World Wonder Ring Stardom
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| Founded | September 7, 2010 |
|---|---|
| Style | Joshi puroresu |
| Headquarters | Kōtō, Tokyo |
| Founder(s) |
Fuka Nanae Takahashi Rossy Ogawa |
| Owner(s) | Rossy Ogawa |
| Website | wwr-stardom.com |
World Wonder Ring Stardom, often referred to simply as Stardom (スターダム Sutādamu?) is a Japanese joshi puroresu or women's professional wrestling promotion, founded in September 2010 by former Hyper Visual Fighting Arsion and JDStar promoter Rossy Ogawa, retired wrestler, model and mixed martial artist Fuka Kakimoto and veteran professional wrestler Nanae Takahashi. Stardom quickly became one of the top joshi puroresu promotions, largely thanks to gravure idol Yuzuki Aikawa becoming the promotion's public face. Much like JDStar, Stardom also places heavy emphasis on the physical attractiveness of its workers, and publishes several modeling photobooks and calendars of its workers per year. Stardom's in-ring style takes influence from mixed martial arts with many workers relying on kicks as the main part of their offense.
After retiring from professional wrestling on March 29, 2010, Fuka began training Yuzuki Aikawa, a gravure idol signed to Platinum Production, the same modeling agency as her, for a career in professional wrestling. In April, Fuka was approached by Hiroshi "Rossy" Ogawa, the former promoter of JDStar, where she had spent most of her career, about starting a new promotion built around Aikawa. During the following summer, Fuka continued training Aikawa for her upcoming debut and also began training the likes of Arisa Hoshiki, Eri Susa, Kairi Hojo, Mayu Iwatani, Yoko Bito and Yoshiko for Ogawa's new promotion. On September 7, Ogawa held a press conference to announce that his new promotion's name would be World Wonder Ring Stardom. Originally, Ogawa had contemplated naming his promotion Bito (美闘?, "Beauty Battle"), before deciding to go with Stardom. The name Bito was then instead given to one of Fuka's trainees as a ring name. Fuka was appointed the General Manager of the promotion and veteran wrestler Nanae Takahashi the playing manager. In addition to Fuka's trainees, the promotion was also joined by Takahashi's longtime associate Natsuki☆Taiyo and mixed martial artist Mika Nagano, who had a professional wrestling past with the Ice Ribbon promotion. Stardom held its first event on January 23, 2011, in front of a sold out crowd in Tokyo's Shin-Kiba 1st Ring, which was also the location of Stardom's training dojo. Originally, Stardom promoted events in "seasons", with one season lasting, on average, two months. During 2011, Stardom was also joined by All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW) veteran Miho Wakizawa and longtime freelancer Io Shirai. Out of the large group of models and idols trained by Fuka, the most successful act, apart from Aikawa, was the teenager tag team of Arisa Hoshiki and Mayu Iwatani, known collectively as AMA. From the start, Stardom set itself apart from other joshi promotions by rarely allowing its workers to take other independent bookings.
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