10 Great Wrestling Moments That Not Enough People Have Seen
9. '90s Joshi
Sexism is hard-coded into the DNA of professional wrestling.
This is an industry that equates the women that follow it with vermin, believed itself to be progressive when women wrestlers were positioned as something remotely approaching their male counterparts 95 years after women were given the vote, and, beyond WWE in the US, insidiously popularised inter-gender wrestling as an assault facilitator and means of inserting a man into a women's match.
This mentality naturally extends to the fandom. Scour virtually any discussion point anywhere the conversation is, and it's shocking how women are reflexively excluded from it. Whatever the topic - who's the stiffest, the most technical, the best orator - that topic barely includes women. Stiffest is Katsuyori Shibata, Vader, Stan Hansen.
It's never Aja Kong, but it f*cking should be.
'90s joshi should be mandatory on the curriculum of any adventurous pro wrestling fan. It's wonderful in a way men's wrestling can't be - the flexibility advantage creates the most gorgeous suplex arcs, the most harrowing-looking submission selling - but also wonderful in a way that it very much f*cking can.
Just look at the disturbing, disgusting treatment to which Kong subjected Yumiko Hotta in a 1994 AJPW war. It's a nasty, incredibly violent fight all the better for its studious lack of customary dramatic rhythms.
It is stronger than strong style.