As summer buds, the Shinjuku FACE crowd watches a feisty Selene Misora rise to her feet. She holds clenched fists at her side. Her anger throbs. Makoto kicks her in the head, but she won’t allow the pain to pass through her. Instead, she seems to be drinking in each strike of the veteran’s boot.
Misora snaps her head up after each blow—defiant as a wild mustang.
To see this scene play out toward the end of the SEAdLINNNG Early Summer Games card, to see how captivating Selene is at the center of it, it’s hard to fathom that she’s a rookie. This bout against the former Beyond the Sea champion marks her one-year in-ring anniversary. She’s barely passed the 20-match mark.
Yet, the presence we see from her in matches like this belies her lack of experience. Misora has shown a great knack for the intricacies, the intangibles of the art of wrestling early on.
This match against Makoto runs less than 13 minutes. It plays out the classic story of a senior overwhelming a gutsy youngster. Amid this familiar framework, we see flashes of greatness from Selene. Clear signs of what’s to come.
There’s a confidence to so much of what Misora does. That’s apparent in this bout whether she is firing off kicks or leaping off the top rope to the outside. All of it is hit with moxie.
You get the sense that she feels at home in the ring already.
That translates to precise attacks and offense with oomph. She nails Makoto with emphatic dropkicks. She batters her foe’s body with the back of her boots as she cranks her ankle. There’s something visceral and alive about all of it. And this has been the norm from Misora early on.
Last June, the Yokohama native came aboard the SEAdLINNNG roster, facing Koguma from STARDOM in her debut.
In that first outing, the pink-clad newcomer started things off by locking up with Koguma. There was a real sense of struggle in that moment, a battle of wills and locked limbs. And Misora followed that with a fiery performance.
Sure, some of her transitions and tumbles to the mat weren’t smooth, but we could already see her aptitude for storytelling. She was ferocious, vulnerable, expressive. She nailed Koguma with aggressive forearms and then writhed on the mat when Koguma returned the favor.
It was easy to care about the adversity she faced despite only just meeting her. That’s been one of her secrets to success thus far. An ability to connect.
In the months following this meeting with Koguma, Misora faced a series of big names. She took on former Regina Di WAVE titleholder Nagisa Nozaki at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring. She collided with VENY. She locked horns with MIRAI at Final Battle in December.
These were massive opportunities, and Selene did a lot of on-the-job learning in each of them.
As you’d expect, though, the rookie fell short time and time again. Misora went 0-11-1 in 2025. She didn’t win her first match until February of this year when she outlasted Honori Hana.
It’s been against Hora where Selene has truly been able to blossom, their shared hatred acting as a great catalyst. Each time these two collide, an electricity surges through the air.
Teaming with VENY, Misora wrestled Honori Hana and Unagi Sayaka in an excellent match on SEAdLINNNG’s Winter Reckoning event in February. Then came the singles match two weeks later, and then a tag title contest that proved to be a showcase of Misora’s guts and early excellence: Hana and Unagi defending the Beyond the Sea Tag Team Championship against Misora and VENY at SEAdLINNNG Jump Up! on April 17.
Selene looked mighty comfy mixing it up with these more established stars in that wild clash. She bullied a bloody Honori with kicks to the face. She bit into her opponent’s scalp like some crazed beast. Then when Unagi (and later Honori) fired back and started doling out offense, Misora’s body flopped around while her face wore a clear layer of anguish.
There was a palpable intensity to so much of what she was doing in there. You believe in her emotion. You believe in her malice. When she had Honori pinned to the mat and she was just thundering forearms against her chest, it felt like she was trying to her foe through the mat and toward the earth’s core.
That ferocity is in part why she’s getting so much buzz in her first year. She gives all of herself in everything she does in the ring, a true leave-it-all-on-the-mat approach.
Her ring work will smooth out with experience. She’ll be better at figuring out what to do if a sequence goes awry. That comes with time.
But she already possesses a fire that grabs your attention and seems to understand how to use her body and face and whole damn spirit to sell a story. We keep seeing that play out.
Amid a SEAdLINNNG resurgence, Selene is absolutely a rising star to keep an eye on. Put her on the same list as Seri Yamaoka and Senka Akatsuki—the must-watch crew, the future flames burning in the present.
RESURA 