Former boxer and mixed martial artist Naofumi Yamamoto had been wrestling for New Japan Pro Wrestling for five years before signing with WWE and entering their developmental system in late 2007. Adapting his style for the WWE market, Yamamoto was renamed Yoshi Tatsu and debuted in WWEs short-lived version of the ECW brand in June 2009. Following his first appearance, defeating Shelton Benjamin, he would be booked to win the majority of his matches, having been cast as a plucky high-flying babyface in five-minute filler matches to keep the crowd high. The dark opening match at Wrestlemania XXVI in 2010 saw him outlast 26 other men in a battle royal to win his biggest match in WWE to date. Sadly, this would be the highlight of his career. 2011 and 2012 saw Tatsu booked to lose more often than not, and on lower tier programming, when he was booked at all. He was released on June 12th, having taken part in 21 matches since the beginning of 2013. He wasnt even considered useful enough to the company to be booked to job regularly on NXT. It begs the question why a talented wrestler would be handpicked from dozens of Japanese workers to relocate all the way over to Florida and spend two years in developmental, to be halfheartedly pushed and then forgotten. Tatsu was nevertheless a skilled worker with a dynamite running spinning heel kick, and would have been best remembered for a series of fantastic matches with superworker Tyson Kidd in NXT in 2011, if anyone were actually watching NXT in 2011. Now working on the US independent circuit, poor Yoshi shares his #YoshiArmy hashtag on Twitter with a 15 year old professional Call Of Duty player. Thats just the saddest sentence in the world to type.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
