She came out of the jungles of Nagoya with a war drum heartbeat and the kind of eyes that knew something about suffering before the bell ever rang. Jungle Kyona—real name Kyona Yano—didn’t just wrestle in Stardom. She survivedit. And when her back broke, and her ligaments screamed, and her own allies slit her wrists in storyline and spirit, she didn’t fade. She paused. She went away so she could one day come back swinging harder, smiling wider, bleeding better.
Her story doesn’t begin in the dojo like most joshi. No, before she threw a dropkick, she spent two years in Senegal—working, living, witnessing a world that looked nothing like the sparkly trenches of Korakuen Hall. And maybe that’s why her pain always looked a little older. A little deeper. She didn’t cry from loss—she stared through it. Like it was just another customs checkpoint on a one-way flight to hell.
The Debut: Fresh Meat in the Jungle
She burst into World Wonder Ring Stardom on November 15, 2015. First opponent? Momo Watanabe. First result? Victory. That’s how you set the tone. A month later, she won the Rookie of Stardom tournament. She wasn’t just green. She was chlorophyll and rage and promise all rolled into one. A stocky little freight train in tiger print gear. If Stardom was a jungle, she wasn’t lost in it—she was it.
Her early tag team with Watanabe, charmingly called JKGReeeeN (because Japanese wrestling loves its chaotic capitalization), didn’t bear much fruit. Thunder Rock ate them alive, and Watanabe eventually went heel, leaving Kyona as yet another discarded piece of Stardom roadkill. Betrayal was a flavor she’d come to taste more than once.
Team Jungle: The Island of Misfit Warriors
2017 saw Kyona link arms with Hiroyo Matsumoto and form Team Jungle, which sounds like a line of fruit snacks but was more like a barbed-wire sisterhood. Together, they won the Goddesses of Stardom belts and then the Artist of Stardom titles with Kaori Yoneyama. At the time, it looked like Kyona was on her way to finally becoming a centerpiece, not just a cog in somebody else’s title run.
But life in Stardom is short and cold if you’re not part of the chosen ones. Team Jungle, like all things pure and chaotic, dissolved slowly—Yoneyama drifted, Matsumoto left, and Kyona was left piecing together a patchwork of teammates like a drunk at last call looking for a ride home. The result? J.A.N.—Jungle Assault Nation—a wild, defiant, chaotic faction of leftovers and underdogs. They were beloved. They were weird. And they were doomed.
When Kyona lost the unit disbandment match in 2019, it wasn’t just the end of J.A.N., it felt like Stardom was asking Kyona to carry the shame of not being marketable enough, cute enough, clean enough. She wasn’t a goddess in a sparkly dress. She was a beast with brass knuckles under her kneepads.
Tokyo Cyber Squad: Punk Rock Therapy
Enter Hana Kimura.
Together, Kyona and Kimura turned Stardom on its neon ear by forming Tokyo Cyber Squad, the DIY-anarchist answer to the pastel-pure idol acts the company usually pumped out like candy. With Konami rounding out the group, they won tag gold. Artist belts. Respect. Briefly, it felt like the outsiders were winning.
And then—well, the world collapsed.
The pandemic. The toxicity. The tragedy. Hana Kimura was gone, and so was the heart of TCS.
Kyona, once again, was alone.
Worse than alone. Betrayed again—this time by Konami, who joined Oedo Tai by stabbing Kyona in the back during a disbandment match. Poetic. Cruel. Stardom doesn’t do retirement watches—it gives you ropes and asks if you want to hang yourself or climb.
Kyona hung on.
The Body Breaks, the Spirit Waits
October 7, 2020, Stardom announced that Jungle Kyona was done. Injuries. Plural. Ankles. Knees. Neck. You name it. She’d been carrying too much weight—physically, emotionally, metaphorically. She left Stardom quietly, like someone tiptoeing out of a funeral. She didn’t go out in a blaze. She went out in silence. A silence that screamed.
Then something beautiful happened.
After nearly two years off the grid, Jungle Kyona returned—not in Japan, but in the U.S., at the Hana Kimura Memorial Show. And who did she wrestle? Kimura’s mother, Kyoko. You couldn’t write this in fiction because it would feel too on the nose. Too damn poetic.
She wrestled like someone who wasn’t sure her body would hold. She wrestled like someone who had to know.
And then she stayed.
She wrestled on AEW Dark against Riho. She returned to Japan. She popped up in tag matches, indie shows, one-offs—Saori Anou here, Sumire Natsu there. Always smiling. Always taping up something. Her knee looked like a crime scene, but her eyes still had that fire.
Kyona once said she didn’t feel pain when she wrestled. She just felt purpose. That’s the kind of quote you expect to see chiseled on a tombstone under a steel folding chair.
The Comeback: Five Minutes of Redemption
On April 5, 2025, at a Marigold show, Kyona stepped back into the fire. Not for a title. Not for glory. For five minutesagainst Nanae Takahashi. That was her comeback. No grand reentry. No champagne. Just five minutes to remind herself—and everyone else—that the jungle doesn’t forget its queen.
You don’t get many wrestlers like Jungle Kyona. She was Stardom’s bruised backbone, its bleeding conscience. She didn’t get the red belt, but she held the red thread that kept the company human. She was punk rock in a glitter ballet. She was the sore thumb you wanted to keep hammering because it meant you were still alive.
Kyona never cried when she lost. She didn’t smile when she won. She did both at the same time. Because that’s what warriors do. They carry the sadness and the joy. The victory and the scars.
Stardom built its castle on the backs of women like her. Women who didn’t fit the mold, so they broke it. Then wore the shards as armor.
Jungle Kyona is no longer a rookie. No longer a champion. She might not even be a regular anymore.
But damn it, she’s still standing.
And that’s more than enough.