Joshi Spotlight: Bull Nakano Interviews Kyoko Inoue

It’s time for another Bull Nakano interview recap by my buddy MoskowDiskow. And yes I’m so far behind on stuff I need to pump out a week of these to have any hope of not falling back, lol.

(As before, Jab’s Notes- ie. mine, are in bold so you know I’m not just swiping his stuff)

(Jab’s Notes: So Kyoko Inoue was Bull’s “kouhai” for years- a subordinate who was both part of Bull’s stable on TV but also a student of sorts in real life, taking advice and stuff like that. Bull actually had her kouhais doing literal work for her as well- the French AJW documentary shows Kyoko & Tomoko Watanabe feeding Bull’s pets while Bull played Super Nintendo. They actually ran a few Bull vs. Kyoko matches during the ’90s, with Kyoko coming ever-closer, until Bull was close to retirement and finally put Kyoko over once and for all- every match was tremendous)

– They start off with introductions and explain that they are close friends in the real world, and talk all the time. Bull says her nickname for Kyoko is “Adamo-chan”, which is based off a comedian’s character from the 80s. Kyoko did an impression on the bus once, and she was “Adamo-chan” forever after (Jab’s Notes: I bet 90% of wrestling nicknames have origins like this). She says only Bull, Aja and Hokuto still call her that – (“3 evil people!”-Bull).

-Bull explains that when rookies get on the bus to go the matches for the first time, they’re expected to show some kind of “talent” to the seniors, like singing a song, telling a joke, doing an impression, etc. “People who do something weird will definitely be made fun of”. She says that if they do something boring, they won’t get over with the seniors (“That’s the first gate to success..”) She says some rookies go nuts with it and give memorable performances – Kyoko was one of these.

-Kyoko laughs and says that at the time Aja was the wrestler that was ribbed the most, and once thanked Kyoko because “You showing up took the heat off me.” Kyoko says her immediate seniors (1987 group) (Jab’s Notes: Manami Toyota, Toshiyo Yamada, Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda) were all “serious” minded and didn’t let Kyoko get away with much. Bull says Aja was ribbed for two years instead of the usual one due to the 87 group being so serious (Jab’s Notes: It’s so weird to think of AJA KONG being ribbed by people- her aura in the ’90s was so tremendous). Kyoko says that being the primary target for ribbing is a role passed down from class to class, and says that Bat Yoshinaga was the one who followed her. Bull says if anyone has the mentality needed to handle it, it’s Kyoko. (Jab’s Notes: It’s very interesting how “Tormenting the newbies” has been a thing on both sides of the pond for ages- Japan’s system was more based around sumo hierarchies and stuff like that- it’s probably just a bit of human nature and the kind of things jocks get up to- test the newbies to see if they can hack it… to the point of abuse sometimes)

-Kyoko tells a story about the time they made Bat go to the spa wearing one of the Honey Wings’ neon leotard and Mickey Mouse makeup. After this, Kyoko realized she was no longer the primary target, and told Bat “It’s just a year, hang in there” as Bat was washing her face in the parking lot. Bull says that this was when Hokuto was a senior and as a result, bullying was on another level (Jab’s Notes: I’ve heard tell that Hokuto was… NOT FUN to have around at times). Bull says that for some reason people who are super bullied tend to move up the ranks quickly

– Bull says that from the very beginning, Kyoko’s outstanding athletic ability was apparent. Bull says that Kyoko was one of the two best rookies she’d ever seen, along with Hokuto. She says they were next level. Bull talks about how even though all rookies get the same moves to do, Kyoko understood right away how to put them to use in a match, which is a very rare skill among brand new rookies.

– They talk about Kyoko joining Bull’s faction Gokumon-to. Kyoko joined the day before the Bull vs Aja feud kicked off, and quickly found herself in main events despite only being 3 years in. Kyoko had been a babyface, but at some point the office felt Kyoko couldn’t be a babyface anymore so they decided to switch her. Bull says she was told Kyoko would be joining and austerely told them “Yes, I understand” but internally was like “YES!!” because she saw Kyoko as a top prospect.

-Bull also felt that Kyoko wasn’t someone who fit into the conventional wrestling company framework (i.e. she was breaking a bunch of the company rules) and wanted to help keep her on track. When Kyoko first came up with her trademark facepaint, Bull’s initial reaction was like “thas some batman shit right there”. Kyoko says she got a ton of bashing from her seniors around the time of her initial push, but that having Bull’s support did a lot to soften the blows.(“I knew that no matter what happened, Nakano-san would protect me.”) (Jab’s Notes: Bull was the Top Senior at this point, so no fuckery was gonna go on while SHE was watching)

– They talk about some short lived plans to give Kyoko some sort of “crazy tiger” gimmick, but “crazy” couldn’t be said on TV at the time so she ended up staying as Kyoko Inoue. She also did two matches as “Adamo Inoue”. (Jab’s Notes: I feel there’s some cultural thing about the word for “crazy” being bad- with regards to how mental health is treated in Japan… as in they tend not to talk about it at all and people receive almost no help. Moskow says the word is considered extremely rude in multiple Asian countries, so it probably just doesn’t translate well, and would have been censored. Also “Adamo Inoue” was a blackface gimmick, Because Japan)

– Kyoko talks about her longtime tag team W Inoue (“There were two Inoues, the beautiful one and the ugly one!”) (Jab’s Notes: While Kyoko isn’t a great beauty, I feel the repeated jokes about her appearance are… misguided? Misguided? But probably rooted in how she was talked to for ages) They talk about Kyoko departing Zenjo in 1997, when she left to form NEO Ladies’s Pro-Wrestling. She says that she was a senior at the time, and was hearing a lot of complaints from her juniors about lack of payment from the company. She checked her own accounts and realized she had been unpaid for the past several months. She went to the office and asked what was up, and they said “Well, you never came to pick it up.” The money, of course, was no longer present by the time she was asking for it. (Jab’s Notes: The Matsunagas engaging in some Wrestling Promoter 101 right there- “Well you never came to pick it up” lol)

– She says she felt the juniors were suffering the most, since they were at the period in their careers where they needed to be working a lot. She brought this up to the office, but Kyoko realized that the company was broke and that she had to think of another way for everyone to make a living. Kyoko was the champion at the time and was still over with the fans, so she started thinking about forming her own company. The financial situation was dire and she just decided to go for it.

– Kyoko says that initially, she had hoped everyone would leave as one group, but that it ended up being split into two – NEO and Arsion led by Aja Kong. She says she asked her seniors if they wanted to join, as well as the juniors (this would have been Toyota, LCO, Aja, and Hotta at the time). She says that when she talked to Aja, she was told that Aja had already been prepping to start her own group as well. She says that she wondered why Aja hadn’t asked her to join, then realized that Rossy Ogawa was involved and that he was really only interested in taking the “pretty” girls. Kyoko says that she and others were clearly not in the “beauty” category and thus didn’t fit into Ogawa’s plans. This led to the split into two different promotions.

-Kyoko says she got some investors and launched the promotion, but that everything was done relatively quickly so the planning wasn’t as optimal as it could have been. The launch occurred in 1998, just as the wrestling boom period was drying up, and closed in 1999. She says that she always made sure the juniors were paid, but that she herself went bankrupt and found herself with enormous personal debt due to NEO’s failure. Bull asks how Kyoko did on the management side, and Kyoko winces and says “I really just wish I’d never done it!” with a laugh. She says the company lost about 60mil yen per year (~500K USD).

– She says that one of the big issues was that she paid the wrestlers too high of a base salary. She says she overpaid because was a wrestler herself, and as the junior’s financial struggles were a partial motivation for creating the promotion, she was more generous than a pro-wrestling promoter should have been. She also cites her own spending as an issue, and jokingly says “I was Bull Nakano’s student after all!” (they both liked to party…) (Jab’s Notes: While boasting about being “too generous” could be given the side-eye, I’ve heard that Kyoko was legitimately quite good to work for… though LCO bailed on her pretty quickly to go freelance after a year of bad gates)

-Kyoko says “Anyway, that’s where my life of poverty began..” She was still paying off the debts from NEO at the time of the interview in 2021. NEO relaunched with different management in 2000, but the days of people sleeping in tents outside the office to be the first to get tickets were long gone, to say the least. It was common practice is for the wrestlers to carry tickets around and sell them by hand at bars, shops, wherever they could. Bull says that this would have been embarrassing for a Zenjo wrestler, and Kyoko talks about having to learn how to use bus transit in her 30s. Kyoko says that this is a normal thing for most people, but it was a baffling ordeal for someone who spent her entire adult life being driven everywhere by a wrestling office. (Jab’s Notes: This is kinda where the whole Zenjo “train them as teenagers then send them away in their mid-20s” thing can have a weird effect- imagine growing up in the insular Zenjo world and then just being a housewife or even working a regular job)

– On a brighter note, Kyoko also launched her bar/restaurant “Akayu” in the early 2000s – a success that is still going strong to this day. (NOTE: The food legit looks amazing at Akayu). It’s also become a popular spot for wrestler drinking parties over the years. Kyoko says that at first, she received a lot of backlash from fans who thought it would be a distraction from the wrestling promotion. Bull says that she heard Kyoko was “drinking like it was her last day on earth”. This was short lived however, and Akayu remains a popular business that’s active in the community (often hosting “free lunch” days for local children and what not).

– They talk about about Kyoko’s weight (she keeps it at 100kg) (Jab’s Notes: About 220 lbs.) and some of the differences between now and the Zenjo days. They say that in their time, pro-wrestlers were expected to be big bodied. These days however, sizes are smaller as many wrestlers still live everyday lives and pro-wrestling is just something they do (as opposed to being 100% a full time wrestler).

-Kyoko says that during the Zenjo days, if she worked a match with a broken bone, she’d be thinking “Cool, I just worked a match with a broken bone!” which is certainly….not the case with most wrestlers in 2023. She says that if she got through a match with an injury in the 90s, the fans would treat her like a warrior, but now they’d be like “omg! are you ok? you need to rest!!”. (Jab’s Notes: lol wrestlers have always been nuts)

– Bull talks about how in Zenjo, they only had 10 years before retirement, so they often worked injured since taking time off would cause them to get passed by others. (“We were really crazy..” – Kyoko). These days, since careers can go on much longer, injuries are handled much more carefully. Bull tells a story where she hurt her hip doing a legdrop, and went to the hospital for xrays. They told her there were no broken bones.., and she felt embarrassed to have gone to the hospital for nothing. Then the doctor said “…. it BROKE about a year ago, now it’s all just sort of stuck together.” (Jab’s Notes: If you watch Bull’s last year of matches, you can definitely see the effects. Bull noticeably winces after every bump and is SUPER SLOW getting up)

– Kyoko puts over Bull’s ability to prevent her injuries from affecting her ring performance – the people always got Bull Nakano as advertised. They talk about going out drinking back in the day. Kyoko tells a story about Bull being out drinking until the next morning, and walking back during the time when all the kids were walking to school (causing quite a stir). Kyoko says that Bull would go out in full gimmick and and go into bars like “BULL NAKANO IS HERE!!” and “I AM BULL NAKANO!! GIVE ME DRINKS!!” etc. Bull passed out at a vending machine once. Despite all this, Kyoko says Bull always showed up at the scheduled meeting time, ready to work. (Jab’s Notes: This is perhaps less amusing knowing that Bull had to go to the hospital for cirrhosis of the liver and could have died, lol)

– Bull says that drinking stories could take up an entire show, so changes the topic to Kyoko’s current promotion Diana. Kyoko says that she will likely retire in Diana, as she sees no reason to start another new promotion at this point in her career. She says that even if she retires, Diana will continue. Bull says “Maybe you can be the commissioner or something~!” to laughs. Kyoko says she will probably split her retirement time between Tokyo and her home province of Yamagata. She talks about having a group of school aged trainees at the dojo now (edit: this was in 2021, and the first of these students is currently about to debut in 2023). They talk about how Sareee was a 4th grader when she started there and Bull says that it means a lot to her to see the spirit of Zenjo still alive in some of the young wrestlers of today.