Satoru Sayama

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Satoru Sayama
Tiger Mask, c. 1983
Born	(1957-11-27) November 27, 1957 (age 67) Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan
Professional wrestling career
Ring name(s)	First Tiger Mask Mask of Tiger Sammy Lee Satoshi Sayama Satoru Sayama Super Tiger Tiger Tiger King Tiger Mask Tigre Enmascarado
Billed height	5 ft 8 in (173 cm)[1]
Billed weight	198 lb (90 kg)[1]
Trained by	Antonio Inoki Diablo Velasco Karl Gotch Kotetsu Yamamoto Yoshiaki Fujiwara
Debut	May 28, 1976
Retired	December 7, 2016 (most recent match)

Satoru Sayama (佐山 聡, Sayama Satoru; born November 27, 1957), best known as the original Tiger Mask, is a Japanese writer, semi-retired professional wrestler and martial artist, and mixed martial arts (MMA) and wrestling promoter and trainer. He is the founder of Shooto, a pre-UFC MMA promotion, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential masked Japanese wrestlers of all time (alongside his contemporaries Jushin Thunder Liger and Último Dragon). The only man to hold the WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship and the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship simultaneously, Sayama became widely known in the wrestling world for his all-round prowess of high-flying, technical abilities, and martial combat skills (as he was a practitioner of judo and freestyle wrestling in his youth).^[2][3]

Primarily trained under New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) founder Antonio Inoki and his mentor Karl Gotch, Sayama made his professional wrestling debut in 1976 at 18 years old. He was sent on an excursion to Europe for World of Sport (WOS), and Mexico for EMLL, where he not only found his ground as a technical wrestler, but also found his niche in Lucha libre. Sayama became Tiger Mask in 1981, brought from Ikki Kajiwara's 1968 manga series of the same name and the popular anime of the decade. He became involved in highly publicized feuds with Black Tiger (portrayed by Mark Rocco), the Dynamite Kid, and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who was one of Sayama's own trainers. He left NJPW at the height of his popularity in 1983 due to political disenfranchisement, and later became a founding member of the UWF brand in Japan. He then became dissatisfied with wrestling as a whole, leading him to write Kay Fabe (1985), which detailed the kayfabe and secrets of puroresu at the time.

After declaring retirement from professional wrestling in 1985 after the collapse of UWF, he founded Shooto, one of the first MMA organizations in the world. Sayama also started mixed martial arts training and developed his own Shooto syllabus for learning what could be considered the first put together MMA training of its kind, with a focus on striking from arts like boxing, muay thai, and karate, and grappling from wrestling, judo, and sambo. The curriculum would help produce the first well rounded fighters of MMA several years before the first UFC event.^[4] He retired from his post in Shooto in 1996, and returned to professional wrestling soon after.

In 2005, Sayama founded his own promotion, Real Japan Pro-Wrestling (RJPW), which later became Strong Style Pro-Wrestling. Sayama likened the promotion to include wrestlers from the past, as well as martial artists, Sayama's students, and modern stars from the likes of Battlarts, Big Japan Pro Wrestling (BJPW), and more. Although he hasn't officially declared retirement, Sayama last wrestled on December 7, 2016. It was announced in 2020 that he had several health problems, possibly linking him to Parkinson's disease and immobility.^[5]