As many joshi fans are already aware, veteran All Japan Women wrestler Kumiko Maekawa is retiring on March 26. Maekawa was the WWWA Singles Champ when AJW closed last May and now it appears that the fate of the legendary red belt rests in her hands.
Maekawa hasn't used the belt since AJW closed but it looks like she is bringing it out of mothballs just in time for her retirement. It appears that the plan is to keep the belt active after her retirement. First GIRLS DOOR announced that Maekawa will defend the belt against Ayako Hamada on their Feb. 19 show. Then EXCITING BOX announced that Maekawa would appear in two matches on their March 19 show. A title match hasn't been announced yet. Now Sanspo Sports is reporting that Maekawa will defend the WWWA Singles Title against Nanae Takahashi on Maekawa's retirement show. Maekawa & Takahashi dislike each other for real. So will Maekawa put the good of the business ahead of her own ego and drop the belt to Takahashi? Remember Takahashi had to drop the belt only because of a serious knee injury. This should be very interesting.
Meanwhile T-1 mobile phone company president Futami is very upset with Kumiko Maekawa. T-1 put on a joshi show last August. They're doing another joshi show on Feb. 23 at Shinjuku FACE. When he announced the show, Futami hoped that he would be able to have Maekawa defend the red belt on the show though the two had a dispute at the first show and do not see eye to eye.
Futami visited the Sportsnavi office and said that he couldn't get Kumiko Maekawa to defend the red belt but she did agree to appear in the six girl tag match main event. She had agreed to appear at a Feb. 16 press conference to announce this. Apparently the participants of this match had not been determined and Maekawa wanted to know who they would be before the press conference. When Futami couldn't tell her, she dropped out of the show.
Futami believes that Maekawa dropped out of the show because of the dispute at the August show. He told Sportsnavi that the main event will be announced at the press conference regardless and she is still welcome to appear at the press conference and on the show. He thinks she left him in the lurch for personal reasons but it's not like he didn't know Maekawa was going to be difficult to deal with. It's probably for the best that she isn't on the show and she's retiring so he won't have to deal with her again. There's certainly a lot of backstage drama going on in the joshi business these days.
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