We are back once again to give you the next edition of the Joshi Top 100 List, this time going through numbers 75 – 51 as we make our way towards that ever so prestigious number one position. Like we’ve said before, no list is completely perfect, but we’re doing what we can to show our appreciation and shine a light on the best joshi wrestlers in the scene over the past year.

If you need a refresher on how we rate these wrestlers, we do so in three different categories: Skill, Influence and Competition.

Skill is determined by how good we thought that wrestler’s matches were for the year. I’m sure you personally could figure out who a few of the top performers were in that category.

Influence is a measurement of what they meant to not only their own promotion, but also the joshi landscape as a whole. If the wrestler was a bigger name who was known to draw, have been in the business a long time, or held an office position in their promotion like head booker or owner along with their wrestling duties, then it meant they they’d receive a pretty high score.

Competition is a rating based on the competition of wrestlers they’d face during the year-long scoring period. Wrestlers that had big matches, especially for titles would get higher ratings than a wrestler who was normally lower on the card, facing rookies for instance.

On top of those three categories we also factored in a wrestler’s win rate, the amount of matches they wrestled, and their accomplishments which include not only titles won during our scoring period, but also any awards or tournaments that they won as well.

All in all, we did our best to try to put together a list that we could be proud of and stand behind. If you’re looking to see who took part in the rating of these wrestlers, that will be the names you see on the list at the bottom of this article. The last name is a fellow writer who wanted to simply pitch in to help write some of the wrestler related paragraphs, which we definitely appreciate.

Before we get started with the wrestler who came in at number 75, make sure you’re up to date with who’s been on the list already. If you didn’t get a chance to read last week’s release, click HERE to do so. If you’re all caught up already, then continue on and enjoy reading what our talented writers have to say about these 25 great joshi pro wrestlers!

75. WAKANA UEHARA – TOKYO JOSHI PRO WRESTLING

WAKANNNAAAAA!!! What a year it was for The Dreaming Star. Uehara and Yuki Kamifuku’s team Ober Eats took over the TJPW tag division. They battled their way to a win in the Max Heart Tournament, knocking off 2025 finalists Max the Impaler and Pom Harajuku in the process. Wakana and Kamiyu then captured the Princess Tag Team Championship and held them for over six months. Ober Eats garnered three wins on the four-match Texas tour and they bested Toga and Uta Takami at TJPW’s Las Vegas show. The team was prominent and prosperous, serving as charismatic ambassadors for the TJPW brand. The duo’s dominance helped Wakana compile a .625 winning percentage during the grading period. In addition to the gold and victories, Wakana continued to have a steady presence online. She made an effort to speak more English in her social media videos as well as on her YouTube channel where she eats ungodly amounts of food. Her continued, persistent effort to connect with Western fans is a blessing for TJPW, a means to help build the promotion’s fanbase outside of Japan.

• Written By: Ryan Dilbert (X: RyanDilbert)

74. RIKO KAWAHATA – MARVELOUS

Riko’s journey through this eligible period has been unscored by her heel turn in May 2025, meaning we have only ever seen Riko’s darker side during the past year. It was something new for Riko, who had been a lovable, dancing, babyface up to that point, and it took some getting used to. However, throughout the year, in contrast to her Magenta tag team partner, Maria, Riko has steadily grown in her role, not letting the character undermine the undoubtedly strong in-ring ability that Riko possesses. This allowed her to kick off not only a Marigold Twin Star title reign, but also a second reign of the AAAW Tag Team title in her home promotion, beating one of the best tag teams in the world, Spark Rush (Sareee & Takumi Iroha). Riko’s comfort in her new character meant that the ability gap between her and Maria continued to widen, with Riko achieving singles success for the first time in her career, as she was entrusted by ZERO1 & Rose Girls GM Megumi Kudo to be the inaugural Rose Girls world champion. Riko has become somewhat underrated. She has been tarred with the same brush as Maria; despite the fact she has consistently shown she can still go in her new gimmick as evidenced in several tag matches throughout the year against hard hitters like Sareee and Itsuki Aoki. Do not sleep on Riko. I think she’s one of the best young talents in the scene. She’s ambitious, and I wouldn’t bet against her rising up the ranks as a singles star.

Recommended Match: Chikayo Nagashima & RIKO vs. Itsuki Aoki & Senka Akatsuki – Marvelous, 21st September 2025

• Written By: Eric (Joshi’ing Around Podcast)

73. MIYU AMASAKI – STARDOM

Miyu Amasaki is a wrestler who seems to have her ups and downs more than most, or at least that’s how I see it. At times, she’ll be on a hot streak, racking up wins left and right, while at other times she can’t seem to figure out how to keep her shoulders off the mat. Still though, I do think she’s progressing well as a wrestler, and her popularity is definitely there to help her become a possible future Wonder of Stardom champion someday. This past year, Miyu enjoyed an incredible 72% win percentage, which is truly special as a member of the STARDOM roster since a lot of the roster hovers around 50% on average. She also held two titles during our scoring period, though unfortunately she’s only had one defense, which is her defense of the Goddesses of Stardom Championship against the team of FWC, Hazuki and Koguma with her partner AZM. Still though, it’s impressive that she’s held two different titles in the top joshi company in the world in the past year, especially because as a company they aren’t really known for ‘hot potato-ing’ the title around. While it’s unfortunate that Miyu fell down the list from her 47th spot last year, she still put in a strong performance overall, and I think there’s a good chance that she’ll see herself higher up on our list next year, especially if this ends up being a strong Goddesses of Stardom title reign.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

72. MARI – ACTWRES GIRL’Z

There would be no AWG as it is today without Mari. It is as simple as that. The most captivating thing about AWG is its ability to find diamonds in the rough. While it is always difficult to know the exact roles played behind the scenes, it is clear that Mari has had an incredibly influential role in training AWG’s conveyor belt of idols and actresses, polishing them into excellent professional wrestlers. AWG is one of the most important promotions in the scene in terms of how much talent it has supplied to the most popular promotions: Tam Nakano, Saori Anou, Natsupoi and Miku Aono, to name a few. Even in the independent scene, I would not be shocked if at least a tenth of this Top 100 came through AWG at some point or another. As AWG’s top stars left for greener pastures, Mari stayed, despite absolutely having the ability to make it on her own. She became one of the promotion’s best wrestlers and put her head down, laser focused on training the next crop of talent to supply the scene. That crop includes five AWG wrestlers on this Top 100, all the way up to Marino Saihara, who ranked 31st. Aside from her influence, Mari won the inaugural AWG Tag Team Titles with her Amaterasu partner Act, before having to relinquish them due to Act’s injury. She regularly put on some of AWG’s best matches during the Act GAME Tag Team tournament, pretty much single-handedly, on her way to victory. She has been one of AWG’s most consistent performers this year. The fact that so few will know of Mari’s greatness is one of the most regrettable things about AWG’s lack of coverage by traditional wrestling media.

Recommended Match: Act & Mari vs. Marino Saihara & Rico Fukunaga, 13th August 2025

• Written By: Eric (Joshi’ing Around Podcast)

71. RIKA TATSUMI – TOKYO JOSHI PRO WRESTLING

It has been a quieter stretch for one of TJPW’s finest but her legacy and a late tag team surge have gotten Rika Tatsumi a respectable, if lower than expected placement. While her company has been busy pushing some fresh faces, Tatsumi has been pretty competent at doing the layman’s work for the most part lower down the shows. She proved she can still switch it on for the Alexcore(™) dream match of Daydream vs. The Iinspiration, where she and Miu Watanabe had one of the best matches of The Iinspiration’s career to date. Much like Miyu Yamashita, the previous guard of TJPW have had an important part to play in handing over the torch while being ready to help at a moment’s notice, what Tatsumi has done over the past year in being the old reliable option is underrated work but one that’s been necessary to TJPW’s massive improvements in 2026.

• Written By: Alex Richards (X: LWOSPWAlexR)

70. TAE HONMA – RETIRED (FREELANCER)

Tae Honma’s career only lasted just over three months into our scoring period for the year, but in those three months she worked about as much as a wrestler could, racking up 48 matches in that small span of time. The veteran seemed to be happy to retire at the time, but you wouldn’t have known it considering how active she was right up until that last date. It also showed that while I’m sure she was feeling it after those matches quite a bit from being almost 40, and 10 years into career when she finally hung up her boots, she still had quite a bit left to give. Whether she was working with fellow veterans or rookies, she put in a lot of really good performances, and honestly showed that she could have kept wrestling for quite a while if she really wanted to. Still though, I’m happy that she retired on her own terms in the end, and we’ll have the ability to look back at her career positively. One of the big reasons why she finds herself on our list this year, even though she only wrestled in those three months, is because she held the WAVE Tag Team Championship all the way up until her retirement, which tallied 104 days in our scoring period, and she even defended it five times during that short period of time, something that is honestly quite impressive to say the least. Part of why she has the ability to defend so many times though is because she defended those titles with her partner Maika Ozaki within every single match she had in the 2025 DuelShock WAVE tournament that they ended up winning. It was a hell of an accomplishment right at the end and a great punctuation to finish her awesome career.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

69. SAKURA MIZUSHIMA – ACTWRES GIRL’Z

The AWG KING of Ring Entertainment Championship was such a fitting crown for Sakura Mizushima. She brought great heart and drama to her title matches that she made the championship feel more than worthy of the main event spots it got. She was a tenacious fighting champion who defended the belt every month until her loss to MARU in November. Along the way, she gave us stirring matches against Yukina Uehara and Haruka Ishikawa. She was playful, powerful, agile and savvy, a noble hero who fought off the villainous Killer’Z. The quality of her work and the presence she had when spotlighted pushes her into this respectable spot on the list despite only having 18 wins and a .437 winning percentage. Mizushima makes up for lesser stats with the intangibles. She continues to grow into a well-rounded performer and looks more and more ready to step into the ace role for Actwres girl’Z.

• Written By: Ryan Dilbert (X: RyanDilbert)

68. NATSUPOI – STARDOM

The ever-spectacular Natsupoi had quite a few challenges this year, unfortunately, that’s all they ended up being, challenges, as she didn’t capture any gold in this period. She challenged for both the Artist and World of Stardom belts but failed to win any of them; she reached the Block B simi-finals of the 5Star GP before being eliminated by Rina. She also entered the Goddesses of Stardom Tag League with Saori Anou, but they didn’t make it past the group stage. However, she delivers every time she steps foot in a ring; her high-speed move set is as smooth as you can get, while also hitting some stiff shots. Natsupoi also had appearances in Sendai Girls, two Sareee-ISM shows, and the promotion that saw her debut as a wrestler, ActWres girl’Z. Also, she made her USA debut during this year’s WrestleMania Weekend. In January of 2026, she announced her marriage to fellow wrestler Shingo Takagi, and then, just six months later, her retirement, set for January 2027. I’d like to wish both a happy life and thank her for this amazing career.

• Written By: Fernando Ibarra (X: Jferimsw)

67. NATSUKI – RETIRED (ACTWRES GIRL’Z)

Natsuki retired from AWG on May 2nd, 2026, at Shin-Kiba 1st RING in Tokyo, a promotion she had been part of for six years. I was there live, front row. She was the wrestler that truly made me fall in love with AWG. I missed her early AWG title reigns myself, but a tag match on May 24th, 2025, just before the eligible period, hooked me completely, and from that day I held the view that Natsuki was the best wrestler in AWG. Her retirement show only confirmed it. On that day, which felt like a celebratory occasion rather than a mourning, she was the brightest star throughout all four of her matches that day, built around her, never once looking tired, all about sunshine and summer, serving as the glue for a roster whose emotions kept getting the better of them. As she put it herself before her retirement ceremony, it was the most tired she had ever been, but also the most comfortable. It was one of the best single-show performances I had seen. That she never won the AWG tag team title alongside Nagisa Shiotsuki will forever be a stain on the title’s lineage, because the truth is that Natsuki should have been a far bigger star than she was. But that was out of her control, she did damn near everything she could to get there. Her retirement, closed out by Mari folding her with the Abyss Drop, teacher and student one last time, was the perfect sendoff for one of the brightest stars on the scene.

Recommended Match: Mari vs. Naru vs. Natsuki vs. Nene Arahata – AWG, 2nd May 2026

• Written By: Eric (Joshi’ing Around Podcast)

66. RANNA YAGAMI – STARDOM

‘The Beat Striker’ Ranna Yagami has been a talent that I think often gets overlooked on the incredibly stacked STARDOM roster, but this year I really think she started making a better name for herself now that she’s holding the Future of Stardom Championship. Her improvement didn’t just happen overnight though, because she’s honestly put in a lot of work to get to where she is today, which has included wrestling in the Catch the WAVE tournament for the past two years prior to this one. A lot of people may not think much of doing something like that, but I feel that having a young wrestler work those indie dates like that really helps their progression, because it puts them into an opportunity to work with different talents than they might be used to in lower card matches of a STARDOM show. She’s also been doing great on her little excursion that started just after our scoring period ended, which is great to see because doing the indies in Japan is one thing, but doing the indies in the US is something completely different. When it comes to the numbers of Ranna’s past year, she ended with a 53% win percentage which is honestly quite good for a wrestler so young into their career. She won the aforementioned Future of Stardom Championship in March of this year and was able to stack up six title defenses by the time our scoring period cut off, which is one of the highest number of defenses on our list. All in all, it’s been a real breakout year for Ranna as she hits our list for the first time in her career, and if she continues to develop this well, I could see her appearing on this list a lot more often going forward.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

65. HONOKA – PRO WRESTLING WAVE

Joshi wrestling is not stocked full of masked wrestlers, but there’s a few who are incredibly talented and have the ability to form a really strong crowd connection with the fans there in attendance every time. Honoka is definitely one of those people. In my opinion, she’s honestly one of the best babyfaces in the joshi scene period, and I don’t think she gets talked about enough because she’s a contracted wrestler to one of the smaller indie promotions Pro Wrestling WAVE. Each year I feel like we’ve seen Honoka take a real step forward in her in-ring work, as she was very simplistic early on like most rookies are, but now that she’s been in the business for over three years, she’s really starting to round out her game to the point of possibly becoming WAVE’s biggest star pretty soon. Sure, she’s not booked overly strong yet because of her lack of experience, but I find that a lot of joshi wrestlers start picking up a lot more wins once they are three or four years into their careers as the ‘rookie’ tag seems to be taken away. This year, she was able to win three different tiles, though two of those titles were very short at least in terms of what made it during our scoring period. The two short reigns were with the Pro Wrestling WAVE Tag Team Championship (which only lasted 19 days, although she did happen to get a defense within that time) and the DIANA Crystal Championship that she only ended up holding for 26 days. The championship that really helped get her to where she is on our list this year is the Princess of Pro Wrestling championship that she’s held for literally the entire year and defended four times as well. Sure, the title isn’t one that a lot of people talk about but simply proving that she can be a strong champion who a company would trust to hold the belt for so long, shows that there’s quite a bit of belief in this awesome masked wrestler. Hopefully this upcoming year her win percentage rises a bit more, and she’s used in a lot more big spots for the few indie companies who regularly use her, because I see a ton of potential in Honoka!

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

64. YUKINA UEHARA – ACTWRES GIRL’Z

There are a few things that you can do as a wrestler to make me a fan. I am, after all, notoriously easy to please. Yukina Uehara hits on one of those boxes perfectly as a tall idol who throws head kicks. Watching Uehara is an easy joy, she’s capable in both tag settings and single settings, putting in strong work no matter who Actwres pairs her up with. While there’s definitely more “talented” or “skilled” wrestlers, there’s few that I find as fun as watching Uehara blast someone with a kick that blurs the line between kayfabe and reality just a bit. And at the end of the day, fun is what we’re here for.

• Written By: Alex Richards (X: LWOSPWAlexR)

63. COHAKU – PRO WRESTLING WAVE

Pro Wrestling WAVE doesn’t have a large roster, but if I had to choose an ‘Ace’ of it, I’d definitely choose Cohaku, as she’s incredibly talented in the ring and she had the honor of beating possibly the biggest star in all of joshi, Saya Kamitani, to win the Regina Di WAVE Championship. Honestly, after winning the top title in WAVE, you’d think that Cohaku would have been on top of the world, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. She was able to defend the title twice successfully during her 840day reign, but was eventually beaten by Itsuki Aoki, which I feel sort of undercut her position as a main event talent for this company. Beating Saya Kamitani should have been the nucleus for a long title reign where Cohaku was able to show that she was the strongest in WAVE, and that she was important enough to make fans want to go to WAVE shows just to see her, but that’s not what happened, which I think hurt the company in the process. Still though, whether she’s wrestling in WAVE or anywhere else on the scene, Cohaku always puts on great performances inside the ring which contributed to her pretty strong overall match quality rating from our team. The fact that she also captured both the WAVE Tag Team Championship and the OZ Academy Tag Team Championship helped her proverbial stock to get her this high on our list even though I think there was a real missed opportunity for her to be quite a bit higher if booked correctly. All hope is not lost though, as I do think she has a bright future since she’s still only 25, but we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

62. CHI CHI – FREELANCER

Confidence kills, and Chi Chi has all the confidence in the world. Whether you want to call her “The Fighting Barbie,” Joshi’s Barbie, or anything that has to do with her love and fandom for Barbie overall, there’s no doubt that Chi Chi is only that in looks and a demon beyond that. The physicality that Chi Chi brings to the ring should surprise no one considering she was trained by Suwama and Shuji Ishikawa — two of puro’s hardest hitting heavyweights — as well as learning under the tree of Sareee and her strong style mentality. It’s allowed Chi Chi to set herself apart from everyone else, and now she’s making noise no matter where she goes as a freelancer. Her latest noise has come in both Sendai Girls and Marigold, with determination to show everyone in joshi that she’s the real deal. Over the last year, she managed to add championship gold to her waist when she finally became the Evolution Strong women’s champion. She held the championship for 154 days, successfully defending it twice against the likes of Sumika Yanagawa and Honoka before dropping it to Ayame Sasamura. It’s undeniable that Chi Chi has everything she needs to be one of wrestling’s top stars for years to come, and with how things have gone since she’s gone freelance, this upcoming year looks to be her best yet.

• Written By: Scott Edwards (X: ScottEWrestling)

61. SENKA AKATSUKI – MARVELOUS

Rookie no longer, Senka Akatsuki has marched her way into bona fide stardom. The magnetic bruiser was in high demand over the past 12 months, getting calls from Sendai Girls, Marigold, NOAH, and Pro-Wrestling Evolution. She thrived as she ventured outside of the Marvelous bubble, too. Senka captured the Sendai Girls Junior Championship and then proceeded to fend off a variety of challengers. She also won the Sendai Girls Jaja Uma Tournament in November. The accolades, though, don’t tell the full story. So much of Senka’s success has been the buzz she’s created. She was again the talk of WrestleMania weekend with her rousing matches against Aja Kong and Chris Hero. Her rivalry with Seri Yamaoka remains one of joshi’s most exciting feuds. She was often one of the most intriguing acts on any given card. There continues to be an electricity crackling around as she rises up the ranks of the joshi wrestling. She will undoubtedly be a mainstay on the JOSHI TOP 100 and charge higher and higher up the list in the years ahead.

• Written By: Ryan Dilbert (X: RyanDilbert)

60. KAHO KOBAYASHI – FREELANCER

Kaho Kobayashi is a high energy joy to see on any show, though it’s unfortunate that we simply don’t get to see her a lot on the bigger company’s shows in the joshi wrestling scene. Whether it’s providing some comedic graps as La Pidita or locking in for a really hard hitting match as herself, Kaho can do it all, and she’s someone I think a lot more people would be a fan of if they got to see her more often. This year, she found herself on the winning side of things 60% of the time, which is pretty strong for a freelancer. In terms of achievements, she only held one title this year which was the Daily Sports Tag Team Championship, but she defended it five times during the run that almost lasted the entire year, eventually finishing at 314 days. Her rating from our team for match quality and such was above average, but I think she was hurt a bit by her being seen more often as La Pidita by them, and some of them don’t enjoy comedy quite as much as I do. All in all, it was another good year for Kaho, and I’m hopeful that she’ll get her shot to lead a company one day as their top champion so that she can really show the entire catalogue of what she can do inside of the squared circle.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

59. RICO FUKUNAGA – ACTWRES GIRL’Z

While Rico Fukunaga has never been my favorite wrestler in AWG exactly, I can’t deny that she’s very talented and did a great job this year as one of the strongest booked members of the roster. She is a part of the strong babyface faction ‘Actress Five’, where she serves as the blue member, much like the power rangers, and she is also pretty regularly used in GLEAT for her UWF ability since she’s a talented kickboxer. Rico finally got her moment to shine on her own though this year when she won the AWG Championship, beating her faction-mate Marino Saihara in the process to do so. She held that championship for 131 days in total, while racking up four successful title defenses in the process. It was a pretty strong reign that allowed her to prove her talent to the masses, and it was exactly what she needed at this time in her career. Unfortunately, though, it ended up being one of the last things she really wanted to accomplish in her wrestling career which led to her announcing that she’ll be retiring soon, which is definitely a proverbial shot to the gut for Actwres girl’Z who seem to be losing some of their talented veterans right now. She’ll definitely be missed but she’s also still young enough to make a comeback some day in the future if she gets the itch to do it again.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

58. YUKI KAMIFUKU – TOKYO JOSHI PRO WRESTLING

Just as Kamiyu is hitting her peak as a performer, she’s announced that she going to retire at the end of the year. Long seen as more of a character wrestler than ring technician, Kamifuku showed improvement on the mat, putting up some of her best work of her career. That includes Kamifuku and Wakana Uehara’s defeat of Kyoraku Kyomei at Wrestle Princess VI and Kamiyu challenging Yuki Arai for the TJPW Princess of Princess Championship. We saw The Casual Beauty provide all her usual panache and cool factor to the TJPW stage while tightening up the in-ring side of things and adding extra oomph to her trademark big boot. She spent much of the grading period battling alongside her Ober Eats partner as they won both the Max Heart tournament and the TJPW Princess Tag Team Championship. A clear indication of year she had is how she jumped up from the no. 95 spot in last year’s JOSHI TOP 100 to right here in the middle of the list.

• Written By: Ryan Dilbert (X: RyanDilbert)

57. AYA SAKURA – STARDOM

The newly anointed captain of the Cosmic Angels is one of the best rising stars on the joshi scene. Aya Sakura has shown in singles and tag team action that she’s one of STARDOM’s best, even if she doesn’t have tons of accolades to prove it. Her most notable accomplishment has been holding the NEW BLOOD Tag Team Championships alongside Sayaka Kurara. Together, they’ve done all they can to keep the NEW BLOOD name alive, and doing so with an exciting championship reign. Also as NEW BLOOD tag team champions, they managed to win the 2025 Goddesses of Stardom Tag League — a moment that showed they’re truly one of STARDOM’s best duos. Sakura didn’t stop there, however, when it came to tournament success. She managed to make her way all the way to the semifinals of the Cinderella Tournament, too, before falling short in the end. Sakura isn’t seen as the top emerging star in Kouzen — that’s Kurara — but she should be seen as one of the top emerging stars in all of joshi wrestling with the year she’s had and where she is potentially going. Sakura is ready for so much more as a babyface underdog, so hopefully STARDOM sees the skill, the connection, and continues allowing her to shine in bigger and brighter spots moving forward.

• Written By: Scott Edwards (X: ScottEWrestling)

56. AZUSA INABA – JUST TAP OUT

‘Big Zeus’ Azusa Inaba is incredibly talented while only being 18 years old, and I don’t think she’ll be hitting her peak anytime soon. Not only can she throw strikes against just about any other wrestler on the scene, but she can also twist them into knots if things go to the ground. While a lot of people may know Azusa from being the evil little imp in H.A.T.E. as a part of the STARDOM roster, her official allegiance is actually to Just Tap Out, the promotion run by WWE ‘legend’ TAKA Michinoku. In JTO, Azusa plays a more noble babyface character who wears red and honestly has better matches than what you’d normally see from her in STARDOM. Her high skill level and strong star power is what has helped make her possibly the biggest star of JTO, so it’s no surprise that TAKA booked her quite strongly over this past year. Where her sister Tomoka was a bit more of a tag team specialist in JTO this year, Azusa was pretty dominant when it came to the singles titles as she held both the Queen of JTO championship and the JTO Girls Championship. She was able to defend the JTO Girls title twice during our scoring period, and she had made it to three defenses of her Queen of JTO Championship by our cutoff date, which is a strong performance overall for the young wrestler. Her win percentage wasn’t too great at 46%, but a lot of that has to do with being in throw away tag team matches in STARDOM where she could take the pin as one of the weaker members of H.A.T.E.. Her 56th place finish this year is a slight step back from her position last year at 51st, but I’m hopeful that pretty soon we’ll see her start to get more strongly pushed in STARDOM itself, because I think she could really make some positive waves for the company if given that opportunity.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

55. UNAGI SAYAKA – FREELANCER

Respect the hustle. Unagi is out there working it. She remains the Empress of Freelance. Unagi travels the joshi scene like no other, wrestling in just above every joshi promotion and then venturing beyond that to obscure places like Fight VGM Fight and Ehime Pro Wrestling. Beyond that, she’s a booker as well, putting together several produce shows during the grading period, some of which had over 1,000 fans in attendance.  The Eel often wrestles multiple times at her own events and books herself against big names: Aja Kong, Maki Itoh, Minoru Suzuki, others. Why not? We got to give her extra points for bringing Hikari Noa back to wrestling, too. Unagi called up the former TJPW talent and convinced her to step into the ring for the first time in three years. During all of Unagi’s treks across Japan, she got her hands on plenty of gold.   She held the Beyond the SEA Tag Team Championship with Honori Hana, SUKEBAN World Championship, and DIANA Tag Team Championship (alongside Haruka Umesaki) over the course of the past 12 months. Unagi continues to be an  energetic mainstay of the scene as a whole, a ubiquitous presence, a savvy businesswoman stacking cash.

• Written By: Ryan Dilbert (X: RyanDilbert)

54. MISA MATSUI – MARIGOLD

Misa Matsui’s year has further established her as one of Marigold’s most reliable performers. Alongside CHIAKI, she became the longest-reigning Marigold Twin Star tag team champion after winning the titles in Sumo Hall, with the duo developing into one of the defining teams of the promotion’s young history. Matsui also continued to make her mark as a singles wrestler, including an unsuccessful challenge against Victoria Yuzuki for the Marigold United National Championship in Sapporo in December. Perhaps her most impressive singles accomplishment, however, came during the Dream Star Grand Prix, where she defeated Miku Aono, who would eventually go on to win the entire tournament. Whether competing in the tag division or being given opportunities on her own, Matsui has continued to prove just how valuable she is to Marigold. Her consistency, technical ability, and versatility have made her someone the promotion can rely on in virtually any position on the card, while her biggest victories have shown that she is capable of competing with Marigold’s very best.

• Written By: Anonymous

53. NAGISA SHIOTSUKI – ACTWRES GIRL’Z

Nagisa Shiotsuki leaps into the 100, leaving nearly half the competition behind her. The reigning Actwress Girl’z champion has been an active competitor for the promotion for four years. She really came into her own last year, showing tremendous in-ring improvement and this year was her breakthrough year. In December, she won the King of Ring championship, defeating dastardly heel MARU and held on to the title for 192 days now. She defended the belt against four competitors, including super-rookie Yukina Uehara and the powerful Rio. And on April 30 at Korakuen Hall, she added more gold to her resume when she defeated Rico Fukunaga for the AWG title in an excellent match. Now holding both of the company’s singles titles, Nagisa is the woman to beat. She is an excellent technician and a ferocious competitor. Look for her to have a long and entertaining title reign.

• Written By: DaveTCS (X: Dave_TCS4Life)

52. SAKI – COLORS

‘All caps’ SAKI has been a strong freelancer on the joshi wrestling scene for quite a few years now, and even though she doesn’t put on as many shows with her own unit COLORS as she used to, she hasn’t had too much trouble finding work. Whether it’s working for the comedy promotion Gokigen Pro, or being a main event talent for PURE-J, SAKI has kept busy and put in a lot of really good work inside of the squared circle this year. Her 10 defenses of her COLORS championship were by far the most defenses of a single championship by anyone on our list during the scoring period, though it’s a bit of a faked number considering she owns the title, and some of those defenses came on Gokigen Pro shows with very short matches. Her six defenses of the top title in PURE-J, the PURE-J Openweight Championship was honestly much more impressive as she was able to defend the title against most of the company’s roster during her reign. Her 48% win percentage wasn’t all that strong however which I think held her back from making it into the top 50 with her resume. Maybe this year will end up being a stronger one for her, or maybe not, we’ll just have to wait and see.

• Written By: Justin Stein (X: BioHizzle)

51. SAORI ANOU – STARDOM

Saori Anou and Natsupoi debuted as professional wrestlers the same day and wrestled for AWG for a while before going their separate ways and eventually reuniting in Stardom. However, and even being part of Stardom, Saori is still known for being a freelancer, as she is a regular in OZ Academy, where she was the OZ Academy Openweight champion for most of this period, until she lost it to Hiroyo Matsumoto in February. Like Natsupoi, Saori didn’t hold any belts in Stardom. She did, however, reach the semi-finals of the 5Star GP before being eliminated by Momo Watanabe. Saori Anou is the perfect representation of elegance in professional wrestling, a graceful competitor with a killer look, made to be at the top of any promotion.

• Written By: Fernando Ibarra (X: Jferimsw)

How’s that for the second 25 wrestlers revealed to be on our top 100 list? Do you agree with our assessments? Do you think a wrestler should have been higher or lower? Feel free to let us know on X, because ultimately the more conversation that we get to have about the best wrestling in the world, joshi pro wrestling, the better! Tune in next week at the same time to see who is ranked 50 to 26.

Thank you to everyone who helped out with this project, please check out their X accounts and give them a follow if you haven’t already.

Justin Stein – Writer at resuramag.com

Ryan Dilbert – Owner & Writer at resuramag.com

Fernando Ibarra – Writer at resuramag.com

DaveTCS – Writer at resuramag.com

Scott Edwards – The voice of the 5-Star Joshi Show on YouTube & writer for various outlets including resuramag.com, and fightful.com

Eric – One voice of the Joshi’ing Around Podcast and contributor to the Social Suplex Newsletter.

Alex Richards – One voice of the Stardom Quest Podcast.

Aris Emmanouloudis – Writer at resuramag.com & member of the Professional Wrestling Studies Association. You can find his academic essays on pro wrestling from his X account.