Wednesday, March 25, 2009

JDStar


Yumi Ohka

In the early 1990's there was a boom in joshi puroresu.
Several promotions started then and among them was a wrestling promotion created by the legendary Jaguar Yokota called JDStar.
She started the promotion in 1996, and in the beginning, because of her star power, she was the main attraction.
But by 1998, she felt the promotion was going nowhere and she decided to leave and become a freelancer.
When Jaguar left, the promotion was bought by Kiyu Uji, and he tried to build the comapny up.
But even with popular performers such as Lioness Asuka, Aja Kong, and Chigusa Nagayo, it still wasnt taking off.


Fuka

In 2001, Hidenobu Ichimaru bought the company from Kiyu Uji, and revamped it with a new gimmick to push the wrestlers.
The new gimmick was "Athress" or athlete-actress. Similar to the WWE renaming their women wrestlers as "Divas".
His method of drawing in models and training them to become wrestlers drew fire from fans and established wrestlers alike.
Again, similar to the WWE Diva situation.
Several of the established female wrestlers thought that the "Athresses" shouldn't be in the same ring as them.
JDStar struggled and finally went under in the summer of 2007.

Shibutani

Although a lot of the wrestlers were basically "throw aways" several stars did emerge including The Bloody, Fang Suzuki, Sumie Sakai, Emi Tojyo, Yumi Ohka, Kei Akiyama, Asami Kawasaki, Fuka and Shu Shibutani.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Female Wrestlers of Kaientai Dojo

Japanese professional wrestling promotion Kaientai Dojo (K-DOJO) is one of the few wrestling promotions to feature both men and women in mixed matches.
They will wrestle each other during mixed tag matches or singles matches.

Some of the female wrestlers that have worked for K-DOJO are.....


Tomoka Nakagawa


Yuu Yamagata


Ofune


Apple Miyuki


Bambi

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling

Bull Nakano started with AJW at the age of 15

Established in 1968 by Takashi Matsunaga and his brothers, All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling was a joshi puroresu (women's professional wrestling) promotion.
The promotion held it's first event on June 4, 1968.
Also in 1968, they got a deal with Fuji TV. This was the first time joshi puroresu had been aired on TV in Japan.
AJW was the successor to the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Association, which had been formed in August 1955.
The AJW held several regular annual events like the Japan Grand Prix, Tag League the Best, Wrestlemarinpiad and Wrestling Queendom.
On November 29, 1998, The AJW Hall of Fame had its first inducted class enshrined at Yokohama Arena in Yokohama, Japan.

Most of the major female stars of Japanese wrestling worked for AJW at one time or another including:

Lioness Asuka (joined in 1980)
Akira Hokuto (she quit High School and joined the AJW dojo, making her wrestling debut shortly before her 18th birthday)
Aja Kong (trained by AJW, and graduated as part of their class of 1986)
Devil Masami (member of the All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame,inducted in 1998)
Dump Matsumoto (one of AJW's biggest stars in the 1980s)
Monster Ripper (debuted in AJW in 1979)
Chigusa Nagayo (one half of the Crush Gals with Lioness Asuka)
Bull Nakano (started training with AJW at the age of 15)
Jackie Sato (joined AJW in 1975)
Jaguar Yokota (defeated WWWA Champion Jackie Sato at the age of 19)

The AJW wrestling promotion closed it's doors in April 2005 after a 37 year run.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Gaea


Gaea Japan was a well known Japanese women's professional wrestling promotion founded by Chigusa Nagayo in 1995.
During it's run, the promotion had ties with Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling (FMW), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and even had it's own weekly show on The Wrestling Channel.
At a press conference on August 24, 1994, charter members Chigusa, KAORU, and Bomber Hikaru (Mitsuyo Mura) announced the formation of the promotion, and wasted no time in holding rookie auditions the same day.
The new promotion held its first show on April 15, 1995 at Tokyo's Korakuen Hall. "Memorial First Gong" was a sellout and GAEA went on to hold monthly shows at Korakuen and went on the road to hold events in other Japanese cities.
Some of the other wrestlers that worked for Gaea included Toshiyo Yamada, Meiko Satomura, Chikayo Nagashima, Sugar Sato and Carlos Amano.
One of the biggest events in Gaea's run was on December 27, 1999, with the reunion of 80's tag team sensations, the Crush Gals (Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka).
On April 10, 2005, GAEA's run ended at the appropriately titled, "Eternal Last Gong" ending in the place it began, Korakuen Hall.
At the show, Chigusa lost to her protégée, Meiko Satomura in the main event.
Chigusa Nagayo offically retired after the match.

Gaea Japan was the focus of the 2000 documentary "Gaea Girls", by Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams.

And here is part one of Mayumi Ozaki and Chikayo Nagashima wrestling Akira Hokuto and Maiko Matsumoto at GAEA, on April 29, 1997.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UiQH86pVgw
The video was posted by nagashimark on YouTube. You should really check out his channel, he's got a lot of good videos posted there.

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