THE WORLD EXTREME CUP TOURNAMENT
April 21, 2000 to May 15th, 2000, I made my 12th tour of Japan. This time, the series would be a tournament for the WORLD EXTREME CUP. Twelve wrestlers from both Japan and the United States were entered in this tournament. During the stay in Japan, we would wrestle on 18 days, have one press conference, have only ONE day off, and travel the country of Japan the rest of the time. I was lucky, on this tour, to have several of my friends participating. Mustaffa Saiid, Harley Lewis, Terry Bull, and Tower of Doom were all along for this tour and it was very nice to have some American friends along.
In Japan, the wrestling is much faster, much STIFFER, and a lot more technical. If you watch some of the great technical wrestlers today, like Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Dean Malenko, and many others, they had very good careers in Japan and that helped them develop their great talents.
During this tour, eventhough the name WORLD EXTREME CUP sounds like it would be a "hardcore" tournament, we had mostly good WRESTLING matches that just happened to be a little more brutal than the typical "American" match.
The Japanese fans are very different from the American crowds. They don't boo and cheer, there. In Japan it is more of a competetion, rather than good guy vs. bad guy. In fact the fans are very polite and remain pretty quiet throughout the match, out of respect, clapping when it is good, but more reserved and very polite. It takes some getting used to, but unlike in America, you don't do comedy in Japan so the matches are much more serious.
The fans loved my friends, TERRY BULL, MUSTAFFA SAIID, HARLEY LEWIS and TOWER OF DOOM. This was my 12th tour, but the first tour for these guys. I am not sure that they were expecting such a grueling pace. Traveling in Japan can be a matter of 3 or 4 hours or it can mean 20 hours or more. The trip to North Japan, for example, is about 14 hours on the bus, then 4 hours on the ferry (huge ocean going ferry) and then another several hours more, depending on the town that you are going to. Sometimes, the ferryboat ride is even longer, up to 8 hours.
The typical day was this. Up early, picked up at the hotel, ride the bus (the wrestling offices in Japan all have their own tour buses) for several hours to the town. Arrive at about 3:00 for a 6:30 p.m. start. Workout and/or rest, wrestle, shower and get back on the bus. Then it was either back to Yokohama or to a local hotel, where after a late meal, a few beers, you'd try to sleep, because you had to be up early the next day to do it all over again. The wrestling was actually the easiest part.
Injuries are a big part of wrestlig and injuries are areally big part of wrestling in Japan. The difference is that the Japanese wrestlers are just so damn tough, they don't complain when they are injured, so it is hard for us to compain. Terry Bull blew his knee out on the second day and still wrestled every night, IN GREAT PAIN, and in fact could not walk during the day. Harley Lewis tore his calf muscle in two places and wrestled every night. If it hadn't been for beer, Harley might not have made it (just kidding Harley). It was tough on everybody.
But, professional wrestling is a tough business. Traveling everyday, trying to workout with such a hectic schedule, the injuries, the time away from home and family, the boredom of traveling, it is all very tough. What makes it all worthwhile? Well, for one thing, it's making that bank deposit when I come home. This is PROFESSIONAL wrestling after all. The other thing that makes it worthwhile is that I am truly doing something that I love. Not many people can say that about their career.
This tour was a lot of fun and it was very tough. I had some very good matches during this series. My friends had a good time and when it was time to go to that airport, at the end of the tour, we all said "goodbye" and THANK GOD WE'RE GOING HOME!!!
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