Yoshihiro Yamazaki will call it a career after 31 years in the industry on July 7, and it’s only natural for fans to wonder what the future of the Tiger Mask character is.
Yamazaki became the fourth Tiger Mask while debuting for Michinoku Pro Wrestling in 1995 and is the longest-tenured incarnation of the character. Yamazaki was trained by The Great Sasuke and the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, who endorsed Yamazaki.
The 55-year-old reflected on his career in an interview with New-Japan Pro Wrestling, where he was asked if there should be a new Tiger Mask in NJPW.
“I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other. I think it would be fine if somebody wanted to do it,” Yamazaki said. “Purely when it comes to the different techniques and athleticism, today’s young wrestlers are even better than Sayama-sensei, but with the overall level so high, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. So it would have to be someone that has Sayama’s accuracy, the weight to what he did, the attitude and the scariness. That’s what I think a new Tiger would need.”
Yamzaki continued: “If it’s just a case of a decent hand, good high flier, then I don’t think it should continue. If you look at all the other Tigers, even Sayama-san himself, you can see how hard it is to keep the tiger Mask thing going.”
The character’s origins date back to Sayama in the ’80s. Then, when All-Japan Pro Wrestling bought the rights to the character, Mitsuhara Misawa became the second Tiger Mask before unmasking in 1990. Koji Kanemoto had a brief run before losing a mask vs. mask match to Jyushin Thunder Liger. Other MMA fighters and brief appearances from other Tiger Mask incarnations have shown up in the past two 20 years, but the most notable was Kota Ibushi taking on the Tiger Mask W persona in 2016 in conjunction with the anime series of the same name.
The most recent example of a revival of a long-time character is the new Hayabusa, who is portrayed by Shingo Suzuki, with the blessing of Eiji Ezaki’s family, Jinsei Shinzaki, The Great Sasuke and Masato Tanaka.
Tiger Mask IV had his Mexico retirement match at Fantasica Mania last week, teaming with Blue Panther and Mistico against Averno, Black Tiger (Magnus) and Volador Jr.
In his retirement show, Tiger Mask will face “Dynamite Kid” Tommy Billington and Rocky Romero, who will reprise his version of Black Tiger.
