14 Facts About Professor Tanaka

Professor Tanaka ran a Judo and Danzan-ryu Jujitsu academy with Professor John Chow-Hoon.

Professor Tanaka employed a combination of power skills, martial arts, and his feared Japanese sleeper submission hold.

Professor Tanaka was a by-the-book guy, who looked at wrestling as a means to make a living.

Professor Tanaka wanted to work his match, shake hands with everyone afterwards, and save some money.

Professor Tanaka was the ring general, who'd lead everyone else in the match.

So, in addition to worrying about their opponents, Professor Tanaka had the responsibility of making sure that Fuji didn't get out of hand.

Professor Tanaka was pinned by Sammartino in a rematch six months later, and Tanaka occasionally teamed with Gorilla Monsoon.

Professor Tanaka main evented the Garden in tag matches, twice with Gorilla Monsoon vs Sammartino and Spyros Arion ; a year later with Monsoon against Sammartino and Victor Rivera.

Professor Tanaka subsequently teamed with Mitsu Arakawa in the WWF in 1969, acquiring the International Tag Team Championship; losing it at Madison Square Garden to Tony Marino and Victor Rivera.

Professor Tanaka was featured in a television commercial for a brand of rice in Puerto Rico.

Professor Tanaka was seen as an extra in a few of David Lee Roth's music videos in the mid-1980s.

Professor Tanaka appeared opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man as a sadistic ice-skating "stalker" named Subzero who uses a bladed hockey stick which "slices his enemies limb from limb into quivering, bloody sushi".

Professor Tanaka was one of three semi-retired professional wrestlers to compete in a tug-of-war match with two other wrestlers teamed up against a large group of children on the Nickelodeon series Wild and Crazy Kids in the early 1990s.

Records do not show which NWA affiliate Professor Tanaka worked for when his two reigns with the title began.