All right, so let's do a little visualization
exercise to start things off today. Okay, I am
game. When I say the words professional wrestler
to you, what is the immediate image that fires
in your brain? Well, you're probably thinking
of a genetic freak, right? Like the archetype
of the alpha. Exactly. The Hogan, the Lesnar.
the Roman Reigns, basically a human tank. Right.
Someone six foot five chiseled from granite with
veins popping out of their neck, screaming about
snapping Slim Jims or conquering streets. Yeah,
that is the standard mental picture. Exactly.
And I want you to take that image and completely
shatter it. OK. Replace it with a man who stands
on a good day in lift boots at five foot seven.
And here is the real kicker. He weighs 42 kilograms.
Which is? That is 93 pounds. Just to put that
in perspective for you listening at home, 93
pounds is roughly the weight of a large golden
retriever or a very determined, slightly underfed
middle schooler. Yeah, and we aren't talking
about some random fan who hopped the guardrail
in a dare. No, definitely not. We're talking.
about kanji stalker ichikawa a man who didn't
just survive in the absolutely brutal world of
japanese pro wrestling for 25 years he actually
became a legitimate legend it really is one of
the most fascinating case studies in combat sports
history it is and that is exactly what we are
getting into today right because if we look at
the sources we gathered for this deep dive We've
got the Wikipedia archives detailing his career,
the reckless run logs, and the specific match
stipulations. Yeah, and when you put all that
together, Stalker Ichikawa represents the absolute
antithesis of the champion. He really does. And
the mission of this deep dive isn't just to talk
about a weird wrestler. It is to really understand
the art of comedy in a combat sport context.
How does a performer build a decades -long career,
specifically by not winning and being totally
physically ineffective? Because calling it just
comedy kind of sells it short. It is Owari wrestling.
Owari. Right? The Japanese term for comedy. But
it is high wire performance art. You have to
be incredibly skilled to be that bad without
getting killed. Yeah, I mean, the name Stalker
alone implies something dark or maybe a bit edgy.
But the man himself is just, well, he's tiny.
He is. So let's set the scene here. He was born
in 1974 in Gifu, Japan. And looking at his background,
the first thing that jumps out is this massive
contradiction. Right, the pedigree. Because you'd
expect a comedy guy like this to just be an actor
they hired off the street. Or maybe a ring crew
guy they threw in the ring as a joke. But Ichikawa
is legitimate. He was actually part of the second
graduating class of the Torimon Dojo. Which is...
For the listeners who might not follow the deep
lore of Japanese wrestling, Toriyuman isn't a
YMCA class. No, not at all. It is run by Ultimo
Dragon. A literal god of the junior heavyweight
style. Exactly. And the training at Toriyuman
is legendary for being brutal. It is Lucha Libre
style. So high speed, complex, gymnastics, endless
cardio. Yeah. If you survive that dojo, you are
an elite athlete, period. And that's the real
twist here, isn't it? The sources mention that
despite his comedy status, Ichikawa actually
has an extensive background in amateur wrestling.
He does. He knows the holes. He knows how to
grapple for real. Which just adds this amazing
layer of irony to his performance. That is the
shoot reality behind the work. To perform the
character of stalker Ichikawa, this man who constantly
trips over his own feet and gets blown over by
a stiff breeze, you actually need incredible
core strength and spatial awareness. Right, because
if a regular 93 -pound person took the bumps
he takes... They would be leaving in an ambulance.
Ichikawa uses his elite training to create the
illusion of total incompetence. It's like a master
pianist who spends his whole career playing chopsticks
badly just to make the audience... laugh that
is a perfect analogy so if we are sitting ringside
at a dragon gate show in the mid 2000s What does
the stalker experience actually look like? Break
down the in -ring psychology for me. Well, first
of all, don't blink. The matches are sprints.
Sprints. Like how fast? Usually five to ten minutes
max. And the narrative of these matches is almost
always centered around futile offense. Futile
how? Like he is trying and failing. Imagine a
mosquito attacking a windshield. He will wind
up for these massive dramatic strikes, huge windups,
screaming at the top of his lungs, and he'll
chop the opponent across the chest. And the opponent
won't even blink. Just zero cell. Negative cell,
honestly. They just look annoyed. Or he will
go for a high -flying move like a plancha to
the outside, and the opponent simply sidesteps.
Ichikawa crashes and burns. Exactly. It's slapstick,
but it's incredibly violent slapstick. I have
to bring up the towel gimmick here because this
is my absolute favorite part of his character
work. It involves his real -life wife, Namiko.
Oh, this is brilliant storytelling. Right, so
in boxing, or MMA, the corner man throws in the
towel to save a fighter from serious injury.
It's a mercy rule. And Ichikawa's wife, Namiko,
actually became a recurring character at ringside
for his matches. But she wasn't exactly the supportive
spouse cheering him on, was she? Not in the traditional
sense, no. She would often throw in the towel
before he even got hit by the finishing move.
Before. Yes. She'd see him wobble slightly from
a basic strike and just go, nope, he's done,
and toss the towel in. That is so cold. It is.
But the gag, and this happened constantly, was
that the towel would land and the referee would
wave the match off to stop the fight. Okay, so
he's saved. But the opponent would hit the finishing
move on him anyway. So he loses by forfeit and
still takes the devastating finisher. Exactly.
He gets the worst of both worlds. That is hilarious.
It creates this tragic, hilarious dynamic where
even his own family has zero faith in his ability
to survive, let alone win. It totally subverts
the Rocky. trope. We are conditioned to always
root for the underdog to get up and keep fighting.
But here, the underdog's wife is literally telling
him to stay down and he still gets crushed. And
strangely, that specific dynamic made the fans
absolutely love him. So he debuted in December
1998, right? Yeah. And early on, he found himself
in the orbit of a group called Crazy Max. Crazy
Max. That was a top tier stable. Simitaru Don
Fuji. These are the cool villains of the promotion.
The bad boys. And Ichikawa started out feuding
with Taro. They had these comedy matches that
really broke up the serious tension of the card.
The fans ate it up. So what happened with the
group? Eventually, the group decided they would
let him join their stable, but only if he actually
won a match. Which feels like an impossible bar
for him to clear. But he did it. He pinned Susumu
Mochizuki in a tag match. Wow. A miracle. It
was. So he puts on the jacket. He is officially
in the cool group. But here is where the stalker
reality sets in. Three months later, they kick
him out. Why did they kick him out? Because he
wasn't heel enough. He wasn't villainous. He
was just goofy and he diluted their brand of
menace. That is heartbreaking. He finally gets
to sit at a cool table and gets booted for being
a nerd. And it gets worse. He then tried to join
Blood Generation, which was another dominant
faction. They kicked him out too. Let me guess
he wasn't cool enough for them either. The reason
given in the source material is that he was removed
for not meeting the strength principle. The strength
principle? He literally dragged down their average
power level. It is like getting kicked out of
the Avengers because you don't have superpowers.
You just have a slide whistle. That is exactly
what it was. But this isolation actually led
to what I think is the golden era of his career,
the Reckless Run. Yes, the Reckless Run series.
This is legendary. Since no group wanted him,
he became this singular entity who decided to
just challenge the scariest people on the planet.
The mismatch here is the entire point. Dragon
Gate didn't protect him at all. They fed him
to the wolves. The concept was that this 93 -pound
guy would face ex -opponents of great importance.
Basically, heavyweights and legends. Right. We
are talking about the great Kabuki. We are talking
Yoshihiro Takayama. For the listener who doesn't
know Takayama, just imagine a 6 '5 blonde giant
who looks like he eats barbed wire for breakfast.
A truly terrifying human being. He is famous
for that MMA fight against Don Fry where they
just... held each other's heads and punched each
other in the face for minutes straight. And then
you have stalker Ichikawa, 93 pounds, standing
across the ring from him. The visual comedy writes
itself. And he fought Toshiaki Kawada, too. Dangerous
K, a man known for kicking people so hard they
forget their middle names. And even female legend
Aja Kong. Aja Kong might be the scariest of them
all. She is a legend in women's wrestling known
for a lethal spinning back fist. The gender dynamic
didn't matter at all. She treated him like an
absolute rag doll. But see, this is where the
psychology gets really interesting to me. Why
do we watch this? Is it just pure sadism from
the audience? I don't think so. The expert consensus
on this is that it shifts the narrative goalpost.
How so? When Stalker fights someone like Takayama,
nobody expects him to actually win. That is impossible.
The audience is rooting for him to simply survive.
It turns a standard wrestling match into a survival
horror movie. It really does. If he hits one
single move or if he kicks out of one pin, the
crowd goes absolutely nuclear. Because by lowering
the expectations to absolute zero, He made every
tiny moment of resistance feel heroic. Precisely.
He mastered the art of the hope spot. Now we
definitely have to talk about the retirements.
Oh, yes. Because in wrestling, retirement is
usually a marketing gimmick, right? Terry Funk
retired about 50 times. But Stalker took it to
a very weird meta place. This started in late
2006. He announced he was retiring to spend more
time with his wife. To save his marriage, essentially.
So the promotion Dragon Gate held a tribute show
for him. Called Stalker Bombayé at Shinjuku Face.
Stalker Bombayé. Just the name makes me smile.
And the card for this event, looking at the sources
here, it reads like a fever dream. It was not
a normal wrestling card. It was a variety show
of suffering. The first match was a Mickey Bean
jam -filled rice cake eating contest. I'm sorry,
a what? A competitive eating match. He had to
eat three bean jam cakes before his opponent.
And how did that go? He actually won. He inhaled
those cakes. A very rare victory for the stalker.
Okay, so he's 1 -0 for the night but full of
bean jam. What is next? A regular wrestling match,
which he probably lost, and then the main event.
A Vale Tudo fight against Akira Tozawa. Vale
Tudo meaning anything goes. No gloves, MMA rules.
And predictably, he was absolutely destroyed.
But the real punchline of this entire retirement
event is what happened a week later. Let me guess.
The retirement didn't stick. His wife, Namiko,
the entire reason he supposedly retired, told
him to get back to work. She talked him out of
it. She did. Just one week later. So he returned
to the ring as Stalker Ichikawa Z. He added a
Z to his name. Dragon Ball Z. Exactly. Implying
this massive anime power up. But of course he
was the exact same wrestler. Same 93 pounds.
Same bad haircut. And then he did the retirement
tease again a year later. Yes. Stalker Bombay
2 in 2007. The storyline this time was that he
and Amiga were having marriage trouble again.
Naturally. And this event was even more absurd
than the first one. I am looking at the match
list here. The variety show format continued.
Match one was a three -question quiz. Against
Naoshi Sano, Stalker got every single question
wrong and lost three to zero. Match two was a
sumo wrestling match. Which he actually won.
He managed to somehow push the guy out of the
ring. And the finale? A lights out death match.
Now, usually death match implies barbed wire,
glass, explosives, real dangerous stuff. Right.
But the death element here was it was basically
bureaucratic incompetence. It was a total administrative
disaster. The referee was supposed to be Masaaki
Mochizuki, but he couldn't make it. And the official
reason given to the press, he had an unfortunate
accident involving Lupin Matsutani's pistol.
Wait, hold on. A pistol accident? They're just
casually dropping gun violence into their wrestling
storyline? That is the surreal world of Dragon
Gate comedy for you. It makes zero sense, and
that is exactly why it is funny. Okay, so because
of this gun accident, they bring in a replacement
referee, Kanichiro Arai. But Arai has a problem.
He loses his glasses during the match. Of course
he does. He is blind as a bat without them. So
the opponent, Sano, decides to fake a firebird
splash, which is a big high -flying move. He
doesn't even do the move. He doesn't even do
it. He just makes a loud noise on the mat. The
blind referee assumes Stalker is dead, counts
the pin 1, 2, 3. So he lost the match because
the replacement referee lost his glasses, allowing
the opponent to fake a win. It is straight out
of Looney Tunes. It genuinely borders on avant
-garde theater. It really does. And this leads
perfectly into what I think is his greatest innovation
and his biggest contribution to the sport. The
rebranding. Right. In 2007. After returning from
a U .S. tour, he rebrands as Hollywood stalker
Ichikawa. And he creates a new championship belt
that I honestly think every sport should have.
The open the O .R .A. gate championships or or
the comedy gate. Walk the listener through the
rules of this title because it fundamentally
changes the objective of the entire sport. So
in any normal combat sport, you win by incapacitating
your opponent. Pinfall submission knockout. Right.
The Owari Gate introduced a completely new metric.
Audience approval, specifically laughter. So
you could physically dominate the guy. You could
powerbomb him through the mat. But if the crowd
is bored. You lose the title. The title changes
hands strictly based on who gets the biggest
laugh from the audience, regardless of who actually
wins the physical match. So if the champion gets
pinned, but the crowd laughs at the funny way
he fell, he retains the title. Exactly. It completely
institutionalizes the idea that entertainment
is more important than winning. That is amazing.
Do we have an example of how this played out?
There is a perfect example. His first offense
was against Don Fuji. They called it an extreme
comedy match. Stalker defeated him to retain
the belt in under 15 seconds. 15 seconds. That
is incredibly efficient comedy. But then look
at the feud with Kikutaro. Kikutaro is another
absolute legend of this comedy style. He wears
a pink mask. He has brilliant comedic timing.
Okay. And Kikutaro actually pinned Ichikawa in
their match. Physically, he won the fight. So
Kikutaro should be the new champ based on the
pin. He should be. But then Stalker's actual
mother, his real -life mom, came out to the ring.
Oh no, the mother intervention. The ultimate
weapon. She grabbed the microphone and she started
begging Kikutaro. She appealed directly to the
fans. She said, and I quote, this belt was one
of the few things he had left. She pity -guilted
him. It worked perfectly. Kikutaro felt so awkward
and ashamed that he just let Stalker keep the
belt. That is genius. But he did eventually lose
it, right? To Sima. He did. And Saima is the
ace of the promotion, the top star. Seema pinned
him, but the official ruling was not just about
the pin. What was it? Ichikawa lost the belt
because he, quote, failed to receive audience
approval. The crowd just didn't laugh enough
to save him that time. And what did Seema do
with this highly prestigious belt once he won
it? He treated it like radioactive waste. He
didn't want it at all. He immediately, right
there in the arena, handed the belt to a fan
sitting in the front row. A random fan became
the champion. Yes, a guy named Jackson Florida.
Because in that specific moment... The funniest
thing that could possibly happen was a confused
fan holding the championship belt. It proved
the concept of the title perfectly. The belt
follows the joy. I love that. I want to touch
on his international exploits before we wrap
this up, because his style of comedy isn't just
a Japanese cultural thing. It translates everywhere.
Right. He came to the U .S. specifically pro
wrestling gorilla or PWG in Los Angeles. This
was in 2007. And you have to understand, the
PWG crowd is famously cynical. They are smart
fans. They dissect work rate and technical skill.
But they fell in love with him. They absolutely
did. He lost his matches there to Don Fuji and
to Top Gun Tall War. But the reports say the
American crowd was chanting his name the entire
night. He completely won them over. But then,
and we have to talk about this. He met the Necrobutcher
in 2008. Oh, this is a true clash of civilizations.
For those who don't know who Necrobutcher is,
imagine a man who fights barefoot in bar brawls
and genuinely enjoys landing on broken glass.
He is the guy from the movie The Wrestler. He
is not a comedy guy. Not at all. So Stalker,
being Stalker, decides the funny move in this
dangerous comedy match is to walk right up to
this terrifying hardcore wrestler and slap him
in the face. Oh, Stalker, why would you do that?
Necrobucha responded with a single punch. Stalker
was knocked out cold. The match ended in 18 seconds.
18 seconds. But the crowd wanted more. So Stalker
wakes up, shakes off the cobwebs, and in true
Stalker fashion, asks for a restart. Please,
sir, may I have another? Basically, yeah. So
the match restarts, goes a little bit longer,
and ends with NecroButcher powerbombing him onto
a pile of steel chairs. See, that is where the
comedy label gets really tricky, because getting
powerbombed onto a pile of steel chairs actually
hurts. That is real impact. That is the sacrifice
of the art form. The joke requires him to take
real punishment. He is the clown in the rodeo
barrel. The bull hits the barrel, the crowd laughs,
but the guy inside the barrel still feels the
massive hit. It reminds me of the story in the
sources about Yuji Nagata, another instance of
Stalker biting off way more than he could chew.
Oh, this is a classic coyote versus roadrunner
scheme. Yes. Nagata, who is a very serious New
Japan IWGP heavyweight champion, was doing a
standard autograph session. Stalker sneaks into
the line acting like a fan. With a piece of paper.
Right. He hands Nagata the paper. Nagata signs
it without really looking, and Stalker reveals
it was actually a match contract. Autograph this.
Gotcha. Nagata was furious. He agreed to the
match just to teach him a lesson, and he kicked
Stalker so hard the match ended in five minutes
with a left middle kick. Just enough time to
humiliate him publicly. It is the rhythm of his
entire professional life. Hubris, absurdity,
and then immediate crushing reality. So Stalker
Ichikawa finally retired for real, allegedly
at least, in December 2024. He was 51 years old.
Over 25 years of getting beaten up for a living,
that is a lifetime in wrestling years. So let's
land the plane here. What does this all mean
for us? When we look back at the legacy of Stalker
Ichikawa, what do we actually see? Because on
paper, he is a loser. He has a massive losing
record. He's small. He never held the big serious
belts. I think if we zoom out, Ichikawa proved
that winning is a very narrow definition of success.
How so? In the performance industry, the ultimate
goal is to elicit emotion from the audience.
Most wrestlers try to elicit awe or fear through
their strength. Ichikawa chose to elicit joy
and sympathy. He found a market in efficiency.
Everyone else was fighting to be the alpha. No
one was fighting to be the omega. Exactly. He
made himself totally indispensable by being the
one guy on the card who could break the tension.
He was the palate cleanser. The fans needed him
to root for, because he represented the part
of us that feels small and overwhelmed by the
world. That is a really great point. We can't
all relate to the guy with the 24 -inch biceps
who wins every single fight he's in. No, most
of us can't. But we can all relate to the guy
who... tries his absolute best, gets slapped
in the face, falls down, and then uncomfortably
gets back up while his wife shakes her head in
disappointment. And sometimes just surviving
the match, just making it to the final bell without
being carried out on a stretcher, is the real
victory. So here is a final provocative thought
for you to chew on as you go about your day.
We are all conditioned to chase the win right.
The promotion, the award, the top spot in our
field. But stalker Ichikawa... built a 25 -year
legacy specifically by losing. He really did.
He turned losing into a sustainable art form.
So ask yourself this. In your own life or your
own career, is there a place where you are trying
way too hard to be the champ, when you might
actually have more impact and have a lot more
fun by being the character? Because sometimes
the most memorable person in the room isn't the
one holding the trophy. Sometimes it's the guy
holding the bean jam bun. Exactly. Thanks for
taking this deep dive with us. We will see you
in the next one.