Joshi Spotlight: Bull Nakano Interviews Aja Kong: “The Real Match is With the Customers”

Welcome back to yet another Bull Nakano interview- this time with the possible GOAT worker, Aja Kong! These are written out and elaborated upon by my buddy MoskowDiskow from Twitter. Aja is of course a huge legend in joshi wrestling, having come up in the late 1980s as a biracial competitor, quickly joining the heel stable and then betraying Bull Nakano to form the rival “Jungle Jack” stable, the Bull/Aja feud dominating All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling (AJW/Zenjo) in the dark period between the Crush Gals retiring (and hurting business) and the Interpromotional Era that was a tape-trader favorite from 1992-on. Aja became dominant WWWA Champion (the Red Belt- top belt of Zenjo) during this time,l and had numerous classic matches and performances.

(Jab’s Notes: My own notes will be in bold text to differentiate them)

PART I:

This is from September 2021

– They start with some greetings and Aja talks a bit about what she’s up to these days, where she’s been working, etc. They talk about how it’s a totally different environment from the days when they were starting out in Zenjo and the newly formed JWP was the only other possible employment alternative. At that time, there was a mentality of “if you leave Zenjo, you leave wrestling.”

-Bull says that since Aja is such a good talker , she’s able to thrive in the current environment. Aja says she cringes when she sees some of her old interviews from her younger days. She says she had a high pitched voice and would speed through promos too quickly. She eventually learned to slow down to get her message across more effectively. Aja takes time to give props to Bull, because it was working with Bull that really taught Aja how to promo. She stresses the importance of reading the room during live promos, which is a skill that comes with experience.

– Aja talks about how when she was a rookie, her only thoughts were about getting through the matches. She saw Bull’s success (Aja was a junior in Bull’s faction) and realized she needed to learn more about how the more experienced Bull thought about wrestling in a broader sense. (basically going from just thinking about doing her spots to thinking more in terms of psychology, etc). Aja is a very bright person in general and went all in, studying all the interviews, tape, etc that she could find.

– Aja says she heard at one point that “the real match is with the customers” and that she finally understood what that meant once she started studying Bull. (this refers to the push/pull dynamic between wrestlers and fans, how to work, get over, etc.). Aja says that once she started looking at it like this, wrestling became a lot more fun for her.

(Jab’s Notes: THE REAL MATCH IS WITH THE CUSTOMERS. That’s it right there. The whole thing. It’s the difference between the greatest and the “merely okay”. It’s why instead of bitching about “bad crowds” not reacting to “obviously great matches”, you should wonder why the wrestlers weren’t able to shift the match to something the fans actually wanted to see)

– Aja talks about the origin of her famous technique, the Uraken backfist. In 1990 when Zenjo was starting to promote shoot boxing matches on their cards, she was training with Mima Shimoda, who the office was wanting to push at the time. Aja was wearing oversized 18oz practice boxing gloves, which made her fight like a cartoon robot (ie very stiffly), so she would occasionally bonk Shimoda with a backfist out of frustration – when a lightbulb went off and she thought “this just might work!” Fast forward to her “kakutogi street fight” match with Madusa a few months later where she hit a bunch of backfists, and the Uraken was born.

-She says the office told her to use it as a trademark, and it took awhile for her to figure out how to optimize it (lots of early matches where she would just whack people willy nilly). They laugh as Aja apologies for potatoing Bull so many times while she was figuring it out (Aja -“I really used you as a practice dummy..”)

(Jab’s Notes: If you watch 1990-ish Aja matches, she indeed just spams it like crazy as a signature strike, the way Misawa would do elbows or Kobashi chops- it’s around 1991-ish that she builds it up as a proper finisher- prepping people for it, slapping them in anticipation and BAM! ending their lives)

Aja Kong shoot KO's Tamura with an uraken (1997)
byu/ShiroAbesPants inSquaredCircle

-Aja says that she started wearing gloves because her hands hurt from all the uraken she was bouncing off people’s heads (also bc Vader looked cool with them). Aja says that the unexpected downside of her hands being protected was that the # of accidental uraken KO’s likely increased due to it no longer hurting to throw it hard. Aja says the number of concussions probably increased and Bull raises her hands and says “My # increased!” with an exaggerated smile. Aja laughs and says thanks to the accidental KOs, the uraken got mega over as a one hit kill finisher (lol). Aja reiterates that she’s grateful that Bull put up with being a punching bag while the Uraken was a work in progress.

PART II:

– They start with some history on the name ‘Aja Kong.’ The Aja part was from a nickname given to her by Hokuto. She started out using her real name Erika Shishido, which didn’t really fit once she was made a heel and put in Gokuaku Domei (Jab’s Notes: Dump Matsumoto’s stable of killer heels). She says the office came to her one day and excitedly told her that her new name was “Black Sunday” (lmao). She said she had one match as Black Sunday, and some fans were yelling “Chocolate Sundae!!” at her, so alternate names were quickly explored.

-She first became “The Aja” but she was like “The Aja? wtf is that?” and it was quickly changed to “Aja Shishido”. Then, after a match, she thumped her chest and one of the office staff changed her name to King Kong Aja. However, King Kong was a male, so it was changed to Queen Kong Aja. Eventually the office had a meeting to settle the matter, and “Kong Aja” was chosen. This turned out to be awkward to pronounce for the ring announcers, so at long last, Aja Kong was born. (Jab’s Notes: In a French documentary, it was described as “Aja for Asia; Kong for Africa”- you probably don’t want to know why Zenjo kept assigning black women the name “Kong”)

– They move on to the main event of the interview, discussion of their famous cage death matches. Bull asks Aja what her strategy was before the first one, and Aja just laughs and says there was none, she had no idea what to do. They briefly wax nostalgic about the various weapons they’ve used against each other over the years. Aja says she didn’t really know how to prepare for a cage death match, so she went out and made a weapon out of bamboo and rope. She says she was told she was going over by KO and had no idea how to work that into a finish, so decided to make a bludgeoning weapon to get the job done.

– They talk about the power outage that occurred early into the match, plunging them into darkness. Bull says it was an awkward situation since they couldn’t really progress the match and had to just sort of cling onto each other for an extended period. Aja feels the fans saw through the work at this point which got the match off on the wrong foot and it never recovered. They say the seconds did a great job trying to save it by fighting with each other (Madusa was going wild here). (Jab’s Notes: this kind of led to a BOD night crew meme of “Coke-head Madusa” being a fun background character) Unfortunately, it was bad enough that fans were demanding their money back.

(Jab’s Notes: OOF. The “Pissed-off, disappointed puro fans” thing runs so contrary to a lot of things we’ve been told about Japanese fans, but it’s happened more than once that fans got REALLY sick of certain matches, performances or results. I couldn’t begin to guess why some draw this reaction and others don’t)

– Bull says that they were both committed to putting on a show for the rematch, and Aja talks about being on the receiving end of the famous legdrop from the top of the cage. She says while she was laying there, she was thinking “I don’t care if I die, just drop it”. Then when Bull hit, everything went dark and when she came to, her first thought was “Hmm…it’s really noisy on the other side” (due to the crowd losing its mind). Aja says that once it was over with, she wasn’t afraid of anything in pro-wrestling anymore. Bull says she expected to die with her spine sticking out of her body.

(Jab’s Notes: This is truly one of the wildest finishes ever, if not the greatest of all time)

Bull Nakano's epic guillotine legdrop off the top of the cage onto Aja Kong (1990)
byu/EvitoQQ inSquaredCircle

– More broadly, Aja talks about feeling 1000 steps behind Bull in terms of being a pro when the feud started, so she was motivated to make up that ground as quickly as possible by absorbing everything she could from working with Bull. This is when Aja really got serious about excelling as a pro. They briefly discuss the fact that they didn’t get along or talk for a shoot at the time, but never let it get in the way of their matches. Aja says that when she got the red belt, she felt she had caught up to Bull, but Bull kept moving ahead, going to America and winning a belt etc. Aja says that when she finally won, her first thought was “What am i going to do tomorrow?” rather than enjoying the moment. (Jab’s Notes: I find a good bunch of Zenjo wrestlers talk more about the stress of the time than feeling success in what they were doing)

PART III:

– Aja talks more about how she had been so focused on the goal of winning the red belt that she struggled to figure out what to do next and even briefly wondered if she should just quit wrestling. However, the day she won the belt was the same day that the interpromotional war angle began, so that gave her some direction, specifically her rival with JWP’s Dynamite Kansai.

– Aja talks a bit about the famous July 1993 JWP Thunderqueen team elimination match, which got the wrestling press talking about a rivalry between Kansai and Aja, leading to them main eventing Budokan in August. Aja says she really enjoyed working with different people from different companies, and this led to her eventual interest is going freelance. (Jab’s Notes: Aja had some TREMENDOUS main events defending the Red Belt against Megumi Kudo, Dynamite Kansai and others- nearly every match over **** and totally different)

– Talking about going freelance, she says that she took the responsibility of leading the company as a senior and champion seriously, but as her name grew and more opportunities were popping up, she felt that Zenjo was limiting her and she wanted to experience more of what the world of pro-wrestling had to offer. She says that the pay issues in the company at the time were a secondary concern to being able to do what she wanted with her career, citing working for GAEA as a specific example. (note: the gist of all this is that she wanted grow the Aja Kong brand in a way that she was happy with) (Jab’s Notes: This leads to her quitting and being a signature feature of Hyper Visual Fighting ARSION, a startup with Zenjo office dweeb Rossy Ogawa)

NOTE: Bull’s caption editor takes a nap here, so the rest of the recap isn’t super detailed

– She talks about the day Zenjo collapsed at Budokan in 1997, when current champion Kyoko Inoue got on the mic and told everyone she was quitting. At this point Aja had already been considering leaving, so with the company falling apart all around her, the time seemed right. It was shortly after this that she was approached to be a wrestler/booker for new company Arsion. She says she refused at first, since she wanted to freelance, but once she realized she would be able to work with other promotions, she thought that booking her own company could be a good thing if they did it right. (note: there’s zero discussion of Arsion, the Rossy Ogawa lawsuit, etc) (Jab’s Notes: That’s too bad, but Aja probably doesn’t want to talk about it. Needless to say there’s a reason you don’t see her in Rossy-related things)

– She talks a bit about her time with Oz Academy and puts over Oz as a cool pro-wrestler that’s not afraid to be hated (and pays well). They talk about how Ozaki as a wrestler was something Zenjo didn’t have (undersized, outspoken, etc).

– Bull asks what the future holds for Aja Kong. Aja says that she looks forward to being in the ring at 90 years old hooked to an IV saying “come at me”. (Jab’s Notes: This is why I can tell Aja is the best promo) She says that once pro-wrestling stops being fun, she will quit the next day, but that hasn’t happened yet. Aja really enjoys the dynamic and ever-changing world of wrestling – always new things to do. She says she’s always wanted to have a big retirement ceremony, but that would require retiring, so she hopes that her funeral will be her retirement ceremony.

– On a personal level she says she’s looking forward to a relaxing and peaceful “Baba Life” (baba=old woman). She wants to hang out reading magazines and playing video games. She says she really wants to travel overseas and see all the different styles of pro-wrestling as a fan.