Maki Itoh - 5 Quick Facts About The Fired Idol

AEW's Women's World Championship Eliminator Tournament, despite its cumbersome name and some questionable booking, has largely been a success. AEW's Women's Division has been the company's Achilles Heel for too long, but this tournament has managed to make the Women's Title feel important again.

It's also introduced the wider wrestling world to one of the most unique performers in the sport today - the Fired Idol, Maki Itoh.

One of wrestling's most popular aphorisms is that, if you want to succeed in the business, you've got to show the audience something they've never seen before. Itoh - a real-life idol with an iron head and the mouth of a drunken sailor - certainly accomplishes that.

Itoh's blend of cutesy appearance, psychotic demeanour and four-letter-heavy vocabulary make her one of the most entertaining acts working today, and she hopefully hasn't made her last appearance in an AEW ring. AEW's Women's Divison needs more personality, and Itoh would deliver it in spades.

Despite being only 25 years old, Maki Itoh has had quite the life in and out of the ring, and this list will act as a quick primer for anyone wanting to know more about the Fired Idol.

Hopefully it doesn't break too many hearts to reveal that most wrestlers who worked occupation-based gimmicks never practised those careers outside of wrestling.

That's right - T.L. Hopper was never a plumber, Irwin R. Schyster never worked for the IRS, and Charles Wright never spent a single day as a pimp/witch doctor/mixed martial artist.

For Maki Itoh, however, being an idol is more than just a gimmick - it's how she started her career as an entertainer, and it's something she continues to practise to this day.

Maki's first big break came as part of the Idol group LinQ, and while that didn't quite work out for her (more on that later), her status as a genuine pop idol is something she works into her wrestling act to great effect.

The above music video shows Maki and her former tag partner Mizuki singing their own theme song, a high-energy track called Setsunairo. It's a good track, and one you will find yourself humming for the rest of the day (sorry about that), but Itoh stopped using it after separating from Mizuki in 2019.

Fortunately, her next theme tune was even better...