Illness, Life After Wrestling and Death
In the summer of 1992, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B and never fully recovered, completing the "October Giant Series" tour before disappearing from the company for almost a year. For the rest of his career, he participated mostly in comedic matches because his health prevented him from working a full physically demanding schedule. He announced his retirement on February 20, 1999 and held a ceremony on March 6, 1999, after being forced out of his front-office position by Motoko Baba in the aftermath of her husband's death.
Four days later, he and his family moved to the United States to be a visiting researcher at the University of Portland in Oregon. Tsuruta had a bachelor's degree in political science and earned a master's degree in coaching in 1997, later becoming a part-time instructor in physical training at his old University.
His health deteriorated, however, as he had been diagnosed with kidney cancer, which eventually spread to his liver, and by the end of the year he was back in Japan. In April 2000, he left for Australia, where he had an operation to remove the cancer, while there a kidney donor was found in Manila. Tsuruta died in the National Kidney Institute in the Philippines on May 13, 2000, from complications of the kidney transplant.
He had 3 sons: Ken, Naoki, and Yuji.
Read more about this topic: Jumbo Tsuruta
Famous quotes containing the words life, wrestling and/or death:
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Time is here and you’ll go his way.
Your lung is waiting in the death market.
Your face beside me will grow indifferent.
Darling, you will yield up your belly and be
cored like an apple.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)