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| The Sheik stabbed Terry's arm with a fork ! |
I think that Pro-Wrestling in Japan had a basic pattern of a confrontation between good and bad. Japanese wrestlers were always baby face, and they fought against bad foreigners. Heel wrestlers were mainly Americans. They showed very cruel fouls, and Japanese hero, Baba or Inoki or others always defended their titles narrowly. That was a basic story of PURORESU.
The first bad Japanese might have been Umasosuke Ueda. He was a pupil of Rikidozan, in short he had been a friend of Baba and Inoki. But when Ueda took part in NEW JAPAN, he formed a tag team with Tiger Jeet Singh. Ueda and Singh repeated harsh fouls, and they savaged Seiji Sakaguchi and Strong Kobayashi (North American Tag Champion team) every week. It was very shocking scene that Japanese bloodied Japanese !
In ALL JAPAN, the cruelest heel team was Abdullah The Butcher and The Sheik. They often showed hard fights with The Funks, and the bloody match in The Open Tag League in 1977 is regarded as one of the best bouts in the history of Pro-Wrestling of Japan. But at the same time, it was true that these bloody Pro-Wrestling reached a limitation. We wrestling fans were certainly tired of cruel fights.
And it was natural that new stars appeared on the ring of Japan. Stan Hansen learned wrestling from Inoki, and he completed his special move Western Lariat. Bruiser Brody showed good fight with Baba, and we were surprised at his wonderful power. Hansen and Brody were not baby face nor heel. So to say, they were strong guys. I think when they appeared, the history of Pro-Wrestling in Japan changed intensely.
