Hikaru Shida to leave Ice Ribbon Mar. 30

Hikaru Shida (right) announces she is leaving Ice Ribbon

With all the big shows in Japan today, I didn't want this news to get lost in the shuffle. It's very good news for joshi fans. At today's Ice Ribbon show in Yokohama, Hikaru Shida announced she is leaving Ice Ribbon at the Mar. 30 Korakuen Hall show. She will freelance. She was working for a lot of companies already but Ice Ribbon was getting a cut of her earnings and her merchandise sales. The golden rule of women's wrestling and joshi puroresu and actresses and models who become pro wrestlers don't really want to be wrestlers and use it as a stepping stone to other things. They don't put in the work to improve and they don't care to improve. We see this all over, not just in the WWE. Hikaru Shida is the exception to that rule. She appeared on TV as a teen and then in 2008 starred in the joshi puroresu film Three Count. Then Ice Ribbon owner Sakura Emi was in the film and convinced Shida to become a full time wrestler. Emi's previous attempts to recruit idols to Ice Ribbon were mixed at best. But she hit the jackpot with Shida because Shida wanted to be a good wrestler. She's good enough now that she has been a trainer at Ice Ribbon. She currently holds the International Ribbon Tag Team Titles with Tsukasa Fujimoto. She also made her US debut in SHIMMER in 2013. A couple of years ago when Makoto left Ice Ribbon for SMASH, there was talk that Shida would leave as well. But she stayed even after Sakura Emi left. She probably should have left at the time. Ice Ribbon was taking their cut when she worked elsewhere and I think she outgrew them long ago. Shida is yet another example that idol gimmicks are unnecessary in joshi puroresu. Shida has sex appeal and has worked really hard to be a good wrestler. The two things are not mutually exclusive.