TARU

[4.0] "Yoshikazu Taru = bring me the iron pipe, im gonna beat you is whats been said in the AJPW locker room on June 1st on the last night of AJPW Rise Up Tour. Apparently the story was that he hospitalised another wrestler called Nobukazu Hirai known as Super Hate. It became his highest profile moment in the business backstage. But other all he was a skilled veteran in AJPW, started in Tenryus WAR and retired after a decade rise being apart of Voodoo Murders. He was malice but well experienced and yet handsome individual. If they made peace, it seems appropriate to forgive him."

"TARU was a charismatic and influential heel wrestler who made his mark in both Dragon Gate and All Japan Pro Wrestling as a leader and enforcer. Originally part of Toryumon, he became a key figure in early Dragon Gate as the arrogant manager of Crazy MAX. He later reinvented himself in All Japan, where he led the Voodoo Murders stable, bringing a Yakuza mastermind style that made him one of the company's main villains in the Muto era. His career, however, was marred by controversy, including a real-life incident that led to his departure from All Japan after he savagely beat a fellow wrestler who subsequently entered a coma after wrestling while injured. The incident didn't completely kill TARU's career, but it did lead to a major scandal for All Japan and raised questions about how wrestlers are treated in Japan."

[7.0] "Very much meh in ring wise but I liked TARU. In a age of smarky "cool heels" a la Adam Cole and whatnot, the heels that get cheered, get their own special chants, TARU was just a straight up nasty guy that people booed completely. Great at seeking heat, he was a very old school style heel, focusing on copious amounts of cheating, brawling, tons of inference, everything a heel needs to be, well a heel, and getting big boos when alongside some of the biggest talents AJPW had to offer at the time is no easy feat, especially given these were pretty dire days for the promotion. I said this before, but he's basically EVIL but done right: goofy when he needs to be, a chickenshit when the babyface is on top, and a dominating force when the tables eventually get turned, all of which he did expertly, either in tags or in singles, through he exceled in tag formats in particular. It's even more impressive given his very late introduction into wrestling: even Genichiro Tenryu joined at 30 while this guy came in at 32. Now, TARU the talent is great, but TARU the man is a piece of shit: read up on the Hirai case and the whole drama on that for more. He's unfortunately one of those cases where it's not the fact that he was poor in-ring that got him booted from every major promotion worth mentioning: it's the fact that the man behind the persona isn't too far divorced from the source material in the first place."