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A strain of thought exists that suggests Rikidōzan’s stabbing death in 1963 was the yakuza catching up with him for the betrayal of Kimura, who, to the surprise of no one, never received a chance to wrestle or fight the former sumo stylist again. As with most things having to do with Rikidōzan, who he was and what he did relative to his public perception were very different.

Rikidōzan and American Lou Thesz wrestled to a sixty-minute draw in Tokyo’s first-ever “world title match” in 1957, scoring a record 87.0 rating on Japanese television—two of his matches rank in the top ten most-viewed programs in the country’s history and tens of thousands of people packed the streets to watch. His matches against Thesz, the only American wrestler Rikidōzan admitted to having respect for, represent the crowning achievements of his enormous ring success.

When Rikidōzan visited Los Angeles a year later to face Thesz—the best shooter in the world, a man chiseled from granite like Ed “Strangler” Lewis—the message was clear: If Rikidōzan could put up a fight against a man like Thesz, if he could beat Thesz and claim the NWA international heavyweight belt, which he did in L.A., well, he could do anything.