Yuzuki Aikawa Says Seniors ‘Like This’ Wrecked Joshi’s Future, Replying to Post on Dump Matsumoto Match

By: Thom Fain

The retired Stardom star also blamed the front office in an Oct. 31 reply to writer Jan Saito, who had shared her 2024 Bunshun interview about the 2011 bout.

Retired wrestler Yuzuki Aikawa blamed senior wrestlers and the front office for damaging women’s pro wrestling in a reply on X over the weekend. She was answering a post about her 2011 match with Dump Matsumoto, but she did not explicitly name Matsumoto.

Aikawa wrote that she thinks seniors like this are the ones who “have been wrecking the future of women’s pro wrestling,” and she called the unnamed senior’s achievements tremendous. She added that the front office is also at fault and that she only fought with everything she had. The former STARDOM superstar opened by saying there’s been some noise for a long time. She did not say who the front office is.

The post came from Jan Saito, who runs the Dropkick wrestling newsletter. On Oct. 31 he linked the third page of a Bunshun Online interview with Aikawa from March 2024, called the match a troubling one, and noted that it is rare in joshi for a junior to condemn a senior this far. Earlier that day he had marked the 16th anniversary of her debut. His post had passed 650,000 views by Monday evening.

In the interview, published March 17, 2024 as the second of three parts, Aikawa said Matsumoto had not acted like an adult and that the match strayed from wrestling’s rules. Bunshun’s headline says it involved kendo sticks and chains. Aikawa said she cried afterward, told people she was going home to Ehime and went, then came back thinking she could wrestle anyone except Matsumoto. She said Jushin Thunder Liger got angry when she showed him the match on YouTube, that critics who called her bad do not understand wrestling, and that her seconds told her afterward she had done well.

The match was billed as a 30-minute, one-fall main event at her Yuzupon Matsuri 4 show on Aug. 21, 2011, at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring. At the press conference, Matsumoto hit her with a bamboo sword and tore off her T-shirt, leaving her in a swimsuit. Weekly Pro Wrestling covered the show as a Showa-era baptism by fire and described the finish as unclear.

Aikawa, a gravure idol, debuted on Oct. 31, 2010 at her own Yuzupon Matsuri show, losing to Nanae Takahashi, and became a central wrestler in the new Stardom. She won the inaugural Wonder of Stardom title in July 2011, took the Tokyo Sports joshi award in 2011 and 2012, and retired on April 29, 2013 at Ryogoku.

She now competes in bodybuilding and posted on Oct. 12 that she won bikini model titles at the NABBA Japan Novice Final.

Replies to her post were split. Some blamed the matchmaker for putting a newcomer from outside wrestling in with Matsumoto. Others pointed to her match with Saki Kashima. In the 2024 interview she said early STARDOM sometimes booked matches between wrestlers who disliked each other, that the Kashima bout was one of them and ended with the referee stopping it, and that she is not on bad terms with Kashima now.

MP found no response from Matsumoto as of Sunday afternoon.