and it is said that it takes two years of training to prepare it well with just the kitchen knife technology, so in reality it takes another year to train that I had considering the technical aspects. It would have been better to open the store after I had raised my skill with the kitchen knife. However, at the time I was also impatient. I had a desire to own my own store as soon as possible. So, as I noticed later, as a result, I got angry at President Takahashi because I cut off the prepared meat.

I was hoping it would be easier after starting my own store than working at Steak Shima, but I was the only one with any experience as everyone else working with me was amateurs. I had to realize that I have to give up all my feelings of comfort. Half a year after opening the store, I thought I would die more than from any death match. Even after that, President Takahashi did not want my store to fail. I did not either and I also decided to take no days off except Wednesdays which is a regular holiday for the first year of a store. In fact, I kept my store open during the Obon Festival (Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors)

I also thought about adding news things to the menus and various new things through trials and errors. Initially one Danger Steak was 2380 Yen but then I started offering it for 1980 Yen for a limited time. This became popular, and customers began to come in from the long established Steak Shop B. With the increase in regular customers, we increased the number of employees. This was the result of my first year of the store.

God's announcement, professional wrestlers are lazy

If you start your own business, you will be having long days. Initially when I started I worked from 9:30 in the morning to 2 in the morning, and I couldn't catch up unless I prepared for it outside of business hours. I couldn't take much time off, and when I thought about my life when I was doing professional wrestling, when it was a tough day, suddenly a message from god came to my mind. "Professional wrestling is a lazy job". Except for practice time, professional wrestling is 10 minutes or more of work a day.

Of course, trainees have hard training and chores, but after they clear that time and get to a certain level, they are not force to practice and just practice as much as they want. To put it simply, for human beings, the shorter the suffering, the easier it is.

For example, in junior high everyone was suppose to run 1500 meters (almost a mile) and I remember it was very difficult to run seven and a half laps around the school yard. However, if someone had said "if you run 1500 meters at full power in the morning and after that you can play the rest of the day" no one would have had any problem running then.

Another example is if you had two options. One is to go to the office every day and the other is if you hurt a part of your body with a knife, you can have a normal salary without ever going to the office. However, suppose God says "Every time you hurt your body, your lifespan will be shortened by one day each day you hurt your body". At first, you don't want to hurt your body with a knife and shorten your life, but then you can't get up because of a hangover, or something unpleasant is happening at work, so you gradually hurt your body with a knife. As it goes on...once, twice, three times you get use to hurting your body and you don't have the fear or feel the pain anymore. By that time, even if your life span is shortened and you just say I don't mind making it to 70 anyway, I am okay dying at 60 and chopping my body with a knife every day. That's a professional wrestler.

Professional wrestlers are slammed on the mat every day with extreme techniques, hit on the head with a chair, cut open and bleed. There is no doubt that the lifespan is shortened because even though the professional wrestler himself knows it's going to happen, he can't stop because it's easier to suffer a short time, so he's a lazy person.

The world of professional wrestling is the last paradise

The life of a professional wrestler is about two weeks on a tour and then a few weeks off. So when you were off tour, every day was really Sunday. "Today, I wasted a day and tomorrow will the same, and then the day after tomorrow will be the same" even for me I was spending my time sleeping on the sofa. Still I like to train, so I am going to practice hard. However, no one would complain if I didn't. As far as I know, many wrestlers lives are irregular and stay up all night, sleep the whole morning, then wake up in the afternoon and just play Nintendo before going out and having fun. Also, there are many wrestlers who go out repeatedly and drink somewhere.

Still, professional wrestling fans may think, "Pro-Wrestlers get so bloody and scary". A lot of them are so use to being scarred up and bloody that they don't even think about it. Therefore, the more you are dyed in the professional wrestling world, the more you can not integrate into society. Normally, even if a professional wrestler opens a store, he does not want to start from scratch and go back to having to train at something. However, I don't want to insult those who failed at life in the general public and returned to professional wrestling with debt. So, even if I had a hard time getting my restaurant going, I chose the safest method, jumping into a thriving store and learned from scratch.

Even if I had just served food without such training, amateur cooking is only a temporary job. If I had just learned the basics while continuing to be a full time professional wrestler, I wouldn't have been able to learn properly and train in preparation for cooking with a kitchen knife. There are many professional wrestlers that retired and went into society and they eventually lost to society and returned back to the world of professional wrestling. In the old days, Terry Funks, even Mr. Onita, who said that he would never return, came back soon after he retired. So did Pogo. That's why, unlike a professional baseball player or sumo wrestler, the professional wrestling world is a world that easily accepts retired wrestlers. So my conclusion is "The world of professional wrestling is the last paradise of the 20th century".

For the 21st century, the world of professional wrestling must change, and in fact there are already some buds beginning to arise and come out. For example, Tsuyoshi Kosaka of Rings, Kazushi Sakuraba of Takada Dojo, and Kazuo Takahashi of Pancrase. We're in a era where fans won't be convinced unless they're strong enough to compete in Vale Tudo. A lazy person can't beat an Ultimate Fighter, and if he were to win, it's strange. But don't get me wrong, I am not saying only shoots can survive. Even though I personally don't like FMW's Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka they have well trained bodies for being indie wrestlers.

I felt like I wouldn't have lost to Mr. Onita if my body would have been in better condition that night, so I want to support myself. If the treatment and evaluation of athletes who practice hard and building up a greedy going up against athletes with fluffy bodies doesn't change, professional wrestling in the 21st century will be ruined.

The content of the matches of matches in professional wrestling in the 20th century may remain, but the era of wrestlers of being idiots and not practicing needs to end. There will be a day where the old constitution will be destroyed and eliminated.

In conclusion in June 1998, when I had a conversation with with Mr. Tarzan Yamamoto in "Weekly Fight" and I said, "I will publish a book that explains what professional wrestling is a easy to understand manner. Mr. Yamamoto said "you're writing a book exposing wrestling!"

No, this is not a book exposing pro-wrestling. I said before the 21st century happens, I have to go over the details of the 20th century. This is not an exposing book. Me saying things like pro-wrestlers are lazy can cause a big ripple effect though.

As for myself, I dropped out of college and had various professions before becoming a professional wrestler, but in the end it didn't last long no matter where I worked.

To put it better, I don't like being used by people, and I a not the kind of person that can adapt to social work. Even if I never wrestled again I would think "well I lasted almost 10 years doing it."

Even now my cousin's child is hanging around unemployed and he seems to tell his worried parents "Mitsuhiro used to be like this, so it's okay".

Also, in a sense professional wrestling fans are in a sense, like a religion. No matter how much a professional wrestler says "pro-wrestlers are lazy people" they will just say "you do such great things in your matches".

Of course, some wrestlers may not be happy with with what I say. But on the contrary, in a world where there is only one wrestler like me, isn't it more interesting?

Mr. Dangers was able to settle in the local area first because it was hidden from the media for a year. Most of the professional wrestling fans who have come so far have called the editorial department of the pro wrestling magazine companies to find out the location of my store. For me, it's a mysterious store that hides with the location of it.

There is also an attempt to increase the joy when the fans find out about it, so I am very happy when fans come to see and check it out. Now that the regulations have been lifted, I am busy every day with a flood of interview requests. It's not always prosperous as people say, but I would like to see more and more fans come from now on.

Finally, in writing this book, I want to say thank you to all that cooperated and who supported me. Really, I can't help but enjoy the fun of professional wrestling.

Written by: Mitsuhiro Matsunaga
Translated by: BAHU
Published on: August 31, 1998