I was doing a little research on the Tiger Mask character and I came across this gem of a match. It features Tiger Mask II teaming with Toshiaki Kawada against Kawada's former tag team partner, Samson Fuyuki (AKA Ricky or Kudo Fuyuki) and Yoshiaki Yatsu. During the match, Tiger Mask II responds to Fuyuki and Yatsu's strikes and constant headbutts by firing back a more aggressive arsenal on Yatsu, which is followed by Tiger Mask instructing Kawada to remove his mask. The removal of the tiger mask revealed the of face of Mitsuharu Misawa, who then went full-on assault mode on Yatsu, leading to the two men spilling out onto the floor and almost brawling into the crowd!
While the crowd quickly recognized Misawa, who had been under the tiger mask for almost 6 years, Misawa was not the icon of Japanese wrestling that we think of today. Thanks to this match and the unveiling of the tiger mask however, Misawa would go on to shine as one of the greatest wrestlers in Japan with dozens of championships under his belt, multiply matches of the year, and over twenty legitimate 5 star matches.
As for the Tiger Mask legacy, the rights to the character (based of the character from the Manga series) would be picked up by New Japan Pro Wrestling and given to Koji Kanemoto in 1992.
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