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| Kyoko Inoue announces resignation from NEO |
The results of today's NEO Korakuen Hall show don't really mean much in the wake of the announcement that the company will close at the end of this year. Following the third match of the show, NEO co-owner and founder Kyoko Inoue announced that she was leaving NEO effective immediately. She didn't say she was quiiting the joshi business. She just said she was leaving NEO. At the end of the show, Yoshiko Tamura, Tanny Mouse and Yuki Miyazaki all announced they will retire by the end of this year. All three have been with NEO since day one and are very loyal to Kyoko. After that, NEO President Tetsuyo Koda announced that NEO would close at the end of this year. It appears that most of the younger wrestlers will continue in joshi though obviously that could change. In the post show press conference, Kyoko Inoue said that she and Koda had a "difference of direction". Obviously they weren't getting along. Koda said that there are no financial problems. The two just decided to split up. Of course this is a potential problem for the joshi business because NEO is the largest joshi company in Japan and they ran shows every week. But it would not surprise me if both of them open individual companies. We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out but Kyoko's announcement was certainly shocking.
Kyoko should have retired a while back. Maybe NEO would've been better for it. I hope this doesn't seriously hurt Joshi, like you worried about as well.
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