 Matsumoto in December 2019 | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | Kaoru Matsumoto (1960-11-11)November 11, 1960 (age 65) |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Dump Matsumoto Kaoru Matsumoto |
| Billed height | 1.63 m (5 ft 4 in) |
| Billed weight | 91 kg (201 lb) |
| Debut | 1980 |
Kaoru Matsumoto (松本 香,Matsumoto Kaoru), better known by herring nameDump Matsumoto (ダンプ松本,Danpu Matsumoto; born November 11, 1960), is aJapanese professional wrestler. She came to prominence as one of the leading female wrestlers inAll Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW) during the 1980s. The longtime leader of the Atrocious Alliancestable, which included Crane Yu, Condor Saito andBull Nakano, she was one of the main rivals of the populartag team theCrush Gals. Their long-running feud would become extremely popular in Japan during the 1980s, with their televised matches resulting in some of the highest rated in Japanese television as well as the promotion regularly selling out arenas.[1]
Matsumoto came from poverty; She was born to a regularly unemployed alcoholic father and mother who had irregular work in the city ofKumagaya in theSaitama Prefecture.[2] The family, which also included Matsumoto's sister Hiromi, lived in a one-room apartment and depended on her father's family for support. His family ran a farm in nearbyHigashimatsuyama. Matsumoto has recalled stealing food as a child to survive. At the age of 6 years old, Matsumoto discovered her father had a child with a mistress over inKawasaki inKanagawa Prefecture.[2] Matsumoto's mother ran away from the family when Matsumoto was in her fourth year ofElementary school, although Matsumoto and her sister were later reunited with her after she became a building supervisor.[3]
Matsumoto has stated her desire to become a professional wrestler was born out of her desire to become strong enough to kill her father.[2] Some of Matsumoto's first memories of professional wrestling are of a cryingMach Fumiake singing to the audience following an important defeat in All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling.[3] Inspired by Fumiake, who won theWWWA World Single Championship in 1975 at the age of 16, Matsumoto applied to become a trainee at AJW during an audition in April 1976, but was rejected.[4] Afterwards a determined Matsumoto attended High School and took upArchery as a sport in addition to theBasketball and swimming she was already participating in.[4] Her trainer in Archery wasHiroshi Yamamoto, who had won bronze at the1984 Summer Olympics and would go on to win a silver at the2004 Summer Olympics.[5]
Matsumoto failed a second audition for AJW in 1978 but in 1979 on her third attempt, she succeeded.[5]
Matsumoto made her debut for AJW in December 1980. She was an unremarkable rookie for the promotion until late 1982 when she joinedDevil Masami's Devil Corps faction and became a villain. As part of the Devil Corps Matsumoto defeatedLioness Asuka for theAJW Championship on January 8 1983 and held the title for almost six months before losing the title back to Asuka on June 1, 1983.
It was in January 1984 that she took the nameDump Matsumoto, supposedly because she was stocky but powerful like aDump Truck. On the same day, she adopted the name Dump, Matsumoto dyed her hair blonde (In the context of Japan at the time, this was a major break from social norms) and donned face paint and a black leather jacket inspired by the rock bandKISS.[6] Matsumoto has claimed that, upon adopting the Dump persona, she wrote the equivalent of a suicide note to her mother explaining that Kaoru was now "dead".[7]
During her feud with theCrush Gals, she would often team withBull Nakano and Crane Yu, known collectively as the "Atrocious Alliance". On February 25, 1985, Matsumoto teamed with Crane Yu to defeat the Crush Gals for theWWWA World Tag Team Championship,[8] although the two were forced to vacate the title two months later following Yu's retirement. The Crush Gals vs Atrocious Alliance feud was ultra-successful for AJW and saw all involved throw in stardom. Matches between the Crush Gals and the Atrocious Alliance would regularly attract a 12.0 rating onFuji TV, the station AJW broadcast on in Japan. This meant that 12% of the entire viewing audience in Japan that night were viewing the match.[9] Wrestling historians have placed the Crush Gals' popularity at this point on par withHulk Hogan in the United States.[10][11][9][12]
Throughout 1985 and 1986, Matsumoto andChigusa Nagayo had a feud with each other that included two highly acclaimedhair vs. hair matches.[8] Following the first hair vs hair match, in which Matsumoto defeated Nagayo and forced her to shave her head bald, approximately 500 wrestling fans surrounded Matsumoto's transport outside of the arena and assaulted her. In the same time period, a drunk fan shoved a broken glass bottle into her chest at a bar in "revenge" for Nagayo.[7] As the feud with the Crush Gals intensified, a stalker began following Matsumoto during the summer of 1985 until he was arrested.
She later made an unsuccessful bid for the vacantWWWA World Single Championship losing toDevil Masami on December 12, 1985.[13] She later lost to rival Chigusa Nagayo for theAll Pacific Championship in Tokyo, Japan on April 5, 1986.[14]
In early 1986, she and Nakano made a brief appearance in theWorld Wrestling Federation as The Devils of Japan, wrestlingVelvet McIntyre in two separate tag team matches withDawn Marie inBoston,Massachusetts on March 8, which they lost and with Linda Gonzales inNew York City,New York on March 16, 1986, which they were victorious.[15]
Once back in Japan, Matsumoto resumed her feud with the Crush Gals teaming with Bull Nakano to defeat Lioness Asuka andKazue Nagahori (substituting for an injured Chigusa Nagayo) for the WWWA Tag Team title on August 23, 1986, however, the two would eventually be forced to vacate the title the following year. Although Matsumoto officially announced her retirement on February 25, 1988, in which she wrestled the Crush Gals in a tag team match with Yukari Ohmori and then siding against her partner by switching with Nagayo against Asuka and Ohmori, she wrestled her final match against Bull Nakano and Condor Saito on February 28 and thereafter retired.
She has since appeared on several All Japan Women "legends reunions", and in August 1998, Matsumoto and Crane Yu came out of retirement wrestling in a ten-minute exhibition tag team match againstCombat Toyoda and Hyper Cat. She also made several appearances for the now defunctGAEA promotion, and as recently as November 11, 2007, ran her own show under the banner of Gokuaku Domei Produce at Shinjuku FACE.
Matsumoto, inspired by theSukeban subculture and the rock bandKISS, adopted the "Dump" persona in January 1984 which saw her become an intimidating villain clad in black leather jackets, wearing dyed blonde hair and gruesome face paint and wielding akendo stick.[6] This persona, which contrasted so greatly with the clean-cut image of AJW's protagonists such as the Crush Gals, saw her popularity skyrocket.[16]
Writing in 1988, professional wrestling Journalist and historianDave Meltzer stated
Matsumoto actually pioneered the gimmick that theRoad Warriors would later use to great fame in the United States, of being face-painted bikers with bizarre haircuts and monster heels who sold very little, if at all, for the smaller, under matched baby faces. Matsumoto's impact was so great that she often brought crowds literally to tears with her villainous tactics, and when she would merely walk down the street in any major city, people would scatter in fear.[16]
Matsumoto lent her ring name and likeness to theSegaarcade video gameGokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto, which was released in some Western countries under the titleBody Slam. The game was laterported to theMaster System, but Westernlocalized versions (renamed simplyPro Wrestling) removed her likeness and replaced the entirely female cast with male wrestlers.
Since her retirement from professional wrestling, she has appeared in a number of Japanese films during the late 1980s and early 1990s most notably portraying the character Bái Yá-Shàn inRyoichi Ikegami andKazuo Koike'sCrying Freeman series which includesCrying Freeman 2: Shades of Death, Part 1 (1989),Crying Freeman 3: Shades of Death, Part 2 (1990) andCrying Freeman 5: Abduction in Chinatown (1992). She has also starred inScorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat (1991) andOkoge (1992).
In 2024, a semi-biographical dramatized series about Matsumoto titled "The Queen of Villains"[17] was released onNetflix. The five-part series,[18] which began streaming onSeptember 19, 2024, features renowned Japanese comedianYuriyan Retriever portraying the character of Dump Matsumoto.
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