Mark Rocco - Tag Team and Feud With Kendo Nagasaki

Tag Team and Feud With Kendo Nagasaki

Another televised confrontation between Rocco and Yamada would come in Spring 1987, on opposite sides of a tag match. Yamada and his tag partner in Britain, "Ironfist" Clive Myers had challenged legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki to a tag team match and, having a shared rival in Yamada, Rocco volunteered. Nagasaki and Rocco defeated Yamada and Myers in the main event of a TV taping at the Fairfield Hall Croydon.

Following this match, Nagasaki and Rocco would continue to team until a year later at another televised Croydon tag match, where the team collapsed in spectacular fashion while facing Myers and Dave Taylor. Taylor was attempting, mid-match, to unmask Nagasaki and had nearly succeeded when Rocco intervened. Rocco attempted to pull the mask back down, but Taylor forearm-smashed Rocco, causing the mask to come off in his hands. As Taylor and Myers celebrated, Kendo fled to the dressing room and returned with another mask. Kendo's manager George Gillette blamed Rocco for the unmasking, igniting a major feud that would run on into the early 1990s.