After graduating high school, Kojima joined
Rikidōzan's
Japan Pro Wrestling in 1957, but left in 1960 due to his dissatisfaction with the highly-hierarchical nature of the Japanese wrestling scene. Kojima then went to
Peru, where he worked as
Ernesto Kojima. Later, after moving to
Mexico through the
United States, the ring name was changed to Kojima Saito, Great Matsuda, and eventually Hiro Matsuda. He would win a second title in 1975 by defeating
Ken Mantell, also later losing the belt to Hodge, whom he had a series of matches with. Matsuda wouldn't let wrestlers train with him unless they did 1,000 pushups and 1,000 squats. In 1987, he began working with
Jim Crockett Promotions as a
heel to participate in a feud between his disciple
Lex Luger and
Dusty Rhodes. During the feud, he was billed as "The Master of the Japanese Sleeper," a
sleeper hold. During a match within the feud, Matsuda locked
Johnny Weaver, who was in Rhodes' corner for one of the matches, in the hold, and the prolonged application of the hold caused Weaver to bleed profusely from the mouth. His last match was against
Osamu Kido at the age of 53 on December 26, 1990, in
Hamamatsu, Japan, in an event that also featured
Lou Thesz, who also wrestled his last professional match, and
Nick Bockwinkel. ==Death==