Rikidozan

Rikid?zan (Kanji: 力道山) was a professional wrestler, known as the "Father of Puroresu" and one of the most influential men in wrestling history. He was credited with bringing the sport of professional wrestling to Japan at a time when the Japanese needed a local hero to look up to.

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Born Kim Shin-rak (Hangul: 김신락; Hanja: 金信洛) in South Hamgyong, North Korea on November 14, 1924, he travelled to Japan and trained to be a sumo wrestler. Due to the discrimination against Koreans by the Japanese at the time, Shin-rak claimed that his name was Mitsuhiro Momota (Momota being the surname of the family from Nagasaki which adopted, but later disowned, him), and used the shikona of Rikidozan. Frustrated against neverending discrimination in matches and his dojo, he gave up sumo in 1950 and made his professional wrestling debut in 1951 with a ten minute draw against Bobby Bruns. He established himself as Japan's biggest wrestling star by defeating one American wrestler after another. This was shortly after World War 2, and the Japanese needed someone who could stand up to the Americans. Rikidozan thus became immensely popular in Japan. His American opponents assisted him by portraying themselves as villains who cheated in their matches.

Kanji: Kanji (, literally "Han characters") are Chinese characters used in Japanese. Kanji are one of the five character sets used in the modern Japanese writing system, the other four being hiragana, katakana, the Roman alphabet (r?maji), and Arabic numerals....

Professional wrestler: REDIRECT Professional wrestling...

Puroresu: Puroresu () is the popular term for professional wrestling in Japan. The term comes from the Japanese pronunciation of "professional wrestling", which is shortened to puroresu ("purofesshonaru resuringu"). The term became popular among English-speaking fans due to Hisaharu Tanabe's activities in the...