13 Facts About Professor Tanaka

1.

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

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2.

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

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3.

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

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4.

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

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5.

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

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6.

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

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7.

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

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8.

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

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9.

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

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10.

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

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11.

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".

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12.

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.

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13.

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

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