What is Joshi Puroresu?
Joshi Puroresu is the Japanese term for female professional wrestling. (joshi=female, puroresu=professional wrestling) It has been popular in Japan since the 1960’s. Why Joshi Puroresu? As a kid growing up in Texas, I used to watch a local wrestling group called World Class Championship Wrestling. As the WWF became more popular, WCCW became less popular and eventually died. I didn’t care for the WWF’s cartoonish style (and still don’t) and stopped watching. I started watching wrestling again in the mid-90’s as people I knew were wrestling in WCW. Someone who was involved with WCW gave me a tape with all sorts of old stuff that I watched as a kid. Right in the middle and totally out of place, was a tag-team match from Japan with women. I didn’t know what to expect. But after it was over, I thought that was the greatest wrestling match I’ve ever seen. The match was Manami Toyota and Mima Shimoda vs Kyoko Inoue and Takako Inoue, 4 of the greatest wrestlers of all time. As I learned more a
