Another new joshi promotion...sort of

You all know how annoyed I am about all the new joshi promotions that keep popping up. So today a press conference was held in Tokyo to announce a new joshi promotion called EXCITING BOX. WHAT! ANOTHER JOSHI PROMOTION! Well, before we all get too upset, it's more of a replacement for an existing promotion, albeit one show, and the owners have experience in the joshi business. So let's look at the background story.


Over a year ago, you may recall that former JWP president Masatoshi Yamamoto and his money mark announced a partnership with Mayumi Ozaki to make OZ Academy a full time promotion. For whatever reason, that never happened. Recently, former FMW star Megumi Kudo and her partner former AJW ring announcer Imai started a new joshi promotion called Indy Trial. They put on their first show last month. Yamamoto has teamed up with Kudo & Imai to start a new joshi promotion called EXCITING BOX. Yamamoto will handle the business end. Imai owns the Marupro Gym so there's your dojo and Kudo will be in charge of training and booking. No, Kudo isn't going to train young girls to do barbed wire matches. Fans forget that Kudo was part of the famous AJW class of 1986 and was trained by and wrestled a lot like Jaguar Yokota. She knows the basics. Alan & Ruslan Karefu have been hired to handle the wrestler management office. They've worked in the past for K-1 & HERO'S. Maybe Kudo & Imai started Indy trial strictly to attract money. If so, it worked.


Yamamoto said that he knows there are a lot of joshi companies right now and fans are very confused but EXCITING BOX will be different. I wonder how he will do that. He also expressed interest in getting into the womens MMA business. EXCITING BOX will produce one show per month beginning February 4 at Shinjuku FACE. Nanae Takahashi, Hikaru & Kumiko Maekawa have already signed to be on the show. I look at EXCITING BOX the same way I look at GIRLS DOOR & Sendai Girls. It they do what they say, they'll be OK. Otherwise, they'll all be zombie feds by the end of the year. We have enough of those already.