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The story
Pro wrestler Keiji Muto (63) revealed on X that when he ordered Uber Eats to his home, the delivery driver turned out to be Ryuichi Takaiwa, a former colleague from his New Japan Pro-Wrestling days. The two men, who once battled each other in the same ring, were reunited in the roles of “customer” and “delivery driver” — and the story became a springboard on 5ch for a wider discussion about the gap in post-retirement living standards among pro wrestlers. The thread ranged widely, from claims that All Japan Pro-Wrestling alumni are well looked after thanks to a solid pension system, to accounts of wrestlers whose lives were upended by New Japan’s pay reforms.
Keiji Muto ordered Uber Eats — and the delivery driver was… a familiar face from his New Japan days
Oct 6 (Tue), 15:52
Legendary wrestler Keiji Muto (63) posted on X on the 6th, revealing that when he ordered Uber Eats to his home, the delivery driver was fellow pro wrestler Ryuichi Takaiwa.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
The guys who used to complain that Baba's All Japan was stingy —
turns out they actually paid proper pensions, and All Japan under Baba was the only promotion where wrestlers got a decent pension.
All those guys who complained ended up singing its praises later.
It's not just "rough" — some of them are genuinely gone from this world.
A ramen izakaya out in the boonies like that isn't gonna turn a profit.
Forget autographs — even just talking to him means buying a T-shirt or something and dropping over 5000 yen, that's the hustle.
He's all over events and YouTube too.
Strong guys like that would be in high demand.
There's already a pro-wrestling moving company, you know.
Eh, I dunno. Guys like this have chronic back and knee issues, so if anything they'd probably wreck some muscle they never use in matches and end up done for.
I was always a fan of Tanahashi and Okada myself.
I met Tenzan off-camera once — he was incredibly humble, so nice it almost made me uncomfortable.
What do you mean "what kind" — they're comrades who ate rice from the same pot (old idiom for those who trained together through hard times), that's just what it is.
Out of this group, who's the one who'd get the face-wash treatment, I wonder?
The way they used to rough up the young guys back then — scary, honestly, they all look like the type who could actually kill someone.
Throw Wild Pegasus in there too.
To think wrestlers who once fought in the same ring ended up on opposite sides — one calling Uber, the other working for it.
Gotta make a living somehow. Respect, honestly.
I don't know him myself, but he's probably a known face to wrestling fans. Takes guts to do that job lol.
Onita? lol
Gotta be Delfin.
Guys like Hiro Saito got offered something like 3 million yen a year, and most of them quit.
Nagata, Tenzan, and Iizuka got knocked down to around 6 million yen a year but stuck around — and the gap between the ones who stayed and the ones who left ended up like night and day.
Tenzan, a guy who even became champion, getting around on a moped — that's pretty grim.
NOAH's the same story: when Nippon TV pulled out, pay dropped overnight, and there was that sad bit about Sugiura's wife having to take a part-time job.
6 million yen a year, seriously…
He left New Japan pretty early and walked away from stable income early on.
He showed up in Nagata's video, and yeah, no doubt he's at the bottom of the pile.
I stumbled on Takaiwa's run-down apartment on the "Nagata Channel" recently and it was a real shock.
Are they just doing routine checkups now?
Really wish they'd help take care of wrestlers' second careers too.
I think the only ones doing proper regular checkups are NOAH and the DDT/CyberFight group.
You get title matches suddenly turning into no-shows, guys retiring out of nowhere, that kind of thing.
Dunno if it's true or not, but apparently any talk of a safety-net setup like that for second careers gets pressured and shut down.
Wait, pressure from where? That's awful.
Nah, doubt that.
If anything they'd be welcomed with open arms.
Like at Sagawa Express — when a delivery's headed somewhere with underworld ties, those tough-looking guys are happy to go.
Security companies would love to have them too.
Apparently his parents were fairly well-off to begin with, so he had a pretty comfortable upbringing.
I've been watching Tenzan's retirement videos these past few days — first time I've watched wrestling in about 20 years, and his retirement match had me in tears. Sounds like he's staying on at New Japan to do commentary and such. He said it's base salary plus commission.
Background and Key Points of This Story
New Japan Pro-Wrestling overhauled wrestler salaries around 2012 amid a change in management, and the thread’s mention of pay being “cut to around 6 million yen a year” likely refers to that period’s restructuring. All Japan Pro-Wrestling, meanwhile, is said to have set up a pension system for its wrestlers under founder Motoko Baba, and the two promotions are frequently compared over the gap in post-retirement living standards. That said, the specific salary figures cited in the thread and the living conditions described via the “Nagata Channel” are based solely on anonymous hearsay and remarks made in videos, not officially confirmed numbers — so some caution is warranted. Muto and Takaiwa both came up through New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but their paths after retirement diverged sharply, and this episode has thrown that contrast into sharp relief. Note: some posts in the thread contained discriminatory remarks about the delivery driver’s background; those have been excluded from this article.
*This article was composed by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Express+) thread “[Pro Wrestling] Keiji Muto ordered Uber Eats — and the delivery driver was… a familiar face from his New Japan days.”
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