Sendai Girls to close July 2011

Aja Kong, Meiko Satomura

Sendai Girls announced today that they will hold their fifth anniversary show July 19 at Sendai City Gym. And after that show, Sendai Girls will close. Sendai Girls head trainer Meiko Satomura told Sanspo that when Sendai Girls started in 2006, her goal was for her trainees to be as good as her within five years. She is not satisfied with the results and therefore the company will shutter. The Sendai Girls concept was to create a new joshi company with rookies from the ground up. I suggested at the time that concept was not workable in today's joshi business. You do need veterans on a roster. Of course the company has also had injury problems and Basara leaving Sendai Girls was also a blow. Clearly the concept has not developed as Satomura and owner Jinsei Shinzaki had hoped. So the closure is not very surprising. I think Sendai Girls has been a failure because only a handful of wrestlers have been developed in five years. Obviously Satomura needed more trainees and never got them. Most young girls in Japan don't want to be wrestlers anymore. We don't know yet if any of the Sendai Girls wrestlers will remain in the business. I'm sure some of them will. Meiko Satomura could make a good living as a freelancer. But considering how her back problems have forced Meiko to tone down her wrestling style, I would not be surprised to see her retire as I know she expects a high level of performance from herself and she can't do what she used to do. So another sad but not surprising day in joshi puroresu.