Let’s admit it: if you have tried following Ice Ribbon any time after 2019, most of what you’ve learnt is thanks to Yappy. The Filipina wrestler has been a mainstay in the promotion for over six years, and, besides wrestling, she has also filled in the position of English social media manager, translator, commentator, merchandise store representative, and many more, making Ice Ribbon more accessible to international fans.

Thus, during my first trip to Japan, I felt like I should have a chat with the person who, for years, has made every one of my Ice Ribbon viewings much more enjoyable, and understand her story a bit better.

It was evening in Ikebukuro. We met close to the metro station. After walking a little bit, while I was learning from her about the area, we reached an ice cream shop. There, we were about to have quite a lengthy discussion on her first steps, the current situation of Ice Ribbon, the joshi scene in Japan, and her future plans.

The Beginning

I know that she has been asked already about it, but I still feel the need to ask how she got into wrestling. “Indeed, I have answered that many times. You know, the wrestling fan in my family is my brother, not really me. I just found it kind of interesting, but I never followed it. However, in 2017, I was just at a point I was not really doing anything with my life and wanted to find a new hobby. At a REINA show, I saw Makoto and Aoi Kizuki, which I found interesting, and the friend who took me to that show told me they used to be in Ice Ribbon. Luckily, Ice Ribbon had the Wrestling Circle, which is a beginners’ class open to non-professionals, and it sounded like a fun hobby.”

Yappy explained that at that time she was already in Japan working as a teacher. “Being an English teacher in Japan is like working as a waiter in Hollywood. I came to Japan to become an illustrator. And then ended up becoming a wrestler.” 

Being a rookie wrestler in your 30s is not easy (I can answer that from personal experience), and Yappy had quite a story to tell about starting pro training at the age of 37. 

“Most joshi promotions would not accept trainees who are over the age of 25. So, Ice Ribbon was one of the very few promotions that would actually take me. Being a rookie in my 30s, it was very hard because back then the culture was very different. It was still very old-school joshi. That means it can be very mentally taxing. There was so much hierarchy and so many rules, and whenever I broke a rule, I would get reprimanded. But if you’re a Japanese person, you already know those rules naturally. And then what made it even more difficult was that we would have foreign guests who could get away with stuff because they’re guests. However, since I’m a roster member, I get the same punishment as a Japanese person. Sometimes, after training, I would be in the corner by myself crying. It was very tough.”

I had to ask Yappy to give an example of one of those rules that must not be broken. The response was swift, as she paralleled those rules to manners. “Japanese punctuality is super important. And Filipinos are perpetually late. I was 30 seconds late when we were supposed to gather to talk about the match. Everyone was already there, and they were mad at me because I was late. When a foreign guest was late, nobody scolded her. It kind of made me resentful of the foreigners at that time, especially also because some would develop an attitude in the dojo. Now that I am in charge of foreigners, I explain to them that they have to be respectful. Ice Ribbon was not used to having foreigners before.” 

The Old Mentality

The constant use of past tense begged the question whether things are different now. Yappy responded that now the culture is very different. As she explained, “because now I’m in a senior position, I can change that culture.”

Yappy referred to the infamous old-school joshi training videos and, while no one was getting beaten up, the vibe was similar and training very strict. She explained that “sometimes it’s just very hard, and your body is tired, and you can’t do it anymore. So, you’re just crying because your body doesn’t want to do it. It’s mentally taxing.” She also remembered that she would be body shamed a lot: “I would try a move from the top corner, and the coach was like ‘Wow, it’s a flying pig!’” She also added, “In my era, it was one hour of conditioning, and it’s not unusual for a wrestler to cry during training. And not just me. Yes, I’ve cried, but other wrestlers have also cried. Tsukushi has cried in training. Nao Ishikawa also cried in training. Fortunately, the culture is not anymore like that. The culture has changed quite a bit over the years. There are still some remnants though.” 

At that point, I was curious to know more about those backstage rules that have carried over.

Yappy gave an example: “When we would have an out-of-town show, we would use a bus. The moment the bus arrived at a pit stop, even if we were sleeping, all the rookies had to get out of the bus before the senpais woke up, stand in lines outside the bus door, hands clasped, and when a senpai came out to use the bathroom, they bowed. And we had to develop that psychic ability to feel when we would reach a pit stop, so we could wake up. Now, not anymore. If you’re on the bus and you’re sleepy, sleep. So, little by little, things like that, they started removing them. But there is still some of it, like if a senpai enters a room, then you go up and greet them.”

Astonished as I was, I needed to ask her how those changes make her feel. She told me that she feels it is a relief. According to Yappy, that old-school mentality had been quite toxic. “I think I survived it because I was already in my 30s when it happened. If I were in my 20s or as a teenager, I don’t think I would have lasted.”

Wrestling in Japan

This culture is not the only thing that surprised Yappy. Before becoming a wrestler, she would watch wrestling here and there on YouTube and not really follow it on TV. So, for her it was a big surprise when she realized how much entertainment is involved in it. “I thought you should just go out and do your thing, but there is much more to it: you need to work the crowd.” Yappy also explained that joshi wrestlers are like idols: “You need to always look single and available. The moment Risa Sera announced she was getting married, her portrait sales dropped.” The fact that some Ice Ribbon wrestlers make it known that they are married and have children is among the reasons she feels the promotion’s viewership among the Japanese has dropped. 

It was then time to learn a bit more about how Ice Ribbon wrestlers spend their time. I asked Yappy what the average week of an IR wrestler entails. She told me that it depends on whether you are doing this as a full-time or part-time job. Full-timers also work in the office. “When I was full-time, I would go to the office at 10 a.m., answer e-mails and then mind the Ice Ribbon International Store. Also, we had to train the rookies, and, if someone rented our dojo, we had to prepare it, too. My life became ‘home, dojo, home, dojo,’ so I am not doing it full-time anymore. I am not trying to be famous; I just want to enjoy my life. Or I guess I am getting old.”

At that point, Yappy brought up again how much creative freedom she has in Ice Ribbon. She explained that the whole idea of her teaming up with Ancham came during one night of drinking. Then, when she pitched the idea of the Bad Butts tag team to the management, they didn’t fully get it. “At first, they thought we wanted to be ‘bad’ characters, and Ice Ribbon doesn’t do heels. They couldn’t understand how we can be both mischievous and cheerful at the same time. I would compare myself to Mark Hamill’s version of the Joker: not a good guy, but still funny and cheerful. But they let us do it eventually, even though some of the stuff we did at first, we did it without permission. It worked, though. We are not evil, we are just having fun, and people get hurt in the process.”

Wrestling for other Japanese promotions isn’t very different. “There are some things that are commonly accepted in all Japanese promotions. In the States, for example, there might be rules that one promotion follows and another doesn’t. In Japan, the culture is very much unified. That is justified by the fact that promotions here lend a lot of talent to each other and seem to be on friendly terms. “Just because some promotions are not friends doesn’t mean they are enemies. It’s just that they don’t have an active working relationship. And some companies just don’t want to deal with other promotions’ management, so they hire freelancers,” she added. 

Freelancers and Ice Ribbon’s Current State

Freelancers has been a keyword in the past four or five years: many wrestlers have left their companies to go solo, including Ice Ribbon talent. “Banny Oikawa invited me to go freelance with her, and I was thinking about it. But then, if you’re a freelancer, you have to be good at networking. You have to be good at going around and meeting people, getting yourself known, and building relationships. I’m too much of an introvert for that. I don’t want to spend time building relationships not based on a desire for friendship but based on a desire for networking and to get work.”

Many fans remember in recent years the conversations about Ice Ribbon’s state. The company saw a lot of talent depart earlier, and there were concerns about its future.

 “Many of our top stars had left: Prominence, Maya Yukihi, and Tsukushi, while Tsukasa Fujimoto went on a hiatus. We had to start from scratch. Suddenly the show had been left to us, all the people who were not highlighted by that point. Up until then, my matches had meant nothing. We were scrambling in the dark, until we suddenly started to see some progress.

Fans and wrestlers alike saw a positive promise when the promotion entered into a contract with the company Rebellions in late 2023. Until things went downhill again.

“The Rebellions president had these two women who didn’t really know anything about pro wrestling and acted as our managers. They were working very hard, but then the booking was still all over the place. There was still no solid storyline happening so it was very hard for fans to really get invested. We were starting to get some audience numbers back, but we were not where we were hoping for. And then, that whole fiasco happened where the president of Rebellions suddenly disappeared, and it turned out he was in the ICU, and we couldn’t get to him. So, we dissolved that and went back to the old contract and management of Ice Ribbon. Everyone was like ‘You know what? Let’s keep making it work’. As Ancham said ‘Ice Ribbon is a zombie promotion: it keeps getting back up’.”

What is, then, Yappy’s position in this whole new situation? “Finally, I have more mobility in the company, and I’m starting to believe in it too. Because now the company is more in the direction of how I wanted it to be. I felt like such an outsider for a long time, but now I really do feel like I belong to the company. I don’t have to try to look cuter or sexier. I can do what I want, and hopefully my people will find it.”

Wrestling in the Philippines

It was time to mentally leave Japan and go to the Philippines for a bit. Yappy has had a few matches there and admitted being nervous at first. The reason was that the wrestling culture in the Philippines is very young, and people would think that foreign wrestling is better, so expectations would be high.

Yappy is friends with both promotions in the Philippines (FPW and Puso Wrestling). In particular, the people of Puso Wrestling see Yappy as a senpai and keep asking for feedback. “One time they asked me for help on how to organise better and took me on a lunch meeting. I had to explain to them how to delegate tasks, such as when building the ring. And at training, even though I am not good as a main coach, if I see something wrong, I am going to pull that person aside and give them a one-on-one session.”

 Other Activities 

A person like Yappy wouldn’t be engaged only in wrestling. She has also had a presence online as an artist and streamer. However, that side of hers is not very active at the moment. She went on that “lately I haven’t been doing much art, but sometimes I design stuff, such as the Bad Butts shirt or the jackets that I and Ancham wear. I also did the illustrations for the merchandise of Banny Oikawa. I still draw sometimes, but mostly for my enjoyment.” Some of you might also remember Yappy taking art commissions, which, sadly she no longer does, as she does not need it anymore.

Yappy would be the promotion’s ambassador to English-speaking fans, as she was posting all the news in English. She informed me that the Ice Ribbon English X account is not very active anymore because the platform’s translation feature is so easy, but she still uploads stuff on Facebook instead.

Yappy was also running a video series, Weekly Ribbon Unravel, in which she was explaining what was going on in the company, helping Western fans connect with Ice Ribbon more. “I liked the series, the management did too. But it was a one-man show: I was writing the script, I was shooting all the footage, I was doing the editing, and then I had to put subtitles and that would take me 30 hours a week. That’s almost a full-time job, and I didn’t have help on it. Rebellions, at least paid for it, but now it’s pro bono work. I’m old, I’m tired. I want to just enjoy my life. And I also fly a lot home these days, because I don’t want to my dad to be alone too much.  When I get the time, I’ll do more short informative videos because people do like those. It’s an insight into Japanese culture.”

Likewise, her streaming days are also in the past. She said that it was fun when it was just a core set of fans who were in love with Ice Ribbon. Yappy would regularly answer wrestling questions and give her insights. However, people who weren’t really into Ice Ribbon started watching it and putting stuff on Reddit just to have some joshi wrestling news they could report. Then, sometimes the things she would say would be misrepresented. The actions of those people brought those streams to an end, according to Yappy.

Yappy is indeed known as someone who doesn’t follow the traditional conventions of joshi wrestling online, as, compared to other wrestlers, she also posts about her private life a lot. I wondered if there are guidelines on that. Yappy confirmed that there is a list of those: “First of all, we need to protect our privacy. We don’t tell people where we live, because of stalkers. Also, if we post a picture and there is an unknown person in the background, we blur their face. Even when I take a picture with another wrestler, I have to ask if they are OK with me uploading it. I never upload anything without anyone’s permission. Other examples include not posting pictures in a car without a seat belt or making posts past midnight the night before a show; it means you are not getting enough rest.”

Future Plans and Epilogue

I decided to end the interview with another cliché question and asked Yappy about her future plans as a wrestler. She replied that she would like Bad Butts to do more matches internationally (at the time of writing, they have already had their debut in the Philippines). Yappy said: “Actually, I contacted some promotions in Singapore and they were open to having us but the scheduling just didn’t work. But we were able to get booked in the Philippines, and I hope that we can do so in other countries too. I’m more comfortable going with Ancham because I’m an introvert, and she is a flaming extrovert. So, she does most of the PR, and I’m just the bouncer in the background. Thus, when we are planning a match, I feel more confident having her with me. We are like ying-yang: we complement each other.” 

By then, it was time to wrap it up. I had to go close to the Shinjuku area, so Yappy helped me find my way in the labyrinth that the Ikebukuro station can be. That was easy for her. The challenge now is to navigate through another labyrinth, that of joshi wrestling. And she has been doing great so far. We wish her a lot of success.