You battle your way through the Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling roster. You rattle off win after win until you have that Princess Cup trophy in hand. Coursing with endorphins, you soak up the glory, the moment.
What next? How much power that victory really wield?
Tournaments like the TJPW Tokyo Princess Cup are often seen as springboards for rising stars. It can, in theory at least, be a means to lift someone from the midcard to the marquee, to hoist someone into the championship picture. Is that true in reality, though? Does outlasting everyone in this single-elimination tourney actually translate to a career boost?
With that question in mind, I looked at the trajectory of the last five winners once they took home that coveted trophy. I noted their winning percentage in the year after their tournament win, which (if any) championships they won, and how TJPW booked them at the big events following the Princess Cup—Wrestle Princess, the January 4 show, and Grand Princess. That should give us a good idea of the impact a Cup win has in practice.
Let the inquiry begin!
2021: Maki Itoh
When Maki Itoh took down Shoko Nakajima to win the 2021 Princess Cup, the foul-mouthed former idol was in the midst of proving herself in the ring, working to change the perception some had of her. Sure, she was a memorable character and charisma wellspring, but could she actually wrestle at a high level?
In response, Itoh did some of her best work to date against Mizuki in the semi-finals and Nakajima in the finals.
We did see her gain momentum after the Princess Cup, but not as much as her biggest fans would have hoped for. Itoh notched a .600 winning percentage in 2022 after being closer to .500 or below for most of her TJPW run. She won a lot in the last part of 2021, too, but it was mostly against midcard and lower-tier talent.
The tourney win did get her a crack at the Princess of Princess Championship, but Itoh fell short against the champ, Miyu Yamashita. As a consolation prize, Itoh started off 2022 by dethroning Hikari Noa to claim the International Princess Championship. That marked the second reign with that title for The Cutest in the World. As hot as Itoh was at the moment, it was surprising TJPW didn’t push her more than that, though.
Itoh was in the main event at Wrestle Princess where she lost to Miyu. Then on January 4, she battled Hikari Noa for the international title in the semi-main event. At Grand Princess, she was in the third-to-last match, defending the international title against Yuki Arai. That’s all pretty good, but in no way was that stretch TJPW fully taking advantage of the buzz around her.
Itoh came out of the Princess Cup looking like a potential main character for the company, but the company never told that story.
2022: Yuka Sakazaki
Much to the chagrin of Miu Watanabe fans everywhere, Yuka Sakazaki stopped the pink powerhouse’s run at the Princess Cup with a dominant win in the finals.
Watanabe was the ideal candidate for a tournament win. A star on the rise, on the cusp. Her popularity was surging. TJPW instead went with a more established talent in Yuka.
Post-Cup, Sakazaki firmly sat in the promotion’s top tier, but she had already been there for years.
Her .694 winning percentage in 2023 wasn’t a jump up; it was a continuation. Yuka consistently had around a .700 winning percentage for much of her TJPW career.
Two months after winning the big tournament, Sakazaki beat Shoko Nakajima for the Princess of Princess title. This was her third go-round with the belt. She’d then successfully fend off challenges from Billie Starkz and Miyu Yamashita in the coming months.
As for how TJPW booked her at the major events, Sakazaki stayed on top of the card. At Wrestle Princess, she beat Shoko in the main event for the PoP title. She then beat Miyu in the marquee match on January 4. She was then piling up wins in tags with Mizuki before she lost the gold to her partner at Grand Princess.
If she hadn’t ventured to AEW, Yuka would likely still be challenging for the PoP and hovering around the main event scene. The Cup didn’t change her position at all. It simply added to her accolades.
2023: Miyu Yamashita
You can’t be more established than Miyu was before her Princess Cup win. She had already been top champ. She’d already beaten every big name. She’d already been the clear and obvious Ace.
Her claiming the Cup after knocking off Yuki Kamifuku didn’t launch her forward in TJPW as much as it added a notch on her belt as she stomped off to overseas action.
Yamashita’s winning percentage of .528 in the year following her tournament win is among her lowest ever. Only 2017 was lower. But you have to factor in how much of that comes her time abroad. She was losing to the likes of Jordynne Grace in TNA, Ivelisse in SHINE, and Shayna Baszler at Bloodsport. This was a time where Yamashita was getting plenty of exposure and exploration but not booked to be the badass she was in her home promotion.
The Cup did lead to Miyu winning the Princess of Princess title for the fourth time. She won that in the Wrestle Princess main event and defended against Masha Slamovich on January 4 before losing it to Miu Watanabe in the top match at Grand Princess.
When Miyu was wrestling for TJPW during this stretch, she was treated like a big deal. That wasn’t because of the Cup, though. That’s just her usual spot.
For Yamashita, the tournament win was more of a way to crowd her mantle. This was one of the few feats she hadn’t accomplished. It served to deepen her legacy more than shoot her upward.
2024: Ryo Mizunami
This is the oddest case of the bunch. While Mizunami has worked plenty of matches for TJPW, she’s never been a full-time member of the roster. She’s a welcome, regular guest.
When she won the Cup in 2024 with a win over Yuki Aino in the finals, it was certainly a departure from the standard story. What kind of push would we see an outsider get post-tourney?
In short, not much of one.
Looking at her overall winning percentage the year after her Cup win won’t mean much as she wasn’t working for TJPW much in that span. Putting together just her TJPW wins and losses manually from her list of matches on CageMatch shows that she won 7 out of 10 bouts. .700 is an impressive winning percentage, but that’s a skewed number at such a small sample size. And a lot of that was in six-woman tags.
Mizunami earned a crack at Miu Watanabe and the Princess of Princess Championship, but she lost to the champ and hasn’t had a TJPW title match of any kind since.
As for the big shows, Aniki lost to Miu in the main event at Wrestle Princess, wrestled a six-woman tag involving Matcha and Kira Summer on the second match of the night on the January 4 show, and lastly didn’t appear at all at Grand Princess 2025. That’s as little momentum we’ve seen someone gain from the Princess Cup as anyone in recent memory. It makes you wonder what TJPW had in mind when positioning her to take it all in 2024.
Yuki Aino fans have to be frustrated that nothing really came of Mizunami beating her in the finals. A Cup win would have been such a bigger deal for Aino. For Ryo, meanwhile, it was a nice moment and a bullet point on a long list of accomplishments for the veteran.
2025: Miu Watanabe
Our most recent Princess Cup winner has seen the biggest momentum shift of anyone we’ve talked about so far.
Yes, Miu Watanabe had already been PoP champion, but she emerged from that tourney more firmly established as a top-tier talent. She wasn’t just a titleholder in the months following the Cup; she was the company’s Ace.
The first piece of data doesn’t back that up unless you look closely. Watanabe has a .568 winning percentage in 2026 as of this writing. That’s not exactly notable considering she’s been at that or above that number most of her recent years. Peep just her singles bouts, however. Since the Princess Cup win, Watanabe has gone 11-2 in one-on-one action. She’s beaten Suzume, Yuki Aino, and Mizuki in that stretch.
After winning the tournament in August, Watanabe went on to claim the Princess of Princess Championship one month later and then the Princess Tag Team Championship (for the second time) the following year. While the tag title is a step down from being TJPW’s top dog, the company putting her there is a sign they want to keep spotlighting her, even as it experiments with a Yuki Arai era.
Miu’s booking post-Cup is impressive. She wrestled in the main event at Wrestle Princess when she took down Mizuki for the Princess of Princess belt. On January 4, she defended that title against Suzume in a Match of the Year frontrunner. Then she headlined Grand Princess opposite Arai in March. At Stand Alone and Yes! Wonderland, TJPW booked her in tag title matches. And when TJPW traveled to Vegas for WrestleMania week, Miu was mixing it up with two former champs in Mizuki and Yamashita.
That’s pretty damn prominent.
The impact of Watanabe winning the Princess Cup has been on display for months. It’s a reminder of the force this tournament can have on a career. A means to bolster and boost.
Final Thoughts
Sorry, Haru Kazashiro fans, recent history shows that the Princess Cup isn’t about shoving a fresh face into center stage. Three of the past five winners had already been PoP titleholders before winning the tourney. Ryo was a big name on the joshi scene well before outlasting the field in 2024.
The pattern seems to be to further establish an established name. A Cup win nets most of the winners a Princess of Princess Championship reign and then at least a few months on top of the mountain.
With that in mind, do we see Rika Tatsumi follow up her tag team partner’s tournament victory with one of her own? She has a PoP title reign to her name. She’s a star who TJPW knows can they rely on. She’d be the first winner to be tag champ during the event, though, so there’d have to be some history made for that scenario to play out.
Regardless of who ends up wielding the momentum of a Princess Cup win, it will be a fun ride seeing how it plays out this summer.
RESURA 