Masaji Goto, better known as Tarzan Goto has passed away aged 58. The former star of All Japan, FMW and IWA was a seminal performer in the 1990s deathmatch scene who helped define what was possible in Puroresu during wrestling’s exponential growth period of the 1990s.
Beginning his fight career as a Sumo for the hugely successful Kokonoe stable, he retired in 1981 and announced he would start his career as a pro wrestler. He would join Giant Baba’s All Japan Pro Wrestling, home of many a former Sumo, around the time a young Atsushi Onita would come home from the excursion and become the ace of the Junior division. Goto would go on an excursion in 1985. He would work his way around the American territories like Onita and many other Japanese wrestlers before him. Starting off in Kansas for Bob Giegel, he then moved on to Jim Crockett Promotions on the east coast. He would eventually work in Puerto Rico for Carlos Colon’s WWC, which would really be his apprenticeship in violence as the tough territory that relied on a street fighting style and bloody payoffs were the blueprint for what Onita was building in Japan.
In 1989 Goto brought this excursion and his association with All Japan Pro Wrestling to an end when Onita called him up to be the number two in his new promotion FMW. It was a big decision. The wrestling scene for men had been dominated by NJPW and AJPW since the early eighties, there was virtually no indie scene, and what Onita was proposing, a sense of realism reliant on violence and bloodletting, was a risky proposition. Little did they know they would be resetting how the Japanese wrestling business would work.
Goto stood by FMW for six years, he would be Onita’s first opponent in an Exploding Barbed wire match in August of 1990. Along with Onita, he built up the FMW Dojo which developed the next generation of FMW greats like Mr. Gannosuke (who would become a key protege), future ECW Champion Masato Tanako, Shark Tsuchiya, Crusher Mademori and Hayabusa. He would be a part of FMW’s biggest successes, and some of its biggest misses, the infamous tag team fire match with himself and Onita against Sabu and the Original Sheik springs to mind.
In 1995 he left the company, fearing he would have to lose to Onita in his (first) retirement match. He went over to the rival IWA which was moving in a similar direction as FMW on a much smaller budget. He arrived in time for the company’s biggest event and possibly his highest-profile match. He would face Dan Sevren for the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship at the King of Death Match tournament in Kawasaki Baseball Stadium. They would be the biggest singles match on the card announced before the show. The show would reach the cult status as Mick Foley chronicled the tournament and that match in Have a Nice Day, his first biography.
He would leave not long after as IWA lost its NWA affiliation but would return as the company shifted its focus from violence to comedy and Goto would become the company’s top dastardly heel in the early 2000s. Over the early part of the 20th century, he would bring back his own promotion Super FMW as well as work all over the Indie scene. He would retire from in-ring action in 2010. He is survived by his wife, Despina Montagas, with whom he had three children.
A wrestler that had bags of charisma and connected with his audience incredibly well, helped develop the FMW Deathmatch style and helped train some of the biggest stars of the era. His passing will be felt by an entire generation of wrestlers and fans, who when they watched the lengths Tarzan Goto would go to entertain them, really couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Videos Courtesy of Premier Pro Wrestling & Abinav Mathur
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