Becoming Fujiwara - Part 2
WNC Year 2 Part 4
This is part 8 of the “becoming a pro wrestler in Japan” series that I have been writing about. I purposely left some time between parts 6 and 7/8 to give me time to think about how to write this. Becoming Fujiwara had a lot of moving parts, and I wanted to get it all out of my head clearly.
I became Rionne Fujiwara on Halloween night, October 31st, 2013. I absolutely hated the Yankee Rionne name but right now, after having written part 7 and reflecting back on some of the yankee matches, I wish I’d given the gimmick more time. Truth be told, I couldn’t get over the “yankee” part and being associated as an American. No disrespect to all my American brothers and sisters, but I am a proud Australian with English and Irish heritage.
As I made my way from backstage to the lobby to sell merchandise (where wrestlers make their real money) at the end of the August 29th show, having just announced my “quest” to wrestle the wrestling master Yoshiaki Fujiwara, a gift from the wrestling Gods in the name of Maria appeared at my merchandise table. She had come to watch the show randomly.
Maria was a large woman with short, boyish hair, and something looked “different” the minute I laid eyes on her. When she spoke, I immediately realized what it was that was so different. Under the short mini skirt that was far too small for Maria, it was clear that Maria was a man.
“You’re so handsome. I want to support you, how can I buy a ticket?”
Maria’s voice was deep and husky, yet she was obviously doing her very best to look ladylike. I am far more open these days about gender and transsexuals, but in 2013, I wanted to run for the hills. Maria made several sexual passes at me right off the bat, none of which I can repeat here. I rejected them all politely, but exchanged email addresses because I was on a mission to sell 100 tickets. The email exchange was done because there were no messaging apps in 2013. Viber may have been around but nobody in Japan used it and Line (the go to app for Japanese now) was in its infancy.
The lewd emails from Maria would continue but she got the idea in the end that I didn’t want to roll that way. A side note to digress, but if a male had constantly harassed a female with some of the stuff I was getting, he’d be in jail. When we are talking about equality, it definitely should go both ways. Being equally fair and respectful, and learning how to say please and thank you, should be on the menu for all kids in all schools and homes. If I hadn’t have had that 100 ticket stipulation, I’d most likely have blocked her. Funny how things work out though, because she went on to sell a ton of tickets for me.
At the beginning of September, Tajiri and I went to Fujiwara’s office. We took a video camera.
In the video, I walk into Fujiwara’s office and bow and proceed to ask him for a single match.
“Why should I grant you this chance? You need to prove it”.
I said I would do anything to make this dream come true and Fujiwara was quick to reply;
“I have an idea. I heard your “beacon of light for foreigners” mic performance. If you can get me 100 foreigner’s signatures on a piece of paper that shows how serious you are about having this match with me, I will grant you the match”.
And there you have it. Fujiwara gave the stipulation, fed to him by phone email to his assistant by Tajiri the previous night. I promised that I would and that I’d see him in the ring on Halloween night.
It was around this time that we went on a tour of Kyushu using Tatsumi Fujinami’s bus (as we always did). The trip took us 20 hours one way and we stopped and did a show in Nagoya on the way. Joining us on this tour was Serena Deeb, who had won the WNC Women’s title from Syuri a few weeks earlier. She was over in Japan for a short three month stay and we hit it off instantly. Serena was so kind and friendly and the Japanese young boys often called her “mama bear” for her ability to melt their hearts whilst also putting her arm around them in times of much needed comfort. To say that a lot of Japanese men are awkward around women is one thing (and true), but when a beautiful former WWE superstar does it, you can see why she had them from day 1.
Joining us on the tour was Rick the Canadian, going under the Leatherface gimmick. As I mentioned in a previous post, he portrays a scary character but Rick is by far THE MOST kindest soul I’ve ever met in the wrestling business.
The bus rides were LONG. Serena and I would sit up the back and chat, but she was also a big reader and like all of us, liked her private time. Leatherface Rick slept a lot, so half the time I just had my iPhone 4 to play with. I mention this tour because something happened that decided the future of my wrestling career.
I had recently become very friendly with renowned wrestling writer Fumi Saito. For those who don’t know Fumi, he is the Japanese Dave Meltzer, and in my opinion the most knowledgeable person alive on the history of professional wrestling. Fumi has written many books, is a live Japanese language commentator for WWE, and often appears on Japanese wrestling related TV broadcasts. He also writes columns for several wrestling magazines and I was chatting to Fumi over Facebook messenger on the long tour bus ride down south about the match against Fujiwara, as we had arranged for him to write a story about me for his weekly wrestling column (below). Fumi was looking out for me from the beginning, I am very grateful for everything he’s done for me.
Fumi was very excited about the chance to wrestle Fujiwara, claiming it was such an honor and practically unheard of that a 6 month rookie would be facing a legend of the sport so early in his career.
“Do you know what would be even cooler? After the match, you should ask Fujiwara if you can be his student!”.
I kind of dismissed it in my mind. I mean, that was a very cool idea, but I was a WNC guy by default, but more importantly, I was a TAJIRI GUY.
But Fumi kept pushing.
“You should be his student, and maybe even one day you could take his name”.
Again, I dismissed it in my mind. Again, very cool idea, but not really possible I thought. Fujiwara would never accept such a thing. I thanked Fumi for his time as the bus had just pulled into a Japanese highway service area, and I told him I had to go.
To digress briefly, Japanese service areas will always and forever remind me of my work as a traveling professional wrestler in Japan. I have been to all 47 prefectures in Japan thanks to pro wrestling, and have most likely been to almost every service area possible.
Amongst wrestlers, these service areas are known for 1 thing; being the carb king of food places in Japan. You’ll usually find nothing more than ramen, fried pork or chicken curry and rice, or dumplings. This is a staple diet of being a Japanese professional wrestler on the road, and quite often the visiting gaijin wrestlers would not be too happy about the food at these services areas because they were on strict diets. You gotta look the part if you wanna be a professional wrestler, but the Japanese guys didn’t get the message when it came to eating clean.
As we stopped at the service area, I sat next to Tajiri with my fried pork curry. He ate ramen, which is basically all I have ever seen him eat on the road and whilst out drinking.
Tajiri and Fumi had been working together doing commentary for the WNC replays. Before that they were doing SMASH commentary together, and I mentioned Fumi’s idea of asking Fujiwara to be his student, saying that Fumi had also said it would be cool to one day take the name too. I never intended it to mean to take the name straight after the match and I don’t believe Fumi did either. Tajiri heard it as such and said “that is a great idea!”.
My free time on the bus gave me plenty of time to send out hundreds of emails to everyone I knew. I sold roughly 40 tickets in the first three weeks and Tajiri basically said that even if I didn’t get 100, the match would be on if I could get close to 100 and that they’d just say I sold 100. He was over the moon at 40, can you imagine how he felt when the final number of 278 tickets came in? Yes, you read that correctly. I sold almost 3 times the amount I was supposed to. How did I do it? It came down to multiple things such as Maria helping a lot, my hard work and hustle, and the kindness of the Japanese wrestling fans and people.
I spent many nights in the gay area of Tokyo, the famous 2-chome of Shinjuku, going around to bars and putting up posters for the shows. I got to meet the transgender community and the gay community and they were a mixed bag of funny, sensitive, out going, secure in their sexuality, insecure in their sexuality, introverted, bunch of people you’ll ever meet. Any adjective you can find, there was someone there who fit it. They were an aggressive bunch, constantly hitting on me and straight up asking if I would go home with them. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for me, I was strictly on a ticket selling mission. And what a mission it was turning into.
Maria sold 47 tickets alone for me. Of the 278 tickets I sold, I kept the 20% commission on all of them as well. I did take Maria to dinner for all her help a few days before the show, but I dragged Tajiri along because I didn’t want to go alone. He asked Maria if her rather large breasts were real and she told him to feel them to see if there were. He did. They weren’t real of course but she was happy. I laughed, and refused to touch when it was “my turn”. I am a gentleman, I told her. I don’t do that. In truth I was still getting used to the idea of a man wanting to be a woman and thought it best to keep my hands to myself.
I sold tickets to basically EVERYONE I knew. All my friends were there, even the ones who didn’t like wrestling, including the ones that were already sick of me hounding them for months about buying tickets to wrestling shows. Eric, who you will remember passed away in 2017 aged just 39, and was the guy who introduced me to Ihara Kickboxing Gym where I met the fortune teller who introduced me to Akira, was one of the loudest in the stadium.
I sold 8 tickets that people had no intention of using. I had Japanese people calling me up saying things like;
“I can’t come to the show because I live far away, but I really want you to have this match with Fujiwara so I’ll buy a ticket. Please give me seat to someone who needs it”.
or things like
“I am coming alone, but let me buy two tickets to support you”.
And this is where I tie in the previous post’s section about Japanese fans some more. Japanese fans are very kind and because this was not in public where their public face wouldn’t be visible, they could show me how much they really wanted to support me, even from afar.
One thing I was very worried about was on-the-day cancellations. It happened all the damn time and I used to get every excuse under the sun. Usually people would walk up to the ticket counter at the venue and say “Rionne booked me a ticket”, and they’d collect and pay for it then. I’d get my 20% (WNC paid well, other companies pay 10%) commission but if they didn’t turn up, then they didn’t pay and it looked very bad on the wrestler. This is how I bought my ticket to meet Akira the year before when I went to a SMASH show to try and break into the business. He made me pay 4000 yen to get into the arena, pocketed the small commission from the ticket, and probably thought he’d never see me again.
I think over 100 grandmas died, and 150 dogs ate their owner’s homework during my time selling tickets for WNC. To counter this, for the Fujiwara match I used WNC’s expensive prepaid private post service without the company knowing. I told every person who bought a ticket that I would post the tickets to them at my expense, but they had to wire transfer me the money first. There was no way I was not going to lose this opportunity and mostly everyone agreed to the deal. I sent the tickets out to them via this private post system and it cost me nothing but it would have cost WNC about 500 yen/$5 to send each ticket out. To me, that was nothing more than a small expense as far as I was concerned. Still, the company didn’t need to know about it and I didn’t tell them about it. It worked, because miraculously nobody cancelled on the day.
The tickets came rolling in and even on the day of the match I was still selling them. Final number, as I mentioned already, was 278. Of that number, I think only about 40 of them were foreigners, and the rest all Japanese. Nobody cared, and nobody ever knew that I didn’t make the 100 foreigner count. Tajiri was the next best ticket seller on something like 83. If you’ve been following the blog series, you’ll know that ex-porn star turned wrestler Koharu Hinata was also a great ticket seller, and you can bet your bottom dollar that she came in third, on a figure I believe was around the 67 mark.
Let me be very clear about selling out Korakuen Hall. It’s VERY hard to do. Only the big boys do it, and the big boys are New Japan Pro Wrestling. Other companies like Dragon Gate, Noah, DDT might do it every now and then, but it just doesn’t happen that often. We sold close to 1200 tickets for that show, with Korakuen Hall’s capacity capped at 1300 or so. In these days of COVID-19, it’s even less. Tajiri, Koharu, and myself accounted for almost 500 of these tickets ourselves. What an effort.
During the period of the Kyushu tour and the night of the 31st of October, Tajiri and I had not spoken about the Fujiwara name or the student idea. It was on my mind a lot however and over those few months I had warmed to the idea. I hated the Yankee Rionne name and was desperate to get rid of it and this was my chance to rebrand myself.
As were were stretching at Korakuen Hall before the show, having finished putting up the ring, I approached Tajiri about the name change.
“Do you remember what Fumi said about the name change? Should we do that tonight?”
It didn’t start out as a name change, but it morphed into that somehow between the three of us (Fumi, Tajiri, and myself). Tajiri laughed a little and replied;
“If you have the balls to ask Fujiwara, go for it”.
I went up to Fujiwara, sheepishly. He was stretching ringside and I was nervous as hell.
“I heard you sold a shit load of tickets. How many women did you have to shag to do that? I’m just joking! Well done!”
I laughed nervously and began to dribble out some kind of Japanese sentence that would have went something like this;
“Um, sir, Mr. Fujiwara, sir. This is not my idea sir, um… it’s Tajiri’s idea but I was wondering if… umm… I mean if you don’t mind of course, umm… if I could become your kayfabe student and take your last name after the match? If it’s possible um… if it’s not, umm”
Fujiwara’s expression changed immediately and he burst out in German and English.
“Oh my god! Schizer!”
Schizer means shit. Like as in “holy shit!”… Kumicho had been a student of Karl Gotch and had also wrestled in Germany, rooming with none other than Dave Finlay on a few occasions.
I thought that he would immediately shoot down the request. I mean, I barely knew the guy! I had only met him once in his office to ask for the match.
He smiled and agreed, and then put out his hand. We shook and that was it. For months there had been stories written in magazines and online about how Fujiwara was my wrestling idol and how I desperately wanted to be like him. He thought it was fabulous and I didn’t have the heart to ever tell him that it wasn’t true. In the days after the match and to this day, that has changed though. He is one of the guys I look to, and I always try to steal his various methods of getting into the waki-gatame, the Fujiwara arm bar that I inherited from him.
When the time came for the match, you could feel the buzz of the crowd. One of their own was having this match, and it had been built up PROPERLY (rare in Japan) for the past 2 months. Pantera, the masked wrestler from Mexico, was also an amazing costume maker and he made me a jacket for the event, although it cost me a pretty penny. I asked him for something similar but not the same as a Cody Rhodes jacket I had seen, but he copied it identically. There was not much I could do about it because he gave it to me the night before. I figured that since I was in Japan, nobody would notice it. I was right, nobody did although someone in the crowd for a 2CW show in Syracuse New York in 2014 spotted it and screamed out;
“Nice jacket Cody Rhodes!”
Embarrassing. I was just about to wrestle Matt Hardy in the USA and that threw me off a little.
I don’t remember much about the match itself, other than that he wrestled rings around me. I was so out of my depth against him, kind of like Gary Neville was when he was managing Valencia (if you’re a football (soccer) fan you’ll get it). The most I do remember was the introduction, the fans and my friends cheering me on wildly and loudly.
I got the loudest pops (cheers) of the night. The crowd was trained, they knew what to do. In fact, they were so loud that Fujiwara and I completely messed up the mic performance at the end. It was my fault, I should have said it clearly that I wanted to be his student and take his name. Instead, in the heat of the moment, I bowed to the mat, and mumbled that I wanted to be his student. He pointed at me and replied;
“From tomorrow onwards, you’ll be known as Rionne Fujiwara”.
We hugged again and we left the ring together, which is unusual as wrestlers come to the ring from different sides and leave the way they came in. We showed solidarity by leaving together.
And that was how I became Fujiwara. Nothing to do with the man himself, everything to do with Tajiri and Fumi Saito. I ended up becoming his real student however, attending his seminars and private lessons regularly over the years before finding a real home under the catch as catch can wrestling tutelage of Yukoh Miyato at Snake Pit Tokyo, Japan.
Here is the match vs. Fujiwara. One keyboard warrior wrote online that I was a poor man’s Davey Richards, and that I completely sucked in the match. Well mate, if you knew what I’d been through to even get that match, doing it in 8 months from my debut, maybe you’d not have been so quick to judge!
On a completely unrelated to me ending, here is another match involving Fujiwara. Minoru Suzuki, Fujiwara’s student and the famous New Japan and Pancrase wrestler is in the match but so is Yuki Kondo. Kondo is the godfather of Brazilian Jujitsu in Japan and a former judo and MMA fighter who was forced to retire due to an injury suffered in a fight. He is also a massive pro wrestling fan. Look how seamlessly he is able to just step into the match and do his grappling. This is because it’s the Japanese style of pro wrestling, very much deeply rooted in Japanese martial arts and Western wrestling.