Let’s call it like it is, wrestling is a weird sport. Some of the greatest of all time were one failed tryout away from becoming an English teacher, or was a TV contract away from hanging it up for good. It’s unlike any other sport, especially in modern times. The line between pro wrestling feeling like a legitimate sports power and it still feeling like it’s an organization of the carnies that were running things nearly a century ago is a fine one, which is why it’s so rare for someone to come out the other side with such a strong presence that it’s almost mythical. To me, that is Giant Baba, and my goal for this piece is to convince you of that as well.

I guess my first piece of business is to tell you who Giant Baba is and just how much of a cultural icon he was. In 2006, The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan poll was ran, which asked the entire country who their most favorite famous person was. Now, I am no poll making expert, but this does not necessarily seem like a great indicator of true influence on a country, but I digress. Baba placed 91st on this poll, one spot above, you guessed it, fellow cultural icon in Japan, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. I tell you that to say, the country loved Baba, even several years after his death and decades past his prime, he was still a beloved figure for his country, something that few wrestlers ever even achieve.

Giant Baba started his athletic career playing baseball, which he clearly excelled at due to his stature, so much so that his high school ordered him custom cleats to wear during games (which I imagine was not an easy task in mid 1950s Japan). He would end up signing with the Yomiuri Giants (the oldest professional sports team in Japan!) where he spent the last half of the 1950s. I think this excerpt from Robert K Fitts’ Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball sums up Baba’s fun, albeit lackluster, baseball career:

“The Giants had signed him after he dropped out of Sanjo Jitsugyo high school in his junior year. As a schoolboy, [Baba] was a good enough pitcher but the Giants hoped that with the proper instruction, he would take advantage of his size and become a truly intimidating hurler. Despite Yomiuri’s efforts, Baba never emerged as a pro-caliber pitcher, throwing just seven innings for the Giants…”

So while Baba was arguably a prodigy at club level play baseball which would end up being enough to sign with the Taiyo Whales in 1960, that success never really peaked its head in a pro setting. However, Baba would retire from baseball shortly thereafter due to suffering a fall and temporarily losing feeling in one of his hands, ending his dream of being a career pitcher. Just kind of wild to think that arguably the single most influential person in the history of wrestling (I’m getting there I promise) not only excelled in a non pro wrestling (or even remotely adjacent) field for so long and pretty much only got into pro wrestling on a technicality, history is weird! Baba probably goes on to be an engineer or pitching coach or something had he not been hyped up by Rikidozan, which pretty much gave him all the runway he needed to pursue pro wrestling shortly after retiring from baseball. I wanted to touch on Baba’s past as a baseball player, because I think baseball, a lot like professional wrestling, is a sport of showmanship in the way that great players are typically remembered for their personalities. Baba had a distinct advantage in this department already being as tall as he was, but I think learning how to “peacock” as a baseball player was at least a very good starting point for him developing the personality it takes to be a remembered professional wrestler. 

Now look, this by no means is meant to be a Giant Baba bio, you can read about his life and such outside of the ring online and frankly I am just not qualified to be talking to you about his life in that much detail from forty years before I was born. However, if it is a bio you are looking for, I suggest checking out THIS piece from The Sportser (or if you have a WON sub, Meltzer’s obit after Baba’s death is truly an incredible piece of work). I want to tell you why he rocks from the perspective of his in ring work (with some little tangents here and there, that’s the DVDVR fan in me), and overall why I think pro wrestling today was molded by guys like Baba (maybe even by Baba the most) sixty some odd years ago.

Giant Baba was never an insanely gifted athlete in the ring like the other great big men of this sport, your Andre the Giants, your Big Van Vaders, your Bam Bam Bigelows, etc., but Baba just had that charisma, almost a charm to him that I don’t think these guys or really many other pro wrestlers have ever brought to the table. Purely from a kayfabe perspective as I can not tell who or how Baba was on a personal level, but every single photo you see of him online, or him making his entrance, or him at ringside, he’s smiling, he just reeks of kindness! The only two wrestlers I can think to ever have this level of, and I hate using this as a term to describe a professional wrestler but let me cook for a second, “pure heartedness”, are El Generico/babyface Sami Zayn and pre WrestleMania 30 Bryan Danielson, but even then I think Baba’s is almost more genuine in the sense that he was six and half feet tall and could probably break you like a twig if he chose to do so on any given day. 

Not only do I think this added to his charm, but he made pro wrestling look so simple, it almost convinces you watching “yea, I could do that”, and reader, I almost assure you that you could not. His main two finishes were slamming his opponent’s head into his knee and a running neckbreaker, the man was not recreating the wheel here! Yea he bumped well, but no better than any of the other giants I have mentioned already, he just had that air of refinement I don’t think any of those guys have. As someone who spent the last decade plus of his career in undercard six man tags, who could get as much juice from the squeeze as he desired, which is what, at the end of the day, made him so special. Not only could he go to Puerto Rico in the 70s and 80s and tear it up for six minutes with Abdullah the Butcher, he was wrestling time limit draws in Japan ON TOP of training, concurrently, two of the best to ever do this damn thing (Genichiro Tenryu and Jumbo Tsuruta SHOUT OUT). There are layers to the art that is pro wrestling and Giant Baba is THE onion (yea I know overused metaphor but do some of y’all old folks know what damn dragon floss is like come on I am working with what I got).

I guess this is part of the piece where I actually point you towards some Baba. Look, I know most normal people don’t have 35-45 minutes to dedicate to one match from the 1970s (but also most of them would not be this deep into a piece about Giant Baba, so you know, maybe some self reflection would be nice?) so I am going to throw you a few matches I really love where our boy Baba shines, and they don’t waste your time.

Starting with this match, where already we are at the tail end of Baba as a bonafide singles guy, but he and Butcher just go hog wild for like four minutes and it’s wonderful. Without hyperbole I think out of all of his matches, this was the match that made me “get” Baba.

I know, bit of an out there pick, but hear me out. Baba and Andre had such a fun run in the 1990 Real World Tag League together, and you can’t go wrong with any of their matches you can find from this tournament, but I love the Jumbo/Taue team so much and it’s really the tale of three generations of giants together as well as two generations of Baba students together the ring and folks, that’s what this whole damn thing is all about.

Look I know what the length of this video says, but remember how I called you a freak for being this deep into the piece, well now you are in the trenches with me bud. Probably the last truly great Baba performance, and while he has a ton of fun matches post January 1994, Baba is just on another level here, easily being the biggest star in the match teaming with the current ace in Misawa, rising star Kobashi and being opposite long time junior ace Masanobu Fuchi and Holy Demon Army. Truly a sight to behold.

In a world where people truly hold pro wrestlers to the lowest bars imaginable, Baba to me never gets his flowers, On top of all of his achievements as a pro wrestler, as the LITERAL FOUNDER of All Japan Pro Wrestling (look I didn’t feel like I needed to go in-depth with this I gotta think there was at least some prior knowledge here) to having a hand in training probably a dozen of the best forty or so wrestlers ever, including but not limited to; Jumbo Tsuruta, Genichiro Tenryu, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue, Jun Akiyama, Yoshihiro Takayama and Yoshinari Ogawa, probably easily the trainer with the best results ever? How do you even argue against that?

These feelings have been on my mind for a long time, but I truly do not think anyone has ever done it like Baba, and I definitely don’t think anyone will or even could work like this now without getting absolutely eviscerated online for it. There is just something so pro wrestling about a friendly giant who breaks in to the business, decides a decade in he wants to bleed alot and then decides another decade later to train some of the greatest of all time only to turn around another decade later and do it again, truly some GOAT shit if I have ever seen, heard or read it. Giant Baba is the pro wrestling legend among legends and he needs to start being held in regard as a sculptor of what we know today as pro wrestling (yes some of it is bad but great chefs can’t teach bad chefs how to make shit taste good). I leave you with this, go watch Giant Baba and then watch the lineage of pro wrestlers that has come from him and witness just how he shaped what we watch today.