Huge thanks to Eric Cholminski, 1/2 of the invaluable Real Hero Archive and administrator of the Classic Japanese Pro Wrestling Facebook group, for kickstarting this amazing initiative. We, along with Damon and Collin of the New Japan Purocast are lending our support to this great cause.
I’ll let Eric explain the full details below:
“As many know, Takayama was seriously injured in a recent match and is in a bad way. This is a man who gave it his all for our enjoyment and entertainment over the years, sometimes putting his body through absurd amounts of punishment. Now is a the time for wrestling fans to show their appreciation for all he has done for everyone and to give a little bit back to a guy who right now desperately needs it. Takayama is a member of this group, and before this happened would sometimes participate here
The drive is simple – if you can, and we know for some people this is difficult, but even $1 helps, we have a paypal address of beerman37@aol.com that we are asking people send donations to. The benefit of us doing it this way instead of donating to an outside page that may take a small percentage of the proceeds is that 100% of the money will go to Takayama directly. The only “fee” there will be is people mistakenly click the wrong way to send on paypal and they take a cut (sometimes if you send the wrong way and send me $10, in the paypal it may show up as something like $9.23 so make sure you choose the correct option).
So if you can spare even $1, please send to beerman37@aol.com. We will be in Japan from 12/30 until 1/7, and we are going to try and coordinate it to where we can hand the money directly into the hands of Minoru Suzuki, who has been handling some of the donation drives over there at some shows. We did a drive like this for Joe Doering when he was ill, and was able to give him over $2,000 (we collected over $1,000 from this group alone and Scott D’Amore matched it). We are hoping we could get that much this time which would be nice but who knows.
Money is tight for some but we hope you can find it in your hearts to help. I constantly get messages privately and on twitter about how they can donate to the Archive and I always turn it down because the Archive is and always will be free for everyone. Here is your chance to donate to something much more important than the Archive. The drive will last from today until 12/27 or so. I will then bring everything with me over to Japan and – God willing – be able to hand this directly to Suzuki or someone else to make sure it gets into the correct hands.
Wrestling fans are often looked upon by some people as neanderthals, so here is a chance to prove people wrong and show that wrestling fans are among the best fans in the world. Feel good about yourself, and donate as much or as little as you can to a guy who truly needs every bit of help he can get
Let’s do something positive! Thank you all”
I hope you’ll join us and the many others who are already contributing to this cause. Please let us know if you have any questions or issues!
