Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Misae Genki challenges All Japan wrestler

You probably heard about this. I was going to let it pass but it got some unexpected media coverage despite it happening in the sticks that I decided to mention it anyway. When she announced her retirement, Misae Genki made a point of saying that she wanted to have a serious match with an All Japan wrestler. NEO President Koda tried to talk her out of it but she insisted so he made a deal to have joshi wrestlers appear on the Oct. 19 All Japan show in Iruma City. Genki teamed with Jaguar Yokota to win over Ran YuYu & Hiroyo Matsumoto and the Shirai Sisters defeated Kyoko Kimura & Mikado. Afterwards, Genki challenged All Japan star Satoshi Kojima to a match that will happen on her retirement show. All Japan put the show out in the sticks because they didn't really want any publicity but most of the usual Japanese sites carried a brief blurb anyway. So here's a joshi wrestler with over a decade of experience and she still feels she needs to wrestle a guy to validate herself. Koda was against Genki doing this but explained on the NEO blog that this is the result of deep seated sexism in the wrestling business and some joshi wrestlers have serious self esteem issues despite having success. I guess he figures she's retiring. Give her what she wants and get it over with. He seemed genuinely surprised by the publicity and I agree with his assessment. It shouldn't be that big a deal.

No comments:

Post a Comment