10 Times Wrestlers Were Broken In The Hard Way
2. The Girls Of GAEA
GAEA Girls (2000) illuminated the distressing training culture native to Japan before that culture softened, to a degree, in the years since. A prospective wrestler of the GAEA Japan promotion, Takeuchi, was filmed in her journey. It was a lonely, rural, menial existence designed to isolate her from any semblance of normal life. To become a professional wrestler, she had to abandon everything else, and suffer disturbing punishment to prove herself.
Reduced to tears, told to go home, told that she was useless, told her tears were just sweat, asked yes-or-no questions to which yes or no were not acceptable answers: Takeuchi found herself in an a brutal, impossible psychological and physical position designed to underscore the perseverance required to withstand the reality of fabricated war. This was a fitting reflection of the paradox at the dark heart of the documentary: was this tough love, or the unnecessary stroke of a sadist's ego?
It is a distressing but no less fascinating watch that became notorious for one GIF-triggering sequence in particular: furious at the impotency of her dropkicks, Takeuchi's trainer responded with something you'd never see in the real wrestling ring, but was thrown in the training arena to determine whether the trainees could absorb the worst-case scenario. Takeuchi's head was somehow not removed from her shoulders, but thick blood oozed gruesomely from her face as she pleaded her case.
Shocking as this was to witness firsthand, the system was a staple of both joshi and its puroresu brother...