Black Tiger (professional wrestling)

Black Tiger has been the persona used by seven different professional wrestlers in New Japan Pro Wrestling as opponents of the four incarnations of Tiger Mask. The character is drawn from the original Japanese Tiger Mask anime. The trademark of the character is to always wear a mask and tights in an almost identical design to that of his perennial rival only with entirely black and silver coloring.

According to the storyline set forth by the original anime, Black Tiger is a wrestler trained and sent by a Yakuza-like organisation called the Tiger's Cave. The Tiger's Cave desire veangence upon the wrestler Tiger Mask, a former trainee of theirs, for publicly turning his back on them and no longer paying them monetary tributes. With the anime's protagonist translated by Antonio Inoki to actual NJPW wrestling events (in the form of Satoru Sayama) it was perhaps inevitable that his arch-enemy would also appear in the promotion.

The wrestlers portraying Black Tiger have always been gaijin, somewhat of a throwback to the days in which non-Japanese were portrayed as heels to fight against national heroes such as Rikidōzan to promote national pride after World War II, paralleling the way American promotions would often portray wrestlers depicted as, or indeed actually being from, foreign countries as villains pitted against American-born heroes. In other countries this has varied. Black Tiger IV was a member of Team Japan during the TNA 2006 World X-Cup Tournament and during his CMLL career Black Tiger III was overtly portrayed as being Japanese.

Mark "Rollerball" Rocco, an established British wrestler, was the first to assume the persona in 1982 to oppose the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama. His pinnacle of success was defeating Gran Hamada in a tournament final for the vacant WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship on May 6, 1982, and was defeated twenty days later by Tiger Mask for the belt. Sayama left NJPW in 1983 and the rights to Tiger Mask were purchased by All Japan Pro Wrestling the following year for the use of Mitsuharu Misawa. AJPW were not to create a Black Tiger counterpart. Rocco continued to portray Black Tiger in NJPW until 1990, and has the distinction of being the first man to wrestle as Black Tiger outside Japan, having faced The Cobra at Madison Square Garden in a World Wrestling Federation match on December 28, 1984.

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