Japanese Women's Pro Wrestling League Gets Ready to Rumble in Miami

"Japanese Women's Pro Wrestling in Miami" may seem like the most random phrase you'll likely hear during Miami Art Week. But reality is about to come crashing into the ring. Sukeban, a new and abundantly creative wrestling promotion, is hosting its first championship here in Miami on Wednesday, December 6.

Based in New York, Sukeban attempts to bring a new sensibility to pro wrestling with plenty of inspiration from Japanese fashion and pop culture.

"What we wanted to do with Sukeban was bring it to America and show it to a whole new audience, not just wrestling fans, but the art crowd, the people who are going to be at Art Basel, for example," Olympia Le-Tan, a fashion designer and Sukeban's creative director, says. Le-Tan was living in Japan, working in fashion and nightlife, when she first experienced women's wrestling or joshi puroresu.

"I thought they were amazing because they're just really good at what they do. They're great athletes," she says. "And I thought it would be really interesting to sort of transform them and make them look different to what they usually wear, turn them into kind of superheroes. That's the sort of thought that I had when I first saw them, that they were a bit like superheroes."
Le-Tan designed the entire brand identity for Sukeban, naming it after the infamous delinquent girl gangs that terrorized Tokyo in the 1970s. The league recruited accomplished joshi wrestlers in Japan and allowed them to adopt new wrestling personae, taking inspiration from anime and classic gang films like The Warriors, among other sources. Each of the four groups in the show has a unique look: the Harajuku Girls wear Power Rangers-style color-coded sailor suits, while the Cherrybomb Girls don souvenir jackets. The Dangerous Liaisons team is made up of villainesses, from the regal Queen of Hearts and the militant Commander Nakajiima to the debonair Countess Saori and haughty Lady Antoinette.

Pro wrestling is often considered a consummately macho discipline, the domain of muscle-bound, 'roided-up behemoths like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. But there's a long history of female fighters entering the ring, from the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) promo, made famous by the Netflix series of the same name, to WWE's Divas, the controversial, sex-appeal-focused division that was rebranded in 2016.

Japan's history with women's wrestling goes back to the 1970s when legendary fighter Antonio Inoki founded New Japan Pro Wrestling, which is based around the martial arts focused on "strong style." Joshi wrestlers of this time, such as the legendary Beauty Pair, became huge stars, attracting fandoms from young girls who treated them as idols.

Because female wrestling promos in Japan developed separately from male organizations, the sport was able to develop its own following. Sustained in the present day by promos like Stardom and AJW, joshi puro often rivals or even eclipses men's wrestling in Japan, according to Bleacher Report.

Sukeban. 9 p.m. Wednesday, December 6, at Lot 11 Skatepark, 301 NW Second St., Miami; sukeban.com. Tickets cost $60.62 to $303.08 via dice.fm.