Will Ayumi Kurihara be the next top joshi idol wrestler?

Ayumi Kurihara and Fuuka in Fotolibre photobooks

With last week's retirement of Fuuka and Ayumi Kurihara, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Tomoka Nakagawa and Misaki Ohata coming to next week's SHIMMER tapings, I want to talk about something I have sensed in the Japanese media recently. The best thing about Fuuka was that at least the mainstream media in Japan was covering her and she got joshi puroresu in the news. Ultimately she didn't help the joshi business much because she and Rossy Ogawa chose not to promote the business as a whole. It's doubtful that they could have done that anyway. The worst thing about Fuuka was she gave consistently poor performances in big matches. This was her big problem in JD Star. Remember she quit the joshi business in March 2007 and only returned in May when JD Star announced that they were closing. Would she have returned if they had remained open? We'll never know. Her run emphasizes the whole problem with pushing idol wrestlers and JD Star's flawed Athtress concept. At some point, the Athtress must produce quality matches. And that's been the problem with most of the recent idol wrestlers. They're not very good wrestlers.





Of course there have been idol wrestlers in joshi puroresu since the 70s. The first attempt at an idol wrestler was teenager Mach Fumiake in 1975. But AJW was more interested in her singing than her wrestling and she soon quit. The first successful attempt at an idol wrestler was probably Mimi Hagiwara in the late 70s. Jackie Sato of The Beauty Pair discovered Mimi at a teenage beauty contest. But Mimi was more than an idol. She worked very hard in the ring and her matches are still very entertaining today. She started late at age 21 and had a short career because of the 26 years of age forced retirement. That she's still memorable today says a lot about her talent. But wrestling took a back seat when JD Star created the Athtress concept in 2001. Of course the concept is flawed because it assumes that sex appeal and wrestling ability are mutually exclusive. And that's why it failed. Recently I saw an article on a Japanese website about the 50 sexiest athletes in Japan. The only joshi wrestler on that list was Ayumi Kurihara. BTW, the only MMA fighter on that list was Mika Nagano. And the other day the men's magazine Men's Cyzo predicted that Ayumi would succeed Fuuka as the most popular joshi wrestler. Now Ayumi is no idol wrestler. She is a very strong performer and produces very entertaining matches. Because she's a freelancer, she doesn't get the push that she deserves. At least she is now a NEO Tag Team Champ. When Ayumi trained at M's Style, her mentor was Michiko Ohmukai. I don't think it's an accident that along with Takako Inoue, Ohmukai has been one of the most successful idol wrestlers. And like Takako, Ohmukai was a tremendous wrestler. It remains to be seen if joshi promoters will let Ayumi rise to the top of the card. But I'm not sure it matters as she has an excellent business mind and it's clear that she is doing a very good job of promoting herself as you can see in the above picture. I'm sure fans at next week's SHIMMER tapings will be highly entertained by Ayumi Kurihara and the other joshi wrestlers.