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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment