.png)
The G.O.A.T. 100 #63 | Aja Kong
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
The above are bars in Aja Kong’s entrance theme. Jungle Emperor was unique to the other theme tunes in the land of joshi. It just hits different to anything else from AJW, JWP, LLPW or GAEA. It’s cool, it’s frightening, it’s a theme that tells you it’s time for business …and the business time when Aja Kong came out was like no other in the 90s from any gender in any company in the world of wrestling.
Born Erika Shisido in 1970, to a Japanese mother and an American father, who was a member of the U.S Army stationed at Tachikawa Airfield whilst the Vietnam War was ongoing. Aja’s father, an African-American would have to leave Japan after being repatriated back home, never to go back and never to see his daughter again, a daughter now being raised by a single mother, disowned by her family with them disapproving of her falling in love with an American… Growing up for Erika wasn’t fun.
Erika and her mother moved to Akishima when she was in 5th grade, and settling in was hard. Bullied by classmates because of her mixed race, Shisido would take up karate to help defend herself. She also started to watch wrestling and became a Crush Gals fan. The path of wrestling was the one she took up, entering the AJW dojo at 16. She would be part of the Class of 1986 that graduated out of the dojo along with Bison Kimura and Megumi Kudo, making her debut in that summer against fellow dojo classmate, Noriyo Toyoda, better known as Combat Toyoda.
Immediately Erika joined the main heel stable in All Japan Women, the Atrocious Alliance along with Kimura, who she had become IRL best mates with while the pair were in the dojo.
Erika, still working under her real name would spend her teenage years working her way up the card. Even in those rookie days she was already booked as a monster, winning around 70% of her singles matches and winning the third most important singles title in the company, the AJW Title, in a tournament – beating Manami Toyota in the final. She went on to hold the belt for 158 days before losing it to Reibun Amada.
Just as Erika was leaving her teenage years, she was leaving behind her real life given name. Erika Shisido became Aja Shisido, working under that name for a few months before finally completing the rebranding to Aja Kong just before we hit the 90s.
Nicknamed The Daughter of King Kong, Aja would be drafted to feud with her former Atrocious Alliance member, Bull Nakano after Kong and Kimura turned heel on Nakano to form the Jungle Jack stable which they headed.
Kong and Nakano fought each other in the first cage match featuring women in Japan – but the cage rematch a couple months later at Wrestlemarinepiad was even better, making the Top Ten of many MOTY lists for 1990. The pair also went at it in a great tag match, with Nakano paired with Grizzly Iwamoto while Kong teamed with her friend Kimura. (I have the tag match even higher than the more widely acclaimed Cage match in my MOTY list for 1990.)
The Nakano feud lasted until late 1992 with the pair going at it more in tag matches in ‘91. A Hair vs. Hair match between Kong and Kimura vs. Nakano and her Gokumon-to partner Kyoko Inoue would see Kong and Kimura lose the match and their hair, bringing the famous moment of Aja yelling at her partner to “STOP CRYING” while Bison wailed as she was losing her hair.
The now-bald pair – with Bison looking like a punk rocker – would become an almost permanent fixture in the slot as WWWA Tag Champions, with multiple reigns with the belts including a 249 day hold. The third of their four reigns with the title would see a belter defending against Toyota and Esther Moreno. The Jungle Jack pair would also get a revenge win over Nakano and Inoue in a defence of the belts.
In 1992 Kong went on to have a really great match with Akira Hokuto. She would also kickstart her rivalry with Manami Toyota along with continuing her hostility with the Nakano, two of AJW’s Big Four. Kong and Kimura would team to face Toyota with Toshiyo Yamada in crackers, but the days of Bison and Aja teaming were nearing the end.
Bison would suffer a series of injuries as 1992 progressed, with the injury Kimura picked up during the Grand Prix being the straw that broke the camel's back in her career. Bison’s retirement ceremony would take place at Dream Rush in Kawasaki, the same night Aja and Bull would main event with Bull’s WWWA Single Championship on the line.
Nakano had held the belt for almost three years since winning the Red belt on 1990.1.4 and in the eleven defences that Bull had had, two of them saw Aja unsuccessful in challenging. The first being the famous Cage Match and then at another Wrestlemarinepiad event earlier in 1992. But this time, destiny would not be denied.
Aja, emotional from the Kimura retirement ceremony, would beat Nakano to take her title and enter her own era of dominance.
Kong held the WWWA title for 850 days. 1993 was her prime year, according to many. In the midst of an interpromotional rivalry with JWP and LLPW, Kong would be part of the legendary Thunder Queen Battle match as part of Team All Japan Women against Team JWP in a 60-minute Ironman Match with the two captains of the teams facing off a few months later in a battle between Aja and Dynamite Kansai. But Kong would also team with rivals Hokuto and Nakano to face LLPW’s Eagle Sawai and Shinobu Kandori and also defend the WWWA Single belt against Sawai and FMW’s Megumi Kudo.
But Kong would also have crackers against fellow AJW roster members. Kong with various partners (Bull Nakano and Bat Yoshinaga) vs Toyota and Yamada matches would be “notebook”. But it would be the next year that saw Kong and Toyota in their prime encounter at the Tokyo Dome.
Kong would be part of main events that drew numbers in the five figures, with the Kansai defence on 93.8.25 at Budokan Hall drawing 14,500. A show in the same arena where she teamed with Hokuto to face Kansai and Yumiko Hotta 364 days later drew 15,560, and the match with Nakano against Hokuto and Kandori would sell out the 16,500 seat Yokohama Arena on 93.3.27.
The Big Egg Universe show at the Dome is still the largest women’s wrestling show ever, with a reported 42,000 fans in Japan’s most iconic wrestling building on 1994.11.20. It was a long night with the show lasting 10 hours with 23 matches scheduled, seven of which pencilled in to be the V*TOP Five Star Tournament, with an 8-woman field and with the WWWA champion as the chief antagonist.
Kong and Toyota would face off in the first round and would wrestle what many believe was the greatest Women’s match of all time to that point. It received 5 stars from Dave Meltzer. Its 9.51 on Cagematch puts it in rarefied air as one of only 81 matches that have a 9.50+ rating on the site – and just five of those 81 are women’s matches.
The match – which Kenny Omega has cited as an inspiration for his style – would steal the show and overshadow the rest of the tournament put on in the second half of the Big Egg event, with Kong and Kansai putting on a great match to build their feud that had started in the Thunder Queen Battle Attack match and the final between Kong and Hokuto, whose ascent to the tournament win was what the show had been booked around and would be very good, but also was in front of an exhausted crowd past 11pm – past the final train out of the nearest station and past curfew for children in the city.
Kong, who was already a Top-10 worker in the world throughout the early 90s, had a 1995 that helped solidify her place in that top tier.
The Toyota vs. Kong rivalry would continue throughout 1995. The most notable of their matches would be the night that Kong would lose the WWWA World Title to Manami in a fantastic match at Wrestling Queendom Victory on 3.26.
The third in their immediate trilogy that spanned 8 months would take place on the 6.27 Zenjo Movement show in Sapporo in a match that I think is better than the beloved Dome match. Aja would take the title back after hitting a second Uraken in a match that saw both hit their big bomb finishers with that Uraken being the hit that saw Toyota’s energy bar elapse.
But while Kong and Toyota were blowing the roof off buildings with their classics, the All Japan Women house was showing disrepair with no signs of a fix. Plans for a second consecutive year with a Dome show had gone out the window with attendances down with Akira Hokuto on a part-time schedule and the inter-promotional rivalries that had defined joshi maybe having jumped the shark.
Maybe the motorbike jumping the shark-infested pool happened on the first defence Kong had of her second reign with the red belt. Aja Kong and Dynamite Kansai, the two leaders of their respective promotions, AJW and JPW did battle on 8.30 with Kansai taking the belt from Kong.
The reason she dropped the belt was that she was due to spend time in WWF as a challenger for Alundra Blayze’s WWF Title. Blayze’s 1994 and 1995 saw her feud and exchange title wins with Bull Nakano and TAFKA Monster Ripper, who was now working as Bertha Faye and Alundra would be the one to suggest Kong.
The first sighting of Kong in the Fed would be at the 1995 Survivor Series in a traditional Survivor-Series elimination match under the banner of Team Faye vs Team Blayze. Kong would leave the match with the most focus on her after she hit the Uraken on Blayze to become the sole survivor in the match.
The next night at the block of tapings for RAW, Kong and Chaparita Asari would have a match with the idea of hyping Kong as the next challenger for Blayze’s title. Kong did Kong things on her way to the win. The problem was that in the eyes of the head honchos of the Fed, Aja Kong doing Aja Kong things made the male wrestlers look really bad. The style of match that was bread and butter in joshi was like something from another planet from the soft-style that was commonplace in the Fed at the time. Add the fact that women’s wrestling had to work from behind anyways from the prejudiced mindset from those in top positions in American wrestling, and the Kong-in-America experiment was dead just two nights in, leading to the women’s division being axed completely, with Blayze’s contract up for renewal in December 1995 not extended.
Weeks later, Blayze went to WCW and appeared live on Monday Nitro with the belt that she still had in her possession after the Fed forgot to ask for it back. She dumped the WWF Women's Title into a bin live on television.
With the American takeover ending as quickly as it began, Kong was back in Japan in time for a match against Kyoko Inoue, who had also been part of thar Survivor Series elimination match.
Kong would lose to Inoue, and it felt like Aja was firmly in the role of gatekeeper for future champions, as Inoue’s win over Kong was priming her for her title win over Manami Toyota at the end of 1996.
As Inoue had become champ, All Japan Women was collapsing around her. Kong, who had won the 1996 Grand Prix – her second after her 1992 win of the annual summer tournament – wasn't happy. AJW’s business was getting worse and an exodus was beginning.
No one was getting paid. The Matsunaga brothers, owners of AJW, were broke – USD 22 million in debt after their real estate business had fallen off a cliff.
Toshiyo Yamada was the first to go, jumping ship to GAEA. All Japan Women saw Toshiyo as a midcarder who at 27, was over the hill.
Yeah, I know…
But AJW, just coming off the end of the “retire at 26” rule, with their hand forced to scrap the rule by the rise of other joshi promotions, thought that a magical joshi tree that supplied new wrestlers could bail them out. They didn’t foresee main event stars getting off the ship.
Aja would soon follow the lead of Chigusa Nagayo (GAEA), Jaguar Yokota (JDStar) and Kyoko Inoue (NEO) by setting up her own promotion known as Arsion with Rossy Ogawa, who had been working at the office in AJW. While Ogawa’s role in All Japan Women varies depending on who you talk to, Rossy and his contacts book leaving at the same time as one of the Big Four of AJW’s boom period in the 90s was the nail in the coffin of the promotion.
Aja would wrestle out her notice til the fall of 1997, when she wrestled Manami Toyota in her final singles match in the AJW, going to a time-limit draw in a sensational encore match rounding off the rivalry between the Daughter of King Kong and her Fay Wray in Toyota.
The emotional farewell ceremony for Aja would be overshadowed by events at the start of the Budokan show – in front of an announced 9,000, (it was actually probably 6,000) Kyoko Inoue, the Red Belt champion who hadn’t been paid in five months, went to the ring in an unplanned segment and announced she was leaving.
Kong and Inoue were two among many to leave. Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda, ASARI, Mariko Yoshida were all also leaving, Yoshida announced that she would join Arsion.
Aja and Rossy fell out over creative differences just a few years later (maybe Aja finally figured out that Rossy is a massive pervert) and Aja left the promotion she founded in 2001. The split was so heated that Aja sued Rossy for continuing to advertise her despite her departure.
Later in 2001, Aja would finally get a chance to work with her hero growing up. She would share a ring with Chigusa in GAEA. Her time in a GAEA ring saw unbelievable matches – a match against KAORU was my MOTY for 2000. Kong would also help put over the next generation of stars of joshi with matches against Ayoko Hamada and Meiko Satomura but the next big things in joshi would have to fight an uphill battle with a fragmented scene seeing the world of joshi struggling to break any ceilings.
Kong won the company’s AAAW Singles Title on three occasions. Her first reign was the big one – as Kong held the belt for 609 days from 1999 to 2001 and would be the final champion of the company beating Meiko on what would be the second to last show in GAEA’s history as the promotion shockingly folded weeks after Kong’s third main title win.. She then went to HUSTLE where she and Awesome Kong teamed up and dressed as schoolgirls under the names Erika and Magaret, because… why not??? The pair would hold the tag titles and defended them against male teams such as Tatsutoshi Goto & Razor Ramon Hard Gay before losing the belts to Team 3D.
Awesome Kong would come in as Aja’s protege, with the Kongs holding tag titles in various promotions – including the WWWA Tag belts with Aja returning to her first home of All Japan Women in its final days, before the Matsunaga Brothers folded the company a week after GAEA closed.
Aja has since then worked around the joshi scene, doing more laps of the scene than an F1 car does of Suzuka International for the Japanese GP. Part of this, according to rumour and innuendo, is that the debts she incurred as part of Arsion were such that she is still paying them off today. That was certainly the case for Kyoko Inoue and her NEO promotion which became defunct in 2010 and in an interview in Bull Nakano’s YouTube interview series, Kyoko said as much.
Highlights in the rest of the 00s saw a belter between Kong and Satomura on 2006.7.9 in Sendai Girls – a promotion set up by Satomura in the aftermath of the demise of GAEA and AJW. Appearances in Mayumi Ozaki’s Oz Academy leaned heavily on nostalgia with Kong facing Kansai and Toyota on shows promoted by Ozaki.
The 2010s saw Kong booked against talent that were destined to go on to be big names. She faced Hikaru Shida at Oz Academy, Chihiro Hashimoto in Sendai. This was when Big Hash was in her sophomore year as a wrestler, in a trilogy of matches that rocked. Chihiro was being pushed to the moon by Meiko even that early, getting the Kong rub by beating her for the Sendai Girls World Title.
These joshi independent companies would trust Aja with their main title with Sendai using Kong holding the Sendai World Championship to beef up Hash’s big moment. Kong had three reigns with the Oz Academy Openweight Title and held the Pro Wrestling Diana World Title with promoter and booker Kyoko Inoue using the same template that Meiko used for Chihiro Hashimoto’s Sendai Title win with Sareee in the slot of the wrestler going over Aja.
She also appeared on AEW at times. She was part of the joshi trios match teaming with Emi Sakura and Yuka Sakazaki in a loss to Hikaru Shida, Ryo Mizunami and Riho. While the match had a solid consensus ***¾ across the board, it still looked something from future times compared to what WWE was serving up in their women’s division.
Aja would also appear in the Japanese half of an Eliminator Tournament to appoint a No.1 contender for the AEW World Women's Championship for Revolution PPV in 2021. She still appears all over the world, revelling in her legend status. She still wrestles in the odd belter (vs. DASH Chisako on 2023.11.5), and she still gets booked to face top prospects from various promotions, appearing in Marvelous to face Senka Akatushi and Sendai Girls to be in the opposite corner of Reina Takano in her debut. (Quick aside – I genuinely think of Reina at 18 in the same vibes that I thought of Lionel Messi when I saw him play for Barcelona at the age of 17 in the year 2005… back when I thought: “that short fella is going to be one the GOATs of football.”) She also makes a habit of terrorizing Safire Reed in EVE and Sendai… (5 places deduction for being mean to my favourite wrestler.)
There is a heavy chance that I will see Aja live in March 2027 and I’m genuinely practicing in not acting like a teenage girl breaking down in tears when meeting Take That when I meet Aja Kong at a potential meet and greet. I’m also trying to put over the idea of asking Aja to hit me with a waste basket as was her signature in her heyday.
There are three women who will place higher than Kong in this list but when it comes to my personal favourite joshi wrestler, no-one will ever rank higher for me than the daughter of King Kong. Any wrestler that dare to come to her island wouldn’t forget the experience and neither would the fans watching in the stands, because the chances of a great match were high, as well as chances of the experience being memorable!
G.O.A.T. 100 Portal
Links to all GOAT100 profiles published so far
G.O.A.T. 100 Image Grid
Comments