page_title: All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Japanese professional wrestler, Bull Nakano. 21 Aug 2011 OZ Academy Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium.日本語: ブル中野 2011年8月21日 OZアカデミー横浜文化体育館大会
context_page_description: All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling, nicknamed Zenjo was a joshi puroresu promotion established in 1968 by Takashi Matsunaga and his brothers. The group held their first card on June 4 of that year. For many years, it had a TV program on Fuji TV.
context_section_description: The All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Corporation, established in 1968, was the successor to the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Association, which had been formed in August 1955, to oversee the plethora of women's wrestling promotions that had sprung up in Japan following a tour in November, 1954, by Mildred Burke and her World Women's Wrestling Association (WWWA). These promotions included the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Federation, and the All Japan Women's Wrestling Club, started in 1948, which was the first women's wrestling promotion in Japan. For a time the Club pushed female wrestling as a legitimate sport, booking sporting arenas.
  By the mid-1960s, the association had fallen apart, due to infighting between the member promotions, and female wrestling was relegated back to being a sideshow act in strip-tease theaters.  In 1967, another attempt to organize the sport of women's professional wrestling was made with a new All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Association.  This time the Fabulous Moolah, the NWA Women's Champion, came across from the United States and traded her title with Yukiko Tomoe, to lend legitimacy to the promotion. The new Association broke up later that year.  Finally, Takashi Matsunaga, who had been the promoter for All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Federation, formed the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Corporation (AJW) with his brothers.  The promotion held its first card on June 4, 1968, and got a television deal with Fuji TV in the same year.
  In the fall of 1970, AJW, which had been contesting the American Girls' Wrestling Association Championship since the previous year, hosted Marie Vagnone, new holder of Mildred Burke's WWWA World Single Championship which had been revived in a WWWA tournament earlier that year in Los Angeles. On October 15, 1970, in Tokyo, Vagnone lost the WWWA title to Aiko Kyo, and AJW had a new world championship singles belt.  The next year, AJW acquired the WWWA World Tag Team Championship as well, when Jumbo Miyamoto and Aiko Kyo were made the first champions on June 30, 1971.
  During the early 1970s, AJW's championship booking was dominated by the traditional trading between a Japanese face and a foreign (usually North American) heel.  The tag belt, for example, was traded fifty-six times between 1971 and 1975, each time between a Japanese team and an American team.  This pattern began to change in 1975 with the new stardom of Mach Fumiake and the Beauty Pair (Jackie Sato and Maki Ueda).  On March 19, 1975, Mach Fumiake won the WWWA Championship from Jumbo Miyamoto, breaking the pattern in the singles division.  After that, only three non-Japanese women ever won the belt, the Canadian Monster Ripper, on July 31, 1979, and March 15, 1980, the Mexican La Galactica, on May 7, 1983, and the American Amazing Kong, on June 4, 2004.
  On July 6, 1980, the promotion had enough popularity to run more shows throughout the country, which resulted in AJW splitting into two teams. Team A featured wrestlers such as Jackie Sato, Jaguar Yokota and Mimi Hagiwara while Team B featured Nancy Kumi, Lucy Kayama and Chino Sato. This lasted until June 1981.
  During the 1980s, AJW continued to feature extraordinarily talented and popular female wrestlers, including Wrestling Observer Newsletter (WON) Hall of Famers, Bull Nakano, Jaguar Yokota, Devil Masami, Dump Matsumoto, and the Crush Gals (Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka).  The feud between the pop culture sensations, the Crush Gals, and the heel stable, Gokuaku Domei, led by Matsumoto, was possibly the most popular angle in all of Japanese wrestling during the 1980s, bringing very high ratings to AJW's weekly television program which caused the show be aired during prime-time. This also resulted in record numbers of girls wanting to become wrestlers with the 1984 auditions having 2,000 candidates.
  Up until 1986, AJW had been the only major women's wrestling (joshi puroresu or simply joshi) promotion in Japan.  Then, on August 17, 1986, Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (JWP) was started, by former AJW stars Jackie Sato and Nancy Kumi, as well a
caption: Bull Nakano
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