In just below per week, AEW is working what they’re billing as the biggest wrestling present of all time: AEW All In London at Wembley Stadium.
There’s one individual I need to highlight who deserves and, in my opinion, has earned a spot on that present.
For a lot of AEW followers, Emi Sakura is the wrestler who did the Freddie Mercury gimmick within the early days of the promotion. Since then, Sakura has not often appeared on TV, so it’s not stunning that for many who don’t know her profession, the concept she ought to be at Wembley Stadium would appear unusual.
For individuals who know, nonetheless, Emi Sakura is likely one of the most influential wrestlers of her era, each on and off display screen, and showing at Wembley makes all of the sense on the earth.
Coming into the wrestling enterprise on the age of 17, Sakura rubbed shoulders with wrestlers like Manami Toyota, Terry Funk, and Luna Vachon in FMW and AJW. By the mid-2000s, she took the daring step of launching her personal promotion, Ice Ribbon, a promotion that has gone on to host properly over a thousand exhibits and continues to this present day.
Sakura would then begin Gatoh Transfer, a promotion that, regardless of its boutique nature, punches properly above its weight in gaining worldwide crucial acclaim, with matches repeatedly putting in Voices of Wrestling’s Match of the Yr. It’s additionally the house turf of former AEW ladies’s champion Riho and a brand new era of wrestlers comparable to Mei Suruga, Yuna Mizumori, and Chie Koishikawa.
Sakura is a prolific coach, and it’s not simply Gatoh Transfer alumni that she has performed a key function in growing. Two AEW ladies’s champions have been educated by Sakura, together with the present holder, Hikaru Shida. Present TJPW champ Mizuki was a Sakura graduate. Undergo the checklist of Sakura trainees, and also you’ll discover a checklist of a few of the most well-renowned ladies’s wrestlers, together with the likes of Tsukasa Fujimoto, Ray, and Tsukushi.
Sakura additionally has a deep connection to the UK.
In 2011, Ice Ribbon collaborated with EVE to create a collection of exhibits highlighting the UK and Japan ladies’s scenes. Sakura has toured the UK quite a few occasions since, serving to to strengthen the scene together with her distinctive experience and flamboyant type. Sakura can be an envoy for the trade in Asia, serving to to arrange promotions in Thailand, and making appearances in Singapore, Malaysia, and China.
In contrast to WWE, one in every of AEW’s nice strengths is acknowledging {that a} world exists outdoors its borders.
AEW isn’t afraid to say different promotions or canon histories of wrestling. It does this as a result of AEW realizes that wrestlers are higher with a pedigree. The corporate has achieved properly to showcase wrestlers from NJPW with a common Forbidden Door PPV displaying how the sum is larger than the components. Nonetheless, concerning the legacy and the profession of legends like Emi Sakura, AEW has not achieved an important job. But, Sakura has been the proper ambassador for the corporate, not least in Gatoh Transfer, the place she repeatedly promotes AEW and, throughout the pandemic, inspired watch-alongs.
In 2019, I went to Wembley Stadium for the primary time. I can not imagine {that a} Professional Wrestling present is occurring right here & {that a} Firm I’ve been with since day 1 is doing it. I need to be one in every of dreamers to make it contained in the stadium.#EmiForWembley #Chocopro #AEW pic.twitter.com/lGNbpWr7qi
— Emi Sakura🍫 (@EmiSakura_gtmv) August 13, 2023
Within the ring, whereas alternatives have been sparse, she stepped up every time she’s been given the chance, whether or not it’s being a part of the worldwide ladies’s event or dealing with Jamie Hayter in a match earlier this yr on Rampage that, in response to Cagematch, is one in every of AEW’s highest rated ladies’s matches of all time.
With a profession that has left footprints inside rings worldwide, Wembley can be a becoming and significant stage for Emi Sakura to carry out on and an opportunity for AEW to point out it values the legacy of girls’s wrestling.
Thanks to all within the Voices of Wrestling neighborhood Discord who contributed their information to the analysis of this text.
