John Tenta
| John Tenta | |
|---|---|
| File:JohnTenta.jpg | |
| Born | June 22, 1963 Surrey, British Columbia |
| Died | June 7, 2006 Sanford, Florida |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Kototenzan (sumo) Canadian Earthquake Earthquake Avalanche The Shark Golga |
| Billed height | 201 cm (6 ft 7 in) |
| Billed weight | 210 kg (462 lb) |
| Trained by | Giant Baba Jumbo Tsuruta Great Kabuki Terry Gordy Road Warriors Dory Funk |
| Debut | 1987 |
| Retired | 2004 |
John Anthony Tenta (June 22, 1963 – June 7 2006) was a Canadian professional wrestler, best known for his work in the World Wrestling Federation as Earthquake.
Early life
John Tenta was born in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. Named after his father, he was a large baby weighing 11 pounds, 3 ounces at birth.[1] Inspired by professional wrestlers Gene Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathan, Tenta decided to pursue wrestling at age 6. He learned freestyle wrestling at North Surrey Secondary, becoming a Canadian junior champion in 1981. Shortly after his 18th birthday, he finished sixth in the super-heavyweight category at the World Junior Wrestling Championships at Vancouver.
Tenta won an athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University (LSU), where he competed in NCAA-level collegiate wrestling.[2] At LSU he was nicknamed "Big John" Tenta, lettering on the Tiger varsity wrestling team and participating on the football team. LSU had dropped varsity wrestling to comply with Title IX in 1985, forcing Tenta to choose a new sport.
Kototenzan
Tenta then moved to Japan to pursue a career in sumo after being recruited by a former Yokozuna who met Tenta on a trip to Vancouver.[3] In October 1985 he joined a sumo stable in Nagoya run by former-Yokozuna Kotozakura Masakatsu (his stable also produced current Ozeki Kotooshu from Bulgaria). Following tradition, the young sumotori took the name of Kototenta (Koto + Tenta), translated as Tenta the Harp.[4]
Beginning the sport at age 22, he entered nearly 7 years later than many (non college) aspirants. However, the combination of his size, he already weighed 192 kg (423 lb),[5] and training as a wrestler were to his advantage in learning and advancing in the sport. The novice won a string of 17 consecutive victories in his first six months,[6] and was later renamed Kototenzan, Heavenly Mountain Harp. The novelty of being a rare Westerner sumotori in the mid-1980s, and the third-ever Caucasian, garnered him press coverage, and he earned the additional nickname of the "Canadian Comet".[7]
Despite doing well as a newcomer he soon quit the sport due to the difficulty of the sumo lifestyle and the toll the hard ring surface was taking on his body.[8] In addition, the sumo world frowned on the large tattoo of a tiger on his left biceps and, though he covered it during matches, would have required him to remove it via skin graft before moving up to the higher level competitions - in Japan tattoos are associated with gangsters.[9] After leaving sumo, he quickly signed up for puroresu (Japanese Pro Wrestling) under the tutelage of Shohei "Giant" Baba.[10] He made his professional wrestling debut with All Japan Pro Wrestling in May 1988.[11] Tenta had a solid 18 month career, teaming with popular Japanese wrestlers Giant Baba and The Great Kabuki, before getting the attention of American pro-wrestling promoters.
Professional wrestling career
World Wrestling Federation
Tenta joined the WWF in November 1989, making his debut on television. For his introduction, Tenta was planted in the audience as a normal spectator. During the show Dino Bravo challenged The Ultimate Warrior to a strength competition. In order to demonstrate, Bravo and manager Jimmy Hart suggested that they pick a random audience member to come into the ring and sit on the backs of Bravo and the Ultimate Warrior as they did push-ups to see who could do the most. The Ultimate Warrior agreed and Hart, after pretending to look around the audience, centered his attention on very large Tenta who was sitting in the audience in casual clothing and appeared surprised. Tenta came down into the ring and proceeded to sit on Bravo's back as he did a set of push-ups, however during the Ultimate Warrior's set, Tenta jumped down onto the prone Ultimate Warrior using a seated senton that was adapted to be his signature move. The victorious Bravo and Tenta celebrated as the latter was inaugurated into the WWF as a heel with Hart as his manager.
Tenta's career peaked when he was pushed as The Canadian Earthquake — and later, simply Earthquake — a top heel, in a feud with Hulk Hogan. The feud exploded in May 1990, when Earthquake snuck up on Hogan from behind during a segment of The Brother Love Show (on WWF Superstars of Wrestling) and repeatedly crushed Hogan's ribs with his "Earthquake splash." Eventually, Hogan recovered and gained revenge on Earthquake and defeated him in a series of matches across the country, starting with Hogan's countout victory at SummerSlam 1990.
After his stint with Hogan, Earthquake entered an infamous feud with Jake "The Snake" Roberts, in which Earthquake performed his Earthquake splash on Jake's pet snake, Damien. In truth what he crushed was a length of pantyhose filled with hamburger meat that had been swapped for the actual snake, which was stored in a cloth bag. He would later serve quakeburgers to babyface announcer Lord Alfred Hayes, only to reveal later that they were made (kayfabe) from Damien's carcass. Earthquake and Roberts would feud throughout the summer months of 1991.
At the end of the Roberts feud, Tenta teamed up with friend, Fred Ottman, who changed his ring name from Tugboat to Typhoon, and the two became a tag team known as The Natural Disasters, managed by Jimmy Hart. Initially heels, the duo tried on many occasions to capture the WWF World Tag Team Championship from the Legion of Doom. The Disasters would later turn face when Jimmy Hart betrayed them and joined forces with Money Inc., Irwin R. Schyster and Ted Dibiase, who had just won the tag titles from Legion of Doom. Earthquake and Typhoon already had heat with them due to a Survivor Series incident in which Schyster, who had been teamed with the Disasters, accidentally hit Typhoon in the head with a briefcase. Although Earthquake and Typhoon would eventually win the tag titles (and defeated the Beverley Brothers at Summerslam 92 to retain the titles), it wasn't long before Money Inc regained the belts.
Tenta left the WWF in January 1993 for a spell in Japan, but returned briefly as a babyface in the spring of 1994, defeating Adam Bomb in a very short match at Wrestlemania 10 that year. He engaged in a short feud with Yokozuna, with whom he had a sumo match on RAW (the early days of Tenta's Sumo training were also revealed). He again disappeared from WWF programming shortly thereafter.
World Championship Wrestling
Personal financial difficulties lead Tenta to contact World Championship Wrestling. Hulk Hogan, a longtime friend, lobbied to have Tenta come in, and so Tenta broke his WWF contract to join WCW.
Tenta was introduced as Avalanche and feuded with Sting, but the character name was dropped after WWF threatened legal action over similarities to the Earthquake character. He then joined Dungeon of Doom faction as The Shark. He was even pressured by WCW management to change the tattoo on his arm of an LSU Tiger to that of a shark. He eventually left the Dungeon of Doom and wrestled under his real name after delivering a scathing promo about the many other names and gimmicks he'd been forced into in the past, including the memorable line "I'm not a fish. I'm a man".[12]
Following a match with the Dungeon of Doom's Giant, half of Tenta's head was shaved by Big Bubba Rogers, another Dungeon member. The two would go on to feud against one another, with Rogers shaving half of Tenta's beard as well.
Return to World Wrestling Federation
After his feud with Rogers, Tenta left WCW and resurfaced in the WWF on the May 25, 1998 episode of Raw is War under the name Golga. He wrestled under a mask as one of the Oddities and the character had a fascination with Eric Cartman from the TV series South Park. The gimmick was given to Tenta because he lost a considerable amount of weight, so much so that the WWF thought it wouldn't be believable for Tenta to reprise the Earthquake gimmick with the weight lost. This was a short-lived gimmick, and the group disappeared in the beginning of 1999 with all the members released.
His last mainstream wrestling appearance was at WrestleMania X-Seven in 2001, where he wrestled in the Gimmick Battle Royal as Earthquake. He worked occasional matches for WWF and New Japan, and ran ICW in Florida with Prince Iaukea.
Illness
Tenta retired from wrestling in 2004 after it was revealed that he had developed bladder cancer, in which he was given a twenty percent chance to live, assuming he continued with his chemotherapy treatments. During his November 18, 2005 interview on Wrestlecrap RadioListen, Tenta announced that a recent radiation dosage did not go as planned, as it had no effect on the tumor. He also announced that multiple tumors had spread to his lungs.
According to his posts on the Wrestlecrap forum, Tenta had been receiving chemotherapy treatments as recently as February. In the Wrestlecrap Radio interview months earlier, he stated that he would continue fighting the tumors as long as his body could withstand the treatments.
Death
The first public notice of Tenta's death was posted on WWE.com on June 7, 2006 at approximately 12:30 p.m. EDT, which read:
John "Earthquake" Tenta passed away this morning at the age of 42 after a lengthy battle with bladder cancer. Tenta is survived by his wife and three kids.
A few days after Tenta's death, his friend RD Reynolds posted a tribute to him on the WrestleCrap.com main page. In this was the foreword to RD's first book, written by John Tenta, details of their friendship, and discussions of Tenta's struggles with cancer. RD ended by saying "John, I will miss you dearly." On the June 9, 2006 edition of SmackDown! and the June 12, 2006 edition of RAW, before each show began, World Wrestling Entertainment showed an eyecatch that said "In memory of John "Earthquake" Tenta 1963-2006."
Wrestling facts
- Finishing and signature moves
- Earthquake Squash / Avalanche Splash (Running seated senton)
- Aftershock (Full body block; into the corner)
- Dropkick
- Big splash
- Elbow drop
- Managers
Championships and accomplishments
- National
- SWS Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Typhoon
- UWA Heavyweight Championship (2 times)
- WWF World Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Typhoon
Video game appearances
John Tenta's professional wrestling career garnered him appearances in several video games. In 1991, Tenta as Earthquake was portrayed as a feature character in Technos' popular arcade video game WWF WrestleFest. He was also included in the 1992 home video game WWF Super WrestleMania by Flying Edge for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (he wasn't in the Sega Genesis version). In 2004, the Japanese video game developer Spike released King of Colosseum II, a puroresu-wrestling game for PlayStation 2 that featured Tenta as an unlockable character; it was a Japan-only release.
Notes
- ^ Tom Hawthorn, JOHN TENTA, WRESTLER 1963-2006, The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2006, Page S9
- ^ Andy Adams, "Kototenta: Canadian Comet!", Sumo World, May 1986, pg. 4
- ^ Tom Hawthorn, JOHN TENTA, WRESTLER 1963-2006, The Globe and Mail
- ^ Gerry Toff, "Ex-Wrestling Champ to Enter Sumo", Sumo World, January 1986, pg. 11
- ^ ibid at 12
- ^ Andy Adams, "Kototenta: Canadian Comet!", Sumo World, May 1986, pg. 3
- ^ ibid at 3-4
- ^ Andy Adams, "Kototenzan Quits Sumo!", Sumo World, September 1986, pg. 11
- ^ ibid at 12
- ^ ibid
- ^ Tom Hawthorn, JOHN TENTA, WRESTLER 1963-2006, The Globe and Mail
- ^ ibid; Derrick Cannon, WRESTLING COLUMNS: A Tribute to John "Earthquake" Tenta, Obsessedwithwrestling.com, August 21, 2004, Accessed June 20, 2006