Rikidōzan was born Kim Sin-rak in Kankyō-nan Prefecture, Japanese Korea, on November 14, 1924. He reached the top makuuchi division in 1946 and was runner-up to yokozuna Haguroyama in the tournament of June 1947. He fought in 23 tournaments in total, with a win-loss record of 135–82. His highest rank was sekiwake, though he was reportedly close to a promotion to ōzeki before his retirement. He died in a car crash on December 15, 1963, in Tokyo.
About Rikidōzan in brief
Rikidōzan was born Kim Sin-rak in Kankyō-nan Prefecture, Japanese Korea, on November 14, 1924. He was the youngest son of Kim Soktee, the owner of a Korean farm with a Confucian tradition, and his wife Chon Gi. He reached the top makuuchi division in 1946 and was runner-up to yokozuna Haguroyama in the tournament of June 1947. He fought in 23 tournaments in total, with a win-loss record of 135–82. His highest rank was sekiwake, though he was reportedly close to a promotion to ōzeki before his retirement. After his retirement, Rikidozan initially worked alongside Americans as a black marketeer. He eventually left this job, and after a petition to return to sumo was rejected, he was given work as a construction supervisor by his former patron Shinsaku Nitta. In July 1951, the Tokyo-based Torii Oriners announced their intent to sponsor a professional wrestling tour for disabled children, for which they would arrange a deal with Lipton Karickas. In September 1951, Lipton announced that he, alongside Joe Malzwicz, would sponsor a pro wrestling tour. The tour would end in San Francisco, California, in September 1952. He died in a car crash on December 15, 1963, in Tokyo. He is the first Korean inductee and the third puroresu star to be inducted after Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami.
In 2017, WWE inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame as a contributor to the development of the sport of professional wrestling. His son, Mitsuhiro Momota, is also a professional wrestler and a former sumo champion. He has been inducted as a member of the Japan Wrestling Hall of Famer and the Japan Sumo Hall of fame. His death in 1963 was ruled to be a suicide by a Yakuza gang member. His daughter, Yuki, was murdered by the Yakuzas in 1963. He had a son, Kyo, who was killed by the Nippon Police in 1966. He also had a daughter, Kiyo, who died in 2007. He left Japan in 1968 and died in his sleep in a nursing home in Japan. He never regained Japanese citizenship. His family refused to let him go to Japan, due to his responsibility to care for his father. He received harassment and racial discrimination for this, and he was adopted by Minosuke Momota and took the name Mitsuiro Momota. However, he did not attain Japanese citizenship until 1951. His father was the father-in-law of a Japanese man from Omura who had moved to North Korea to become a policeman, and had recruited several Korean boys for the Nishonoseki stable, and persuaded him to join as well. The amount of success he had earned despite his humble beginnings was a source of envy amongst his seniors in Nish onoseki.
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This page is based on the article Rikidōzan published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
