The joshi world just won’t feel the same without Arisa Nakajima slamming her boots into someone’s sternum or flinging a hated foe to the mat with pure ruthlessness.  

But after a frightening neck injury and nearly 20 years in the ring, a warrior is set to walk away. Nakajima announced after a tag match in April that she will retire on August 23. She will then wrap up a lauded career.  

Whether she was competing for JWP (Japanese Women’s Pro-Wrestling Project), SEAdLINNNG, or elsewhere, Nakajima consistently brought a palatable intensity to her work.  

Of course, some of that came from the moves themselves, the hard strikes, the vicious submissions, but the fierceness of her rivalries helped power her matches. It so often felt like she truly hated the woman in the ring opposite her, that she wanted to not just defeat them but destroy them. Many of those adversaries were also Nakajima’s tag team partners, adding a layer of intimacy to the hostility.  

As she closes out her grand career, let’s look back at who were Nakajima’s most compelling antagonists with an eye on great matches, high stakes, and indelible stories.  

6. Kana 

When someone wants to introduce Nakajima to a curious fan, the go-to recommendation is often one of her bouts against Kana (now Asuka with WWE).  

There’s good reason for that. Those two had tremendous chemistry, each doling out merciless violence to the other in and out of the ring. 

On intensity alone, you have to rank Kana highly here. Their two JWP Openweight Championship bouts crackle with it.  In August of 2013, Kana dethroned Arisa in a match heavy on submissions and featured some nasty headbutts. The two women outdid themselves in the rematch three months later where they kept upping the level of violence. 

Kana and Nakajima also wrestled as a tag team beginning back in 2008. While they didn’t team up together as much as some of the other women on the list, that partnership did add some emotion to their meetings. 

What holds the Kana-Nakajima rivalry back is the low number of one-on-one meetings. They fought just twice in singles action. It’s hard to compete with opponents who have battled her three or four times that many times.  

5. Hiroyo Matsumoto 

Matsumoto and Nakajima have been colliding since The Violence Queen’s career began. 

In Nakajima’s rookie year, she battled her in the semi-finals of the JWP Junior Championship tournament. And this past April, in her return match from injury, Nakajima bested Matsumoto in trios action. Points for longevity! 

The lengthy rivalry has seen the two bruisers compete for all manner of gold: the SEAdLINNNG Beyond the Sea Tag Team Championship, Beyond the Sea Championship, JWP Junior Championship, and Princess of Pro Wrestling. They have several times ended each other’s title reigns including Matsumoto unseating Nakajima for the JWP junior belt in 2008 and Arisa beating The Lady Destroyer for the SEAdLINNNG crown in 2022. 

There’s often been a big-fight feel to their meetings.  

Credit the championships up for grabs for some of that, but they’ve also wrestled on grand stages. In 2015, for example, when Matsumoto produced her own show at Shin-Kiba 1^st RING, she booked herself against Nakajima in the main event. Then when SEAdLINNNG celebrated its seventh anniversary in 2022, these two enemies headlined. 

Their rivalry has led to some stellar matches, particularly with the tag team side of things. Seek out Nakajima and Nanae Takahashi vs. Matsumoto and Ryo Mizunami from SEAdLINNNG Luckiest777 (2017) and Best Friends vs. Matsumoto and Yoshiko at SEAdLINNNG’s fifth anniversary show for starters. 

What keeps Matsumoto from ranking higher, however, is that their singles matches never reached the heights of Nakajima’s clashes with Kana or say the next woman on this list. 

4. Misaki Ohata 

Great rivals are often mirrors of each other. Such is the case with Ohata and Nakajima. They are both sadists, skilled strikers, makers of beautiful violence. 

You can see that in their many top-notch matches against each other.  

E.g.: Nakajima and Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Ohata and Ryo Mizunami from SEAdLINNNG Summer Blast 2017. Best Friends vs. Avid Rival from Ice Ribbon Ice in Wonderland. Their 2018 classic in Pro Wrestling WAVE. 

There have been stakes aplenty when these two have met, as well. Nakajima and Ohata have fought against each other in the JD Star Grapple Beauty League Princess Tournament and the Catch the WAVE finals. They’ve tussled over the JWP Junior title, Regina Di WAVE Championship 2018, and the Ice Ribbon International Tag Team Championship.  

Ohata also has the benefit of being a rival in both singles and tag team competition. Nakajima and Fujimoto (Best Friends) had a number of memorable collisions with Avid Rival (Ohata and Ryo Mizunami).   

There was plenty of nastiness between the duos to go around, but it was regularly Ohata and Nakajima’s ferocity towards each other that shined brightest.  

Like Matsumoto, their rivalry spanned a long stretch. Ohata started banging heads in 2007 and kept their animosity going until her early retirement in 2018. Had the three-time Regina De WAVE champ hadn’t hung it up at just 29 years old who knows what kind of additional bad blood these two could have created together. 

3. Hanako Nakamori 

This may be the most unappreciated of Nakajima’s great rivalries. It is rich with malice, features stirring title matches, and spans 10 years, but it doesn’t seem to get the nearly the amount of attention Nakajima vs. Kana or Nakajima vs. Fuijimoto receive. 

Arisa and Nakamori battled for the JWP Openweight Championship three times, a trilogy that ended with Nakamori dethroning Nakajima in 2016. Both the Beyond the Sea Championship and the Pure-J Openweight Championship were on the line in other bouts between them.  

With a variety of partners at her side, Nakamori clashed with Nakajima in tag team matches throughout the 2010s. There was no one particular set of duos that met, but the sight of these two at odds was a common sight. 

The large number of meetings they had help Nakamori in the rankings. Per Cagematch, Nakajima and Nakamori fought in eight singles bouts and 50 tag matches.  

Their rivalry hit its crescendo (at least from an intensity standpoint) in a grudge match at a SEAdLINNNG show in Korakuen Hall in 2013. Here, these two battered each other over and over, headbutting, hammering until Nakamori finally outlasted The Violence Queen. 

Nakajima vs. Nakamori also boasts a very personal feel thanks in part to their partnership. They teamed together as Violence Princess and won Pure-J’s tag titles together.  

That alliance adds drama, but it can’t compete with the closeness Nakajima shared with her best friend.  

2. Tsukasa Fujimoto 

Best Friends often make the best rivals. Nakajima and Fujimoto are proof positive of that. 

The aces of SEAdLINNNG and Ice Ribbon formed Best Friends in 2015 and have since established themselves as one of the best one-two punches in joshi. Ever. 

They care for each other. They know each other better than any own. They have all kinds of history together. That all makes for a rivalry teeming with intensity.  

That’s on full display in their 2022 match at SEAdLINNNG Golden Moment. They absolutely wallop each other, elbowing and stomping flesh with the worst of intentions. The same goes for their slugfest one day later at Ice Ribbon Spring is Short, Fight Girl.  

The stakes have been regularly high between Nakajima and Fujimoto, too.  

Fujimoto kept the ICExInfinity Championship from Arisa in 2014. Arisa bested her ally/adversary to defend the JWP Openweight Championship (2014) and the Beyond the Sea Championship (2022).  

Each of their one-on-one meetings dripped with enmity, each of them was memorable. Of course, they didn’t fight often in tag matches because they almost always on the same squad. That in part why one other rival just edges out Fujimoto.  

1. Nanae Takahashi 

Takahashi vs. Nakajima has everything you want in a great rivalry. 

Longevity. Intensity. Stakes. Chemistry. A true classic. 

These two first met in singles at JWP in 2007 in Nakajima’s second year as a pro. There wasn’t much contact between them for years after that, but they eventually made up for it.  

A raging rivalry eventually boiled over. They clashed in tag team bouts with Takahashi partnering with either Sareee or Yoshiko. The imposing Takahashi beat Nakajima to win the vacant Beyond the Sea title 2018. Nanae then beat Nakajima in the main event of her own produce show the next year. 

Then came the apex. Nakajima fought Takahashi in a Hair vs. Hair match  for the Beyond the Sea title. The match is far more personal than a title bout, one that saw the rivals held nothing back and Nakajima eventually force Takahashi to shave her head. 

But that isn’t even the best match they’ve had opposite each other. In what is arguably Nakajima’s greatest match, Best Friends took on Takahashi and Yoshiko at JWP Pure Slam 2016. This is a high-energy war that gains much of its power from Nanae and Arisa’s bad blood.  

Takahashi’s name comes up over and over in any list of Nakajima’s greatest hits. One-on-one or otherwise, they made magic when they met. Among Nakajima’s rogue gallery of villains, the bulldozer Takahashi stands on the very top.