Katsumi Sasazaki

Katsumi Sasazaki was a professional wrestling referee, born in 1965 in Itabashi, Tokyo, who died in October 2025. That job is the strangest one in the building. When a referee does it well, nobody remembers he was there; when people start noticing him, something has usually gone wrong. Yet the referee is arguably the busiest person in the ring. He has to read how much a wrestler actually has left, feel where the crowd's attention is, and time the count so the story lands — and none of that survives being done mechanically. A three-count delivered without conviction collapses the whole illusion the match is built on. Sasazaki refereed for ZERO1, went by the name Tiger Katsumi, and from 2018 to 2020 was president of the company that ran the promotion. Referees leave almost no paper trail, only the memory of matches that felt right.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Katsumi Sasazaki

Name (Japanese)

笹崎勝己

Reading

ささざき かつみ

Born

February 12, 1965 – October 16, 2025

Origin

Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

professional wrestling referee

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Snake

• Xhttps://x.com/tigerkatsumi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AC%B9%E5%B4%8E%E5%8B%9D%E5%B7%B1
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11602566

Tags

• Tokyo
• professional wrestling referee

Last updated

September 25, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.