She was twelve. Just twelve. While most kids that age were picking at cafeteria mystery meat and dreaming of iPads, Tsukushi Haruka was being suplexed into the next dimension by grown women in a Saitama dojo. No lollipop guild here. This wasn’t Oz. This was Ice Ribbon—a place where fairy tales came with black eyes and bruised egos. Her training partner? A nine-year-old named Kurumi. Together, they kicked off their careers like a fever dream—two preteens in kneepads, getting paid in stiff bumps and scattered applause.
This is the story of Tsukushi Haruka. It’s also a cautionary tale. It’s a career that reads like Alice in Wonderland rewritten by Charles Bukowski—if Alice swapped tea parties for brainbusters and decided to test the edge of a kitchen knife in a locker room scuffle.
The Ice Ribbon Factory Line
Tsukushi didn’t ease into wrestling. No glow-up, no high school drama arc. She got tossed straight into the fire, debuting in 2010 with three-minute trial matches that felt more like bare-knuckle chess. The crowd got to vote on which child would graduate into full-fledged violence. Like some twisted Pokémon contest, fans chose Tsukushi, who immediately got wrecked by Chii Tomiya in her official debut match. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had arrived. A kid in pigtails with murder in her heart.
In May of that same year, she pinned Emi Sakura in five seconds. Five. Seconds. You don’t do that unless you’re talented, lucky, or possessed by the spirit of a jilted Yokozuna. She used the win to challenge for the ICE×60 Championship. She lost, but the message was clear: this kid was going to bulldoze her way through the joshi wrestling world like a pint-sized Terminator with a dropkick fetish.
She’d go on to break her own record—four seconds, this time. A new fastest win. Blink and she’s already pinning your shoulders to the mat while you’re still fumbling with your wrist tape.
Like Manami Toyota, But With a Knife
Aja Kong compared her to Manami Toyota. That should’ve been the moment Tsukushi’s career went straight to the moon. Instead, she made a hard left turn into the land of backstage drama, blood feuds, and at least one police report.
But first—let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
By 2011, she had won the inaugural IW19 Championship by pinning Tsukasa Fujimoto, Ice Ribbon’s ace. Then she defended that belt in her actual high school, cutting class to dropknee her mentor in front of a bunch of wide-eyed ninth graders. Imagine showing up to gym class and seeing a girl from third period German class get tossed across the floor by a grown woman named Makoto. That’s the Tsukushi experience.
Tsukushi became the embodiment of Ice Ribbon’s house style: fast, innovative, sometimes reckless, always intense. She wasn’t just prolific—she was good. Damn good. By the time she turned 18, she’d already racked up five International Ribbon Tag Team title reigns, two IW19 reigns, and her first ICE×60 championship. She was a decorated child soldier of the squared circle.
This Is Ice Ribbon: And So Is Tsukushi
Teaming with Kurumi as “This Is Ice Ribbon,” she looked like she was finally settling into a groove. Tag team gold flowed in. So did praise. Even a few whispers of her being the next face of joshi puroresu.
But behind that schoolgirl smirk was someone wound tight—a powder keg in pigtails.
In 2017, the fuse burned out.
The Knife Incident
You don’t spend your teenage years throwing forearms without picking up a few demons. And Tsukushi had a few. July 23, 2017. The date is scorched into joshi history. That’s the day Dave Meltzer reported she’d been arrested for allegedly trying to stab Kagetsu. Not in the ring. Not in some storyline. In real life.
Details were murky—Saitama police. Ice Ribbon press conference. “A 19-year-old wrestler” arrested. Victim unnamed. But everyone knew. It didn’t take Scooby-Doo to figure it out. The underage star had gone too far. A real-life heel turn, with blood and betrayal.
Suspended. Scrubbed from cards. Even removed from Manami Toyota’s retirement show. That’s like getting booted from your own graduation.
Tsukushi went dark. Gone. Out of sight, behind the scenes at Ice Ribbon. Working backstage while the locker room whispered about what the hell had happened.
Redemption in the Squared Circle
But she came back. Because, of course, she did. Pro wrestling isn’t a business that forgives easily, but it does forget—especially if you can still put on a 15-minute banger and sell a suplex like your neck just snapped.
RibbonMania 2017, she returned to lose to Fujimoto again. Then came the slow climb back. More tag titles. More wars with veterans like Misaki Ohata. She even trained the next wave—Yuki Mashiro and Nao Ishikawa—like some reformed warlord teaching Sunday school.
Tsukushi turned herself into the elder stateswoman of a company she helped define—despite starting when she was barely old enough to order off the adult menu. She wore her scars like championship belts. Her legacy was equal parts trophies and trauma.
One Last Harukaze
Tsukushi retired in 2022. No big pyro. No confetti. Just a silent exhale and a locker room that knew they were watching the most dangerous spring breeze finally settle.
She left behind a record 10-time International Ribbon Tag Team Championship reign, three IW19 titles, and the ICE×60 championship she chased her whole damn youth. But more than that, she left a mythology. Tsukushi wasn’t a wrestler. She was an earthquake in a sailor uniform. A cautionary tale and a folk hero rolled into one.
In a world that sells redemption arcs like popcorn, Tsukushi Haruka actually lived one. She debuted as a child, flew too close to the sun, got burned, and clawed her way back from the abyss.
And somewhere out there, you just know there’s a ring mat still recovering from being pinned by her.