There are wrestlers who walk into the squared circle like it’s church. Reverent. Humble. Ready to bleed for honor and legacy. And then there’s Miyako Matsumoto — a self-proclaimed “ace of all wrestling” who enters the ring dressed like a magical girl side character and wrestles like she’s trying to lose a bet with God.
To call Miyako Matsumoto unconventional is like calling a shotgun wedding “spontaneous.” She’s a living contradiction — a Nihon University art graduate, idol singer, cosplay queen, hardcore brawler, and chaos engine disguised as a joshi wrestler. She is where Andy Kaufman meets Jun Kasai, where glitter and broken light tubes coexist in bizarre harmony. And by God, somehow, she’s made it all work.
Born on April 11, 1985, Miyako didn’t claw her way through dojo tryouts or gym wars. She tripped into wrestling through the side door, cast in the wrestling-themed drama Muscle Venus, which was basically GLOW if it was written by avant-garde theater kids on Red Bull. She and her fellow cast members were supposed to act like wrestlers. Instead, they became them. While most of the group bailed once the fake slaps got too real, Miyako stuck around. She didn’t just survive. She committed. Like a method actress who decided the only way to play Hamlet was to murder a king.
She debuted in 2008 for Ice Ribbon, a promotion already weird enough to make Dali blink twice. In her first match, she went to a time-limit draw. Nothing about it suggested legend. But legends don’t always explode into the scene. Sometimes they show up in a maid outfit, botch a hip toss, and win your heart by losing gloriously.
Her style? Comedic, sure. But that’s like calling barbed wire “prickly.” She wore cosplay into matches. She danced mid-fight. She broke kayfabe like a hammer through stained glass. She intentionally botched spots for laughs — which is a hell of a risk in a business where botching gets you blackballed. But Miyako had something the others didn’t: guts, absurdity, and a savant-level understanding of performance art masquerading as combat.
She once declared herself the “ace” of all wrestling despite a losing record that would’ve embarrassed the Washington Generals. She challenged for titles, demanded respect, and when she didn’t get it — she made you laugh until you gave it to her anyway.
But then the real twist hit — she started winning.
In 2010, Miyako scored a fluke victory over Tsukasa Fujimoto to win the ICE×60 Championship. It was the wrestling equivalent of your little cousin beating Mike Tyson at Punch-Out. The next day, she won the Triangle Ribbon Championship. Two titles in two days. Somewhere, Vince McMahon probably fainted into a pile of protein powder.
Her reign didn’t last — of course it didn’t. She lost both belts in rapid succession and was left crying in the ring, a comic tragedy until Jun Kasai, the Crazy Monkey of deathmatch fame, appeared like a sledgehammer-wielding guardian angel. Together they formed “385Myankie’s,” a tag team that looked like a romantic comedy directed by Takashi Miike. And damned if it didn’t work. They won the International Ribbon Tag Titles in a hardcore three-way match. It was beautiful and profane — a match held together by duct tape, blood, and weird chemistry.
Matsumoto’s life became a tornado of titles, feuds, and feigned incompetence. One minute she was fighting Dump Matsumoto for the title of “Number One Matsumoto,” the next she was challenging Minoru Suzuki and actually getting booked to wrestle him twice — losing both times, but stealing the show with her masochistic charm.
When she wasn’t headlining Ice Ribbon shows, she was creating her own brand of pro wrestling — Gake no Fuchi Puroresu, or “Edge of the Cliff Pro Wrestling.” Think of it as Joshi’s answer to Andy Warhol’s Factory. She brought in everyone from Emi Sakura to Great Sasuke to the neighborhood raccoons if they could bump properly. It was underground, absurd, unpredictable — the kind of promotion where sanity goes to die and is replaced with performance art, chair shots, and existential dread.
Yet, beneath the madness, there was discipline. Real grit. She could wrestle. When she wanted to. She just chose to make you think otherwise — until she was twisting someone into an octopus hold or spiking them with a move she probably named after a manga reference.
Her accolades stack like a pile of vinyl records in a Tokyo dive bar — Triangle Ribbon Champion three times, ICE×60 Champion twice, Tag Team Champion twice, and most improbably, the second-ever Ice Ribbon Triple Crown holder. She didn’t just play the fool. She outplayed the system.
And through it all, she kept crawling back. Oz Academy, Reina Joshi Puroresu, Stardom, WNC — each fed got a piece of the madness. She lost more than she won, but no one forgot her. In an industry where hundreds of athletes blend into carbon copies of each other, Miyako stood out because she refused to blend in.
On July 3, 2016, after years of toying with quitting, joining, feuding, laughing, crying, and being DDT’s favorite indie chaos goblin, she returned home to Ice Ribbon — officially, this time. It felt right. Like a jester returning to her kingdom. The prodigal daughter with a chair in one hand and a mic in the other.
Miyako Matsumoto is the kind of wrestler that defies stat sheets and logic. You don’t analyze her matches — you experience them. She’s a living poem scribbled on the back of a bar napkin at 3 a.m., wearing a Sailor Moon outfit and bleeding from the forehead.
And the punchline? She’s not done yet.
Because as long as wrestling has a ring, a camera, and a sense of humor, there will always be a place for Miyako Matsumoto — the cosplay queen of chaos, the ace in her own mind, and the lunatic fringe we never deserved but damn sure needed.
Long may she dance, botch, and bewilder.
