6/1/2025

A Wrestler You Should Know About: Chi Chi

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover, even if that book’s entrance music is Barbie Girl by Aqua.

By Chris Whitehead

I have been watching wrestling long enough to know not to make a first impression of a wrestler based on their wrestling outfit, gimmick, name or music. So when I heard there was a joshi wrestler doing a Barbie gimmick, who debuted a few months before the Barbie movie came out, I was suspicious. When I saw a picture of her, I wanted to be annoyed by it. When I heard her entrance music was “Barbie Girl”, I was annoyed all over again. I dragged my feet on believing the hype, even when people whose taste I trust were complimenting her, well into her second year of wrestling. But, months later, when I saw her in person coming out to the ring at Ryōgoku Kokugikan, then mixing it up with her rival Aya Sakura, it all clicked. I was proven wrong by a wrestler, yet again. I was humbled by this 5’2” live action Barbie murder doll. Sometimes, it’s good to be wrong.

Chi Chi (real name unknown, but apparently her given name is Chihiro, hailing from the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan) debuted on March 31st, 2023, at the debut Pro-Wrestling Evolution (EVO) show, alongside fellow Evo rookies SUNNY and ZONES, losing in a singles match to veteran wrestler Yuu.

For the rest of 2023, she did one show a month for EVO, a smattering of shows for AJPW (from which EVO spun off), before finishing the year busy, working shows across the joshi world including for Stardom, Sendai Girls, Wave and SEAdLINNNG. Altogether the first 8 months of her career in 2023 yielded 39 matches. As a point of comparison, two similarly aged wrestlers who were being featured on US TV, Roxanne Perez and Anna Jay, wrestled 46 and 23 matches respectively in 2023.

Moving into 2024, Chi Chi wrestled exactly 100 matches (Roxanne: 42, Anna: 39), going on a tour of the joshi scene by wrestling for 15 companies, participating in the annual Catch The Wave tournament, winning the Sendai Girl’s Jaja Uma Tournament for rookies, appearing on all 3 Sareee-ism shows and capping her year by becoming the Sendai Girls Junior Champion in November.

In 2025 by the end of March, Chi Chi was keeping the 100 match per year pace, and wrapped up her 25th match – one day shy of the 2nd anniversary of her debut – due to injury after being accidentally dropped on her neck in a match against Yuuri on the T-HEARTS 5th Anniversary show. She has not wrestled since, but will be making her (presumably/hopefully) triumphant return on June 1st, right in time to compete in the tournament to crown the first ever Pro-Wrestling Evolution champ. (Interesting timing, huh?)

In those first two full years of her career (March 31st 2023-March 30th 2025), Chi Chi wrestled 164 matches, averaging a match every 4.5 days. In the same time span Roxanne wrestled 88 matches with an 8 day average, and Anna wrestled 60 matches with a 12 day average. This is why wrestlers of every gender improve in Japan at a rate that is unseen in the United States.

For many people, one of the appeals of joshi wrestling is to enjoy the (often relatively short) career of a rookie from their debut, maybe even all the way to retirement. I am not one of those people, I don’t usually care about a rookie’s journey. I will regularly skip rookie matches in all promotions. I have been accused of being a workrate snob and I will never beat those accusations. Consequently, much like any other rookie, I didn’t really pay attention to Chi Chi other than to eye roll at the Barbie of it all.

When I really started to take notice was when I realized that Sareee was booking Chi Chi on every Sareee-ism show, including two matches against joshi legend Jaguar Yokota. If Sareee is booking you, there is a reason. If she is booking you against legends like Jaguar and Aja Kong, there is a reason. Later, Sareee also began tagging with Chi Chi semi-regularly, further signs that perhaps at best Chi Chi has become a “Sareee project” or at worst, Chi Chi is spending time learning from one of the five best active wrestlers in the world.

When I really, finally, began to pay attention to Chi Chi was the tail end of 2024, when Chi Chi began what could be a potentially career spanning rivalry with a wrestler who debuted six days earlier than she did: Stardom’s Aya Sakura.

On October 20th, Chi Chi defeated Aya in the final of Sendai Girl’s Jaja Uma Tournament (a rookie’s tournament), before losing to Sakura and her partner HANAKO in a tag match with her partner ZONES three days later. Their rivalry would then escalate significantly in December, as Sakura and Chi Chi wrestled three times in four days across a series of preview tag matches between the 26th and 29th, splitting victories across their teams.

Most importantly for me, I saw the last of these four tag matches live on the 29th at Ryōgoku Kokugikan, which is when I had the lightbulb moment. The Barbie gimmick works because this Barbie is a maniac. Chi Chi wants to slap your face off your skull and look good doing it. And “Barbie Girl” blasting in Sumo Hall has an undeniable vibe. I was sold before the match ended.

Those series of tag matches previewed their first single match since the Jaja Uma final, which took place on January 3rd 2025 at Stardom’s New Year Dream, in which they stole the show. The footage of them exchanging mounted, unprotected slaps on each other will live in my brain as another classic example of the true fighting spirit of joshi wrestling.

This remains the best singles match so far in Chi Chi’s career, beating out the rematch with Sakura for the Senjo Junior title rematch from Sendai Girls “The Top Of Joshi Wrestling” show at Yoyogi #2 on March 19th. Across their 3 singles matches to date, Sakura and Chi Chi have shown the kind of chemistry most wrestlers dream of finding with a rival, and more importantly they have shown a willingness to work hard and stiff with each other, lending their matches a real sense of vitriol and violence.

And with that, we are caught up on Chi Chi’s career to date and ready for her return from injury on June 1st. Put a marker on your calendar for her match on the upcoming Sareee-ism “Chapter VIII” on July 14th, in which she will take on Sendai Girl’s DASH Chisako. I also expect that we will see her in the finals of the EVO championship tournament final on July 5th. 

Remember how wrong I was about Chi Chi and judging a book by the cover. Do you want to know when was the last time I was wrong about a wrestler based on their look? It was no big deal, just the biggest star in joshi this decade and maybe this century, Tam Nakano, who was calling herself the Cutest in the Cosmos. Her career worked out pretty well. It’s good to be wrong, sometimes.

By Chris Whitehead

Striving For Mediocrity

The Martin Scorsese Effect On Pro Wrestling Fandom

When in 2023 the “absolute cinema” meme took off on Twitter, naturally it wasn’t long before the pro wrestling community picked it up for themselves. Particularly fans of the promotion “WWE” were quick to adopt the moniker to describe the one-act plays that took place in the middle of their notoriously underused wrestling ring on their beloved 3 hour TV shows, or whenever Roman Reigns ground another match to a halt in order to give his monologue within earshot of the ringside cameras and explain the story they were trying to tell to all the viewers at home.

Is this the “absolute cinema” that the meme was originally intended to describe? Certainly not. It isn’t easy to find an exact descriptor for what it actually is. It’s an awkwardly written script drawn from a made up language that no one speaks recited by people who aren’t actors. It’s not pro wrestling, it’s not acting, I wouldn’t even say it’s sports entertainment. I guess it’s just what they do.

© WWE

So, of course the usage of the word “cinema” by inhabitants of the WWE Universe quickly found ridicule in the vast landscape of pro wrestling fandom, and soon it was the catch-all solution for any overused trope in a wrestling match that drew the ire of the community.

Wrestlers speaking to the viewer during a match. Eyes bulging out of their sockets in disbelief that the opponent just kicked out at two. Staring at their hands, asking themselves how they could be so violent in a violence contest. It is “absolute cinema” in the worst kind of way. And I think this is earned. Tropes like these have taken over and become normalized in the pro wrestling world, specifically in North America, after a near 20 year monopoly of a creatively bankrupt company. People have accepted them as the norm and as something that wrestlers just do in a wrestling match now. Wrestling fans going against the grain and voicing their frustration over lame and nonsensical clichés is a good thing. It’s a vapid and boring formula that should have never succeeded and taken over the medium in any meaningful way.

© WWE

Losing The Plot

This is where my issue begins, however. I think we have rebounded too far in the opposite direction. The fear of pro wrestling becoming WWE style “cinema” has caused a ripple effect in the wrestling community that lead to an unwavering, defeatist attitude. Of course I agree with wrestling fans who push back on the WWE vision of “cinema”. However, it is alarming to me how many times recently I have heard the following opinions and statements on podcasts or read in online spaces that I frequent, spaces that I thought were of like-minded individuals in the wrestling fandom: “This is wrestling. It doesn’t have to be a great thing. It shouldn’t move you emotionally. It’s not art. Get over yourself. It’s just silly pro wrestling. You’re taking it too seriously. It’s supposed to be simple. Entertainment for stupid people. It’s. Just. Pro. Wrestling.”

If you want to just enjoy watching two big dudes beat the shit out of each other, that is perfectly reasonable and understandable, I will not stand in your way. However, emotional storytelling in matches is, and has always been, an incredibly important part to the greatness of this sport, and taking a stand against it just to make a stand against a company that has never really strived to implement it into their product anyway is terribly reductive to me.

If this is the attitude I am supposed to approach this fandom with, then I don’t even see any reason to waste my life on it at all. Why are we spending so much time every week watching matches from all around the world when it’s not even supposed to do anything for us?

No, wrestling is art. And wrestling is supposed to move you.

Don’t get it twisted, this is not in defense of WWE style “cinema” tropes. That is not what I’m talking about when I say that wrestling should be worth investing time and emotions into. When I say I want pro wrestling to have the ambitions to be great, Paul Heyman shaking his jowls for half an hour on a Friday Night Smackdown is not what I’m talking about.

It is when Akira Hokuto misses the senton to the outside and the match shifts dramatically in favor of young Meiko Satomura. It’s the insane risks a supposedly-past-his-prime Mitsuharu Misawa takes to overcome the struggle against Kenta Kobashi in 2003 and ultimately fails. It’s the frenzy 30,000 people in the Tokyo Dome are being whipped into when Tetsuya Naito finally wins the IWGP Heavyweight title after a decade-long chase. It’s Arena Mexico filled to the brim collectively in tears, in equal parts out of celebration and desperation when Villano III loses his mask. It’s Hangman Page taking us on a journey through his mental struggles during a time that was difficult for everyone. It’s Saya Kamitani preventing the third fall on her own pin attempt because she isn’t emotionally ready for her mentor to retire yet.

To say “wrestling isn’t supposed to be great, wrestling isn’t supposed to be art,” is to deny the existence of moments like these. It is a middle finger in the face of the athletes who put their bodies on the line in order to build their stories over decades and perfect the craft of telling their stories back to us via a predetermined fight. It is disheartening to see as a fan who has invested so much time diving deep into this medium in order to find and experience these moments.

“Of course!”, you might say, “these are all once in a decade occurrences! These are the top 0.0001% of wrestling matches!” That’s true, I did choose top shelf examples to make my point, but I still believe that wrestling can be good art on a consistent basis. Moments like a young rookie called Senka simply fighting through a pin attempt by Aja Kong in some shack in Las Vegas on a random Thursday night and melting people’s minds, blowing the roof off the place in the process confirm that to me. You can visit Korakuen for any random weekday All Japan show and witness the entrance of Kento Miyahara transform the crowd in a way that will make you feel it.

Is this not what we are doing this for? This feeling of amazement or desperation that only wrestling can provide? Why has it become fashionable to say that this shouldn’t exist? That mediocre is enough? Just to spite WWE fans obsessed with the word “cinema”? At first I thought the worst thing WWE style television could do is to be a negative influence on pro wrestling promotions, becoming a viable flavour of ice cream to wrestlers who could do better. Maybe the worst effect after all is the counterculture that emanates from it, fans becoming cynical and giving up on the true greatness of pro wrestling.

© WWE

Loremasters

In quite a similar vein I feel like there is a real movement against so-called “lore” happening in modern professional wrestling. I get it. Lore is when Bray Wyatt and Tommy End. Oh, how cringy. But then all of a sudden, every wrestler who prefers to build their feuds upon years and years of history becomes a Wyatt style loremaster? How did this happen? The word “story” became the enemy because some fans on Twitter don’t understand what it means? I love to see a random banger with no story attached to it whatsoever being booked for a random “Collision” on a whim like everybody else does. Does that mean that any great wrestling feud is not reliant upon a vast history between the wrestlers? Was the King’s Road not built on years and years worth of Baba’s meticulous planning? Matsumoto and Nagayo doesn’t count? Steen and Generico? Tam Nakano? All just silly loremasters?

It feels like in our quest to combat the opinions of overbearing fans for a company that does things in a bad way, we have lost the plot somewhere along the way and we have become irrational ourselves. Just because people use a phrase incorrectly to describe something that sucks doesn’t mean the concept in itself is a negative when applied correctly.

Trust me, when pro wrestling is truly great, it can do things that go beyond “cinema”.

© STARDOM

What’s My Point?

Okay, hear me out. Obviously I’m not trying to say that every piece of wrestling is, or should be a great piece of art. I’m not even suggesting that you should only consume wrestling that is artistically impressive. You do you. If wrestling for you is a way to shut off from the everyday stress and just a mode to shut off your brain and let the visuals flow through you, that is perfectly fine. I applaud you for it.

What I do want to rally against is the notion that wrestling cannot and should not be something that can touch you deeply inside your soul or that can blow you away in its brilliance. It has nothing to do with “Cinema”. Don’t let a meme bring you down into hating important aspects of what makes the thing you love great.

By Tim Hunter

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