WhiteTail Wrestling

The story of Japanese women’s professional wrestling stretches back to at least the 1950’s when Women’s World Champion Mildred Burke toured the country however the women’s wrestling scene was held back by overly conservative views about women’s involvement in sports as well as general views on women’s role in society as a whole.

In 1968 the course of joshi puroresu or Japanese women’s professional wrestling was changed forever when a new company All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling was formed by the Matsunaga brothers Takashi & Kunimatsu Matsunaga. The early days of the promotion were characterized by matches involving Japanese talent taking on touring foreigners matching the approach taken by men’s promotions in the country dating back to Rikidozan and the height of JWA in the 1950’s. Unfortunately data on shows and matches from this time period is limited but we do have some good records provided by Cagematch which will be my main source of match data from this point forward.

In March of 1968 the NWA Women’s World Champion the Fabulous Moolah toured the country having a series of matches with Yukiko Tomoe and trading the belt with her for the length of the tour before Moolah won the belt back on the last show of the tour. This set the scene for those early AJW tours with foreign talent coming in brandishing their belt trading these belts with the top Japanese talent before going home and pretending that these matches never happened and with the limited exchange of news and no footage to speak of to the audiences outside of Japan these matches may as well have not happened.

On the 15th of October 1970 Aiko Kyo defeated Marie Vagnone for the WWWA World Title a title founded by the legendary Mildred Burke. Kyo would hold that title for the next 511 days establishing the WWWA as the world title the red belt of AJW. In July of 1971 the WWWA Tag Titles were established this belt would see the best teams from Japan taking on foreign talent with the belt regularly changing hands.

During the first half of 1972 Kyo would trade the WWWA Title with foreign wrestlers Jean Antoine, Sandy Starr and Sara Lee but then on the 26th of July 1972 Miyoko Hoshino became the new champion defeating Sara Lee and becoming the new long term champion through the rest of 1972 and well into 1973. Kyo retired in September as a three time WWWA champion holding the belt for a combined 591 days Kyo had also been a WWWA Tag Champion three times teaming with future WWWA Champion Jumbo Miyamoto. Hoshino would retire herself by the end of 1973 as a three time WWWA Champion holding the belt for a combined 394 days as well as holding the tag belts four times for a combined 267 days with three of those reigns being with Miyamoto.

Now would be a good time to mention the mandatory retirement rule which forced AJW wrestlers to retire by the age of 26. This was due to the conservative values of the time with AJW wrestlers expected to conform to societal expectations and get married and have children. This may sound old fashioned, stupid and sexist and it was but there was also a benefit to AJW in that they were forced to regularly turnover their roster and train and push new young talent to replace the talent that had been forced into retirement in the prime of their careers. This resulted in a fresh roster that was rarely ever stale while business downturns could occur when top talent retired the promotion could always replace this talent with new stars ready to go and take the promotion to new heights.

On the 30th of September 1973 Jumbo Miyamoto won the WWWA Title for the first time starting a period of dominance that would last for the better part of three years. However Miyamoto would drop the belt on occasion and one of those occasions was on the 19th of March 1975 when the first Joshi Idol star Mach Fumiake defeated Miyamoto for the title although she would only hold the title for 14 days before dropping it back to Miyamoto. Fumiake the teen sensation had a successful career in music and film when her short wrestling career came to an end but we thankfully do have clipped footage of the 19th March match and this will be the first bit of known footage of the promotion. The footage lasts about six minutes and shows mostly competent wrestling although nothing special but perfectly fine for 1975. The finish isn’t great with Miyamoto clearly not wanting to do a job and wanting to keep her heat kicks out well before the three count. It is here with Fumiake on top for her brief run that we’ll end this first part but we’ll be back for part two as footage becomes more readily available and new stars take AJW to its first beautiful golden age.