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The G.O.A.T. 100 #89 | Jaguar Yokota
- Peter Edge
- May 28
- 9 min read
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 word trailblazer gets thrown around in wrestling a lot. Bobo Brazil, who we talked about earlier, broke barriers for black wrestlers. Gorgeous George pioneered flamboyance in wrestling and changed the art of wrestling to focus on showmanship and in women’s wrestling, Jaguar Yokota blazed a trail for other women to aspire to be the best in their industry – no matter the gender, breaking the glass ceiling to be discussed as the best in the world.
Born on July 25th, 1961, in Tokyo, Rimi Yokota wasn’t athletic in high school but was inspired to become a professional wrestler by the original idols of Joshi – The Beauty Pair.
Jackie Soto and Maki Ueda were the original darlings of teenage girls across Japan, but when Rimi passed through the AJW dojo, she was set for a different path than the Pair. Yokota was one of hundreds of teenagers who auditioned for a spot at the dojo, and she got her “wrestling license” just two months after her first day there, under the watchful eye of her hero Jackie Soto. She made her debut the following month on June 28, 1977, facing Mayumi Takahashi. She would team with Seiko Honawa to form Young Pair.
For context, AJW named all their tag teams _____ Pair. Black Pair was the name of the team of Shinobu Aso and Yumi Ikeshita and Golden Pair was the name of the team of Nancy Kumi and Victoria Fujimi. Just think of it like how American wrestling was obsessed with the word "Express" in a team name in the 80s and 90s.
But instead of getting fame as a tag team wrestler, then gradually transitioning to singles success, Yokota would quickly rise to become the main star of All Japan Women. She won her first belt on January 4, 1980, when she became the AJW Junior Champion, which she vacated in August – then defeating Nancy Kumi to become the inaugural AJW Champion. Her only WWWA World Tag Team Championship would be with Jumbo Hori, winning those belts two days after her AJW belt victory.
The AJW Championship was regarded as the “secondary title” to the WWWA World Single Title (descended from Mildred Burke's original Women's championship) that Jackie Soto and Monster Ripper feuded over in this time. It was the secondary title to the point that holders would vacate the belt and make their ambition to become WWWA Champ clear. Rimi vacated the belt two months after winning it.
Rimi now transformed into Jaguar Yokota, going from using "Jaguar" as a nickname to wrestling as "Jaguar Yokota" by the time she challenged for the WWWA Title. The name Jaguar came from Jet Jaguar, one of the titans that fought alongside Godzilla in the movie Godzilla vs. Megalon.
Then, on her first challenge for the top belt in AJW, on February 25, 1981 – she beat Jackie Sato, for the WWWA World Single Championship. She was just 19 years old at the time.
It was a passing of the torch that put a rocket booster on the back of the next generation of Joshi talent, with Jaguar being the torch bearer of a cohort that included Devil Masami and Crane Yu.
Her 801-day reign – the longest until Bull Nakano’s run with the red leather belt – didn’t see the belt defended regularly, with 8 defences, only 2 of which being against fellow Japanese natives (Masami and Yu). Most defences saw her facing North Americans, with matches against Wendi Ritcher, Judy Martin and Monster Ripper.
But it was a wrestler from south of the border that ended the reign. La Galactica – better known as Pantera Sureña – not only won the title off Yokota but took her hair as well, in a hair vs. mask match. A foreigner wouldn’t win the red belt again for over two decades, until Amazing (Awesome) Kong won it on Jan 4th, 2004.
Galactica’s reign only lasted a month with Yokota taking the belt back. The first defence in Yokota’s second reign would take place at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium, a cult arena in puroresu history, with the opponent being Devil Masami. It’s a match that has only been unearthed just over a year ago as of publishing this bio, when a random YouTube account called Mike Doe uploaded it amongst a massive dump of videos that included a load of Jaguar defences of the WWWA Single Title. As fellow lost-media nerd Ian Riccaboni pointed out to me, this find was akin to a bunch of silent movies being found on a sunken ship. The 9.7.83 match is one of the most historically significant pieces of lost wrestling footage to ever find the light of day.
But it’s the fifth defence of the belt in reign No. 2 against Lioness Asuka on August 22nd that is Jaguar’s most famous match. That's because it got the 5-star treatment from Dave Meltzer, the 6th match to ever get that now-famous distinction and the first women’s match to get 5 on it.
It’s also the earliest match in wrestling history to get 5 stars from me. Unfortunately it isn’t on YouTube, but can be found in full on Vimeo – but you need to sign up via paid subscription to watch because of the Online Safety Act installed by the current UK government (thanks Keir Starmer, I can’t watch Lioness Asuka vs Jaguar Yokota in full now.) There is an edited version of the match on the 8/22/1985 (as labeled) episode of AJW TV that is on YouTube but it doesn’t hit like the full match does.
But that most famous match of Yokota’s career was also one that seemed to end the career of Jaguar Yokota at the time. She suffered a serious shoulder injury in the match and she forfeited the belt and retired at the age of 24, two years shy of the mandatory age of 26, a stipulation that blighted perceptions of Joshi wrestling from outside the industry.
Jaguar Yokota’s injury and subsequent retirement would end a stretch of time that saw Yokota considered one the top-tier wrestlers in the world – the first woman to be thought of in that tier. But due to the lack of coverage of Joshi at this time, she wasn’t seen by the masses.
To really emphasise this, as I mentioned before, Jaguar vs Asuka got 5 stars from Dave Meltzer. But the match was only looked at and reviewed for the October 1st, 1985 edition of the Wrestling Observer, 6 weeks after the match aired on Fuji TV – which in probability, was due to accessibility of tapes in the mid-80s. At least he gave it a rating unlike any of the matches at Stardom's 2026 All Star Queendom.
Her new life would be at the dojo as head trainer of the All Japan Women dojo, taking her full circle to where she had learnt her trade.
The third generation of AJW legends came from the learning tree of Yokota, leading the 1986 (Aja Kong, Megumi Kudo, Combat Toyoda, Miori Kamiya, Kaoru Maeda, Bison Kimura), 1987 (Manami Toyota, Toshiyo Yamada, Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda) and 1988 (Kyoko & Takako Inoue) classes.
That itch to come back never seemed to be there until it was there. When All Japan Women announced just before Christmas 1993 that they were going to do a show at the Tokyo Dome in November 1994, Jaguar announced she would make a comeback. She would compete in a legends tag match, in the opposing corner of her old nemesis Lioness Asuka with Yokota and Bison Kimura facing Asuka and Yumi Ogura, with all four coming out of their retirements for this night
This tag match – a 10-minute exhibition, put on towards the end of the first half of what was a 10 hour show (and you thought All In 2025 went long) – turned out to be a hit. Within a minute of watching, you realise that Yokota and Asuka still have it. The match was such a hit with not just the fans but the wrestlers in the match, that 3 of the 4 came back to a regular schedule in the ring.
AJW’s rule of compulsory retirement at 26 had been phased out as frenemy promotions JWP Joshi Puroresu and LLPW were making waves with a roster going past 26, enticing AJW legends such as Devil Masami, (who had retired on December 26, 1987, 12 days before she was going to hit the age of 26) to come out of retirement to work for them.
Lioness Asuka, after 5 years away, returned to the ring very shortly after the Big Egg Universe show at the Dome. Bison Kimura, whose retirement lasted 29 months, was back in an All Japan Women ring and Jaguar was back in the ring with Asuka as her partner – beating Kaoru Ito and Sakie Hasegawa on Jan 4th, 1995. But as Yokota was getting going with the revitalisation of her in-ring career, All Japan Women were facing massive business problems.
Wrestlers were leaving AJW left, right and centre. They just weren’t getting paid – one of the big names, Kyoko Inoue, even made the decision to leave while champion.
Aja Kong and Kyoko Inoue would set up their own promotions, Arison and Neo respectively and Jaguar would also start up a company. She would take Bison Kimura and Asuka with her to the promotion she had founded, JDStar.
It might be harsh to say that JD had a USP of bringing nostalgic hits to fans of the joshi scene but the most notable matches in JDStar’s history involved Yokota, Asuka and Masamo.
In 1998, JDStar was bought by Kiyu Uji. The USP of the company would now focus on a new form of the “idol” base that was so successful in the 70s and 80s. The company – again bought, this time by Hidenobu Ichimaru in 2001, promoted “athresses”, a combo of athletes and actresses, an attempt to push good-looking women who had athleticism. This gimmick failed and JD never got near the top of the joshi promotion heights, floundering until their demise in July 2017.
Jaguar retired from the ring when she sold JD in ‘98 so she could try and start a family. This retirement lasted 5 years this time. Yokota would come back to AJW as it was on the edge of extinction, also making appearances for male dominated promotions such as DDT and BJW.
The third act of her career, with a one-year break due to Rimi having her first child, would be the longest of the three. While she would share the ring with her peers in her first and second act, she also competed with and against some of the modern stars of Joshi such as Saori Anou, Chihiro Hashimoto, Emi Sakura and VENY (is this the point when I say that I’ve met the latter two on this list and Emi remembered me when we met for a second time?)
Yokota’s biggest successes in her Act 3 have come in OZ Academy, owned by Mayumi Ozaki, and in Pro Wrestling Diana, owned by Kyoko Inoue – her second attempt to own a wrestling promotion.
She teams with Ozaki regularly, winning the tag belts together. In Diana she won the tag titles with Sareee in 2014, pre her time in NXT and the magical schoolgirl gimmick. Yokota would also become Diana’s inaugural Queen Elizabeth Champion (which I think is ironic as rain on your wedding day) having three reigns with the belt.
In 2026, at the age of 64, Jaguar is still having fun matches. I really enjoyed the three-way with Jaguar, Kakeru and Mayumi Ozaki. (That’s probably my love of Ozaki and my belief she can do no wrong though.)
A friend of mine will think that I’ve ranked Jaguar way too low. He might have a good argument. But factors out of her control, such as the injury in 1985, the packed roster in AJW meaning that Jaguar was limited to mid-card tags in her second act and being an indie warrior in a time when Joshi had its biggest down period – until the Threedom trio of Kairi Hojo, Io Shirai and Mayu Iwatani helped shift eyes back on Joshi – means I have her in the 80s on the list.
But no one can deny the impact Jaguar had on Joshi. She was the first woman to fit comfortably as a Tier One worker in wrestling. Watching her matches is like watching Flair vs Steamboat on 2.5 speed. Her matches got the attention of the tape-traders and set the foundations for the Crush Gals and Dump Matsumoto to get the box-office accolades they did.
Jaguar’s legacy includes her building the golden era (in my opinion) of Joshi in the 90s both as a competitor and after her first retirement as a trainer and her rebirth as a character in the renaissance of Joshi that we have seen in the last decade
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