Imagine it's 11 .59 p .m. on New Year's Eve.
You and your entire executive board are suddenly
escorted out of the corporate headquarters by
security. You're completely fired. Wow. Just
out on the street. Yeah, exactly. The company
refuses to issue a press release explaining why
there's no severance package discussed and there
is absolutely no gentle transition period. None
at all. In the normal corporate world, your career
is... unequivocally over. But in the, you know,
the neon lit, beautifully chaotic world of Japanese
professional wrestling, you just became the most
dangerous, highly valued commodity on the open
market. Oh, absolutely. Because danger, especially
the unexplainable kind, it draws money. Right,
it really does. You stop being a corporate employee
and immediately become this, like, rogue element
that audiences will gladly pay a premium to see.
Well, welcome, you incredibly curious learner,
to today's Deep Dive. Our mission today is to
extract the absolute most fascinating insights
from the Wikipedia page of Japanese professional
wrestler, Yasushi Tsujimoto. Better known to
fans by his legendary ring name, Brother Yoshi.
Exactly. We're stripping away the theatrics today
to look at the raw mechanics of his career. Because
even if you don't watch wrestling, this deep
dive is just a total masterclass in branding.
Yeah, branding, toxic workplace dynamics, the
works. Seriously. And the intense psychological
weight of loyalty. To kind of capture the mood
for you, I'm shifting our visual backdrop right
now. We're pulling up this vibrant electric mix
of neon Tokyo cityscapes intersecting with gritty
vintage wrestling promotion posters. Oh, I love
that. Sets the vibe perfectly. Right. It's a
visual representation of a world where the lines
between actual human reality and fabricated performance
are just constantly bleeding into one another.
So setting the stage here, Yasushi Tsujimoto
was born in 1982, which makes him 44 years old
today. Yep. And he doesn't just walk off the
street and into a wrestling ring. Right. He actually
starts out with a highly legitimate amateur wrestling
background. Which is huge in Japan. Exactly.
He transitions into the professional scene in
2000, and he's trained by the iconic Ultimo Dragon
and Jorge Rivera. We're talking about the notoriously
rigid, grueling Japanese dojo system intersecting
with Mexican lucha libre philosophy. And that
foundational training, I mean, it is critical
to everything that follows in his life. Absolutely.
Well, the dojo system is designed to completely
break down an individual's ego. You sweep the
floors, you cook the meals for the veterans,
you endure just relentless physical conditioning.
A military boot camp. Basically, yeah. By the
time you actually debut, your technical base
is so deep. ingrained. Having that legitimate
grappling skill gives him an undeniable physical
credibility. Which acts as an anchor, right?
Exactly. It grounds him when the narrative around
his career gets entirely absurd later on. And
every great character starts with a struggle
for identity. So, Tsujimoto debuts in the Toriumon
Japan promotion, specifically as part of their
T2P class, under the name Stevie Brother Tsujimoto.
Okay. In his rookie class, he's ranked second.
He's roughly tied with another wrestler named
Masato Yoshino, but both of them are ranked distinctly
behind the top dog of the class. This highly
touted prospect named Milano Collection A .T.
Right. Milano was the golden boy. Yeah. And because
Milano is the golden boy, management essentially
lets him call the shots. Milano forces both Tsuji
Moto and Yoshino to join his faction, which was
called the Italian Connection. And factions in
Japanese wrestling operate essentially like feudal
houses or, you know, modern tech conglomerates.
They control everything, don't they? Oh, entirely.
They dictate your merchandise revenue, your travel
partners, your locker room placement, your whole
public identity. You literally do not exist outside
of your faction. Okay, let's unpack this. Yeah.
Because it's basically the equivalent of a terrible
corporate rebranding forced on a rebellious employee.
Oh, completely. Milano decides that Tsujimoto
needs a new name to fit this fabricated Italian
theme, right? So he forcibly renames him Yassini.
Just brutal. Just think about the psychology
of that. You survive the dojo, you're a highly
skilled technical athlete, and your new boss
completely overwrites your identity with a gimmick
name you absolutely despise. Yeah, that's gonna
cost some friction. It did. Tsujimoto pushed
back aggressively. He argued with Milano behind
the scenes and in front of the crowds, and eventually
they settled on a tense compromise, which was
Brother Yosini. What's fascinating here is the
structural flaw built into this faction from
day one. Oh, the dynamic between the good guys
and bad guys. Exactly. Milano and Yoshino were
positioned as pristine corporate baby faces.
They were the heroes management wanted the crowd
to love. Right. But Yosini and his allies within
the group, specifically guys like Kandari Shuji,
Baker Yagi, Berlinetta Boxer, they were intrinsically
wired as heels. Bad guys. Yeah. You cannot put
traditional rule -breaking heels under the management
of a white meat baby face without the entire
psychological structure of the department collapsing.
It's an organizational nightmare. It's like having
half your marketing department running a wholesome
PR campaign while the other half is actively
trolling your customer base on social media.
That's a great way to put it. It just doesn't
work. The tension eventually snaps, and it snaps
violently. Yasini and Kandori Shuji literally
shatter the faction by attacking their own leaders,
Milano and Yoshino, with blue boxes. Which is
just a brilliant piece of stagecraft. Oh, absolutely.
They don't just, you know, disagree. They violently
dismantle the hierarchical structure that management
placed them in. And this act of rebellion forges
Tsujimoto's defining career alliance. He permanently
drops the Yasini name management forced on him
and finally becomes Brother Yashi. Nice. And
Kondori Shuji renames himself Shuji Kondo. They
grab a couple of other frustrated workers, Toru
Awashi and Shogo Takagi, and they form their
entirely own group called Haguragundam. So they're
just completely rogue now. Officially out from
under management's thumb, building their own
brand from scratch. But forging your own path
requires a massive amount of operational capital,
both literal and metaphorical. Right, you need
star power. Exactly. Haguragundam starts gaining
serious traction, but they realize they need
a marquee name to legitimize the group at the
top of the card. So what do they do? They bring
in a highly respected veteran wrestler named
Masaki Mochizuki to be their new leader. With
his arrival, the stable goes through a massive
rebranding. They rename themselves again, Isu.
I have to say the English translation of that
name. is quite possibly the coolest thing I've
ever heard in professional wrestling. It really
is. It translates roughly to, villains all wear
the same colors. Such a good aesthetic. It speaks
to this absolute unified front of rebellion.
They even add another wrestler, Takuya Shukawara,
to the mix. But very quickly, a massive ego clash
erupts between the new veteran leader, Mochizuki,
and the original founder, Shuji Kondo. Classic
power struggle. Yeah. They're arguing bitterly
over who is the true ace. the top revenue generating
star of the stable. And when push comes to shove,
the stable looks at the veteran they brought
in and they look at the guy who actually built
the house. And they side with the builder. They
side with Kondo and they kick Mochizuki entirely
out of the group. That is a fascinating internal
power struggle. The founding board members essentially
vote out the veteran CEO they just hired to legitimize
their startup. Wait, hold on. I'm looking at
this from a business perspective. Yeah. You don't
just fire the veteran CEO you just brought in
to legitimize your company. Yeah. Doesn't kicking
him out instantly kill their credibility with
the fans? Not if your entire brand identity is
built on betrayal and volatility. Oh, I see.
Right. By turning on Mokuzuki, Ugen Issu proved
they were genuinely unpredictable. They signaled
to the audience that no one was safe, not even
their own leadership. That's bold. It is. And
that level of internal ruthlessness actually
amplifies a heel faction's heat with the crowd.
Well, here's where it gets really interesting.
Because the fallout from this ruthless branding
doesn't stay confined to a storyline. It bleeds
into reality in a way that is genuinely jarring.
Oh, yeah. The purge. According to the source
material, on December 31st, 2004, New Year's
Eve, all five members of Agony Sue are completely
fired from the Dragon Gate promotion. All of
them. Just gone. The stated reason. Controversial
and mostly unexplained reasons. The wrestling
dirt sheets absolutely exploded. I mean, think
about it. A promotion firing its top -drawing
heel faction entirely unannounced on a major
holiday with zero PR spin. I have to challenge
the logic of what happens next, though. If you're
a rival promotion, why on earth are you hiring
guys who are just violently fired for unexplained
reasons? It seems like an immense liability.
Normally, yes. But you have to look at the Ronin
rebrand as a business concept. OK, lay that out
for me. In the Japanese wrestling industry, unexplained
controversy is a bizarre kind of currency. If
you're fired for a mundane reason, like showing
up late or declining skills, you fade away. Right,
you're just washed up. Exactly. But if you're
fired as a collective unit under a shroud of
absolute mystery, you instantly become a Ronin.
You're a masterless samurai. Oh, wow. Fans want
to know what you did, and more importantly, they
want to see what you're going to do next. Rival
promotions will gladly absorb that liability
because that mystery translates directly into
ticket sales. Which explains exactly how they
leverage that infamy perfectly. Tsujimoto and
Kondo don't issue apologies. They don't rebrand.
They pack up their proverbial blue boxes and
they immediately resurface in all Japan Pro Wrestling
as part of a stable called the Voodoo Murders.
They just took their highly toxic villainous
brand to a legacy market and instantly became
top tier attractions. Just incredible maneuvering.
But, you know, surviving a mass firing alongside
your primary business partner definitely hardens
the alliance. But the grueling travel schedule,
the physical toll and the constant pressure to
maintain that heel heat, it eventually fractures
even the tightest alliances. Yeah and we track
Tsujimoto into these newer alternative promotions
called Dragon Door and El Dorado. And it's here
in El Dorado that he finally splits from Shuji
Kondo for the very first time since their early
days in the Italian connection. A massive shift
for him. Huge! They dissolve their partnership
and go their separate ways. When I was reading
the sources, the psychology of his reinvention
after this split absolutely floored me. The moment
he leaves the corporate structure and his primary
partner, his entire in -ring philosophy shifts.
It totally does. He immediately reverts to his
oldest, purest roots. He goes back to using the
law of style, of wrestling, leaning heavily on
that amateur background. Right. And he forms
a brand new stable with a very aggressively granded
name. The Nanking Fucking Wrestling Team. Quite
a name. Seriously. But he doesn't form it with
other established stars. He forms it alongside
Masaki Okimoto and Yuji Hino, who are his actual
wrestling teammates from high school. That's
such a telling detail. Isn't it deeply psychological?
The moment he leaves his best friend, his defining
business partner, it's terrifying. So what does
he do? He retreats to ultimate safety. He surrounds
himself with his childhood friend and reverts
to the exact grappling style he learned before
the industry ever told him he had to be a villain.
It is. And to truly understand how drastic that
retreat is, we need to look at the mechanics
of the loft style. Break that down for us. So
Lave is a Mexican style of grappling. It's built
around intricate pretzel -like joint locks and
complex submission geometry. Now the Japanese
wrestling scene is mostly dominated by strong
style blistering strikes, heavy suplexes, sheer
physical force. Right, very punishing. Yeah.
Bringing Lave into that environment completely
changes the physical geometry of the match. It
grounds the high -impact violence into a cerebral,
technical chess match. By returning to Lave,
Tsujimoto is essentially putting up a highly
complex technical shield around himself. But
the wrestling industry is incredibly unforgiving
when it comes to vulnerability. Very true. The
brutal irony of this era is that he eventually
ends up in a high -stakes match against his old
partner, Shuji Kondo. The stipulation of this
match dictates that the loser is forced to completely
disband their faction. Oh, man. And Sujimoto
loses. His childhood reunion, his safe haven,
is forcibly shut down by the very monster he
spent his entire career building alliances with.
It's genuinely Shakespearean. And the physical
and emotional toll of that narrative collapse?
Well, it pushes him entirely out of the professional
wrestling bubble. Yeah. Shortly after, in February
2009, he formally retires from professional wrestling.
Though there's a really interesting detour before
that. Right, the MMA fight. Before that retirement,
he took a detour that I think provides a massive
reality check regarding the physical toll of
this lifestyle. In August 2007, he stepped out
of the scripted world and took a legitimate mixed
martial arts match for the Heat promotion. Heat
4. Against a trained fighter named Takasuke Kume.
Why would a pro wrestler in 2000s Japan step
into an MMA cage? It requires understanding the
immense cultural oppression of that era. There
was a pervasive philosophy called Inokism infecting
the industry. Inokism? Yeah, named after Antonio
Inoki. Promoters and fans demanded that professional
wrestlers prove they were legitimate tough guys
in actual unscripted combat. So Tsujimoto wasn't
just taking a detour. He was trying to validate
his physical credibility in a highly dangerous
arena. And the result was a harsh wake up call.
He lost. He was submitted via a rear naked choke
at three minutes and seven seconds into the second
round. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
that single MMA fight is a profound moment of
contrast. How so? In professional wrestling,
loyalty, betrayal, wins and losses, they're all
negotiated. A faction disbanding hurts emotionally,
but the narrative is controlled. An MMA cage
is an entirely unforgiving, unscripted reality.
It's just raw violence. Exactly. A reenactment
choke does not care about your character's elaborate
backstory, your faction's merchandise sales,
or your legacy as a man. masterless samurai.
It operates on pure physics, cutting off the
blood supply to your brain. It highlights the
immense physical jeopardy these performers place
themselves in trying to bridge the gap between
scripted villain and legitimate combat athlete.
It just completely strips away all the mythology.
But you know, as anyone who follows this industry
knows, retirement is rarely a permanent state
of being. Definitely not. Retirement in professional
wrestling is usually just an extended period
to let your surgically repaired knees heal before
the audience demands your return. So what does
this all mean? How does a masterless samurai,
a guy who has been fired on New Year's Eve, betrayed
by his best friend, choked out in a cage, and
forced into retirement, orchestrate his final
act? He engineers the art of the comeback. Yes.
In December 2012, he makes a special appearance
for a promotion called Diamond Ring. Then in
February 2013, he fully resurrects his career.
He reforms the Voodoo Murders, that exact stable
he joined right after the mass purge. But this
time, he's positioned as the outright leader
of the entire group. He finally ascends to the
top of the corporate ladder that he helped construct
years prior. He goes from the rogue liability
to the commanding executive. But the moment that
actually gave me chills, reading through the
sources, happened on February 4, 2016. Oh, the
Dragon Gate return. Yes. Exactly 11 years after
that controversial, unexplained mass firing on
New Year's Eve. Tujimoto walks back through the
doors of Dragon Gate. Eleven years of a bitter
grudge finally settled. And who does he reunite
with? Masato Yoshino, the very same guy he was
tied with in his rookie class, the pristine babyface
he attacked with a blue box to kickstart his
entire rebellion all those years ago. It is a
stunning full circle narrative resolution. It
demonstrates that in this industry, time heals
all wounds, provided those wounds can be leveraged
to draw a massive paying audience. So true. But
looking at the entirety of his career achievements,
there's one detail, almost a mystical footnote,
that demands analysis. If you look at his championship
resume, he is a two -time winner of the UWA World
Trios Championship. I saw that in the notes.
It sounds like a standard prestigious accolade
until you actually look at the operational dates
of the organization. Right. The Universal Wrestling
Association, the UWA, officially closed its doors
and ceased corporate operations in 1995. The
company did not exist. Wait, what? Yeah, yet
Tsujimoto was winning their championships over
a decade later. This raises an important question
about the nature of legacy. These championships,
much like the Voodoo Murders faction itself,
take on a life entirely independent of their
creators. I'm struggling to understand how a
defunct company's title carries any weight. Is
it just a prop at that point? Think of it exactly
like a breakaway republic continuing to print
its own currency. OK, I'm cracking. The central
bank that originally minted the money collapsed
in 1995. But because the citizens in this case,
the highly invested wrestling fans and the performers
themselves still genuinely believe the paper
has intrinsic value, it remains a fully functioning
economy of prestige. That is fascinating. The
belt becomes a mythological artifact. Wrestlers
continue to bleed over it long after the kingdom
that forged it has turned to dust. It is the
ultimate testament to branding. If you convince
the audience the power is real, the power becomes
real. Exactly. To bring this all together for
you listening, what we've extracted from the
complex, chaotic life of Brother Yashi is the
power of the Ronan rebrand. The most compelling
careers are rarely linear climbs up a predictable
ladder. They're really not. They're defined by
the alliances you build, the organizational structures
you are willing to violently dismantle, and your
ability to relentlessly reinvent yourself when
management tells you your career is over. It
leaves us with a deeply lingering question to
ponder, however. Lay it on us. When a promotion
fires its top group of villains right on New
Year's Eve for real life unexplained reasons,
does the boundary between the fabricated toxic
heel character and the actual human being permanently
blur? That's heavy. If your entire professional
existence demands that you act as a ruthless,
unpredictable rogue, how much of that fabricated
toxicity bleeds into your actual psychology when
the arena lights finally go dark? You don't just
put the villain's nameplate on your door. Eventually,
the nameplate dictates who you become. Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
Keep questioning the rigid narratives around
you. Keep looking for the mechanical truth behind
the performance, and we will catch you next time.