Before I begin, I want to thank EVERYONE who has assisted me, one way or another, with finding anything involving Kyoko Aso. I especially want to shout out X/Twitter users (Cult of Bull Nakano) for sending me photos of her they’ve archived. And Alex AKA NOAHs_Savior for sending me both photos and info of her they have in their extensive archive. This writing would quite literally be impossible without them.
(Photo of today’s topic, Kyoko Aso. Thank you, Cult of Bull Nakano, for this photo.)
Kyoko Aso is a wrestler who has been lost to the sands of time, virtually all but forgotten to many wrestling fans including myself, until I saw an item for sale one day. I was scrolling through my favorite place to buy Japanese wrestling goods, I checked the “awards and championship” section out of curiosity and made it show only women’s goods. I came across a real, TV used award from AJW for their junior championship. At first, I wondered how it was still for sale at such a low price…
(Kyoko Aso’s real Junior trophy being sold for $150 on Toudoukan, A site that sells lots of Japanese wrestling and martial art merchandise)
It was quite obvious from reading the description that this was in fact a real junior trophy used in AJW. Being sold at a little under $150, I was quite surprised to see it was still for sale. After reading further, I realized the title revealed the name of our former champion, although misspelled, it says “Kyoko Asao last defense”. After asking around I learned of Kyoko Aso, A former AJW Junior champion and a woman who has been lost to time. While the exact day of her debut is argued between two dates, for my sanity we will say, in general terms, Kyoko debuted in the spring/summer of 1985. (She was officially part of the March rookie class, but her exact debut match date seems to be debated.) Online on YouTube she has three surviving matches, all of them belonging to the archive page “Evito-X-Puro” The first one being on 9/4/1985, where she faces Megumi Nakame. Watching the match she seems to be a face and gets regular cheers from the audience. She seems to be a technical style wrestler and frequently puts her opponents in submission moves. She unfortunately loses this match via pinfall, but she did fairly well in my opinion.
(Kyoko sporting a striped one-piece like she did in her match with Megumi. VIA Cult of Bull)
Her next known match was on 10/25/1985 where she faced Mika Suzuki in the 1985 rookie of the year tournament. I am 90% sure she is the winner in this match, I don’t really speak Japanese and the commentators speak so fast it can be hard to hear. The final match of hers you can actually “watch” On YouTube is when she wins the vacated junior championship while facing future star Megumi Kudo on February 26th, 1987…. A fairly large leap in years of having no other watchable matches.
(Photos from Deluxe Pro VIA Alex that feature Kyoko winning the junior championship and her beating Megumi Kudo)
Post winning this championship, she has three matches listed on wrestlingdata.com, unfortunately none of which have any video to go along with them… The first one is a defense for her AJW Junior title where she faces a familiar face in Mika Suzuki. This match took place on 4/15/87 in Tokyo and was a win for Kyoko. While we have no video of this match I do have a photo from a magazine (thanks to our good friend Alex) of this defense…
(“I’ll lose, I’ll lose” Kyoko says in a quote from this matchup. Mika (in red) and Kyoko (in blue) were featured in this match and article about it VIA Alex)
Her next listed match in wrestlingdata.com is for the AJW tag team championship. Kyoko’s partner is Mitsuko Nishiwaki, and it’s against the team of Kumiko Iwamoto and Drill Nakame. On the website it says the winners are “unknown” but nobody I’ve spoken to has mentioned Kyoko winning any sort of tag team championship so we can assume she lost this match.
(Kyoko sporting what I assume is a purple kimono, and striking her best fighting pose of course…VIA Cult of Bull)
And now, the fateful last match Kyoko ever wrestled is listed… In Kyoko’s final defense before suddenly retiring, Kyoko wrestled Aja Kong (then known as Erika Shishido) in a defense match for her junior championship. Kyoko defeated Aja, and was then never seen again….
(The first photo of Kyoko to grace the internet thanks to seller service TOUDOUKAN. Kyoko holds her title high and proud before never being seen again…)
So is that it? Is Kyoko’s story over? Is she permanently lost forever? Well, I never go down without a fight…. First order of business I reached out to the one selling her trophy, TOUDOUKAN, and asked if they knew how to contact her or what remained of her. Unfortunately they have no idea where she’s at and are just selling her trophy, I still feel very determined to discover what’s become of our forever champion Kyoko… So I joined a Japanese pro wrestling fan page on Facebook and asked the big question “Does anyone remember Kyoko? Does anyone know why she retired and where she’s at?” I even included two photos to hopefully jog their memory….
(Kyoko sporting an official 1986 fan club shirt and Nike shorts. VIA Cult of Bull)
I’ll be honest, my Japanese is terrible, and I knew there was probably a grammatical error in my post in the Facebook group. One man reached out just to be nice and correct my grammar. Feeling hopeless, I received my final message on Facebook regarding Kyoko. A very kind man who speaks both English and Japanese reached out to me. His name is Danny Akagi, and he asked me what I was trying to say in my Facebook post (A testament to just how bad my Japanese truly is!) When I clarified my question he looked into it for me. He said it was probably two reasons why Kyoko retired the way she did, champion and all…
(Our forever champion, Kyoko, with Devil Masumi VIA Cult of Bull)
Back in the day, the women wrestlers had a policy that when they reached 25 years old, they had to retire and pursue other careers in life. It was very common for many of the women to “break” this policy ironically and continue wrestling especially if they reached stardom before the age of 25. Secondly, I was linked to a Japanese Yahoo answers thread that asked the same question I had been searching for this whole time… “Why did Kyoko Aso retire?”
(Kyoko and her best gnome-y….haha….VIA Cult of Bull)
Apparently, In the January 1988 issue of Deluxe Pro, it’s written that Kyoko suffered a cervical vertebrae injury and attempted to return to the ring, but it was too painful on her body. Two other girls also retired around this time, and she figured it would be okay if she did too… While I know this wasn’t the “Storybook” ending that I and everyone else was searching for, I think as long as Kyoko is doing good and is happy somewhere that’s all that truly matters, correct? She sacrificed so much to be an entertainer, including her body, and I want her to know we still love her and think about her all these years later. Media preservation is so important for these reasons. If it weren’t for these people I wouldn’t be able to write this article. Thanks to these preservationists, Kyoko, who was once completely lost, is now known once more. Maybe, per the chance she reads this article, I just want Kyoko to know she still has dedicated fans out there, and you can consider me one of them.
(A fans artwork of Kyoko VIA Alex)
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