She’s four-foot-eleven and weighs just over a hundred pounds soaking wet, but Mio Momono walks into a wrestling ring like she’s a riot in a kimono—polite on the surface, dangerous underneath. She’s the kind of fighter that makes you question physics, biology, and your own manhood all in the same breath. Trained by the legendary Chigusa Nagayo—the kind of woman who eats lightning and shits pushups—Momono was bred in the fires of Marvelous That’s Women Pro Wrestling, a promotion that sounds like a fashion magazine but hits like a cinder block to the teeth.
Momono debuted in 2016, the same year Donald Trump took office and Harambe became a martyr. America was falling apart, but in Ichihara, Chiba, a five-foot bullet of defiance had just stepped into the squared circle for the first time. Her debut was an international affair—New York Wrestling Connection, of all places. Tagging with Renee Michelle, she took a loss, but like most things in wrestling and life, you don’t judge greatness by the win-loss record. You judge it by the swelling under the eye and the fire that won’t go out.
She made her bones in Marvelous, but you couldn’t cage her there. The indie circuit in Japan is less a ladder and more a meat grinder, and Momono fed herself to it willingly. She wrestled in Pure-J, she traded forearms in Ice Ribbon, and she even honored the fallen—showing up at the Hana Kimura Memorial Show in 2021 like a cherry blossom blooming in a graveyard. That night, she stood shoulder to shoulder with the heavy hitters—Asuka, Syuri, Natsupoi—and helped lay waste to Oedo Tai and Tokyo Cyber Squad in a match that felt more like a séance than sport.
Ice Ribbon brought out her inner punk. She tagged with Maruko Nagasaki as “Mabutachi 2”—a name that sounds like a failed boy band but wrestled like a bar fight at 3 a.m. They went to a time-limit draw against Arisa Nakajima and Tsukasa Fujimoto, proving that sometimes a draw can be more telling than a win. She challenged for the Triangle Ribbon Championship and got shut down, then teamed with Tsukushi and Kyuri in her final match for the promotion, eating the loss but never losing her edge.
Pro Wrestling Wave was where she really started carving her initials into the wood. The Catch the Wave tournaments became her proving ground. In 2018, she was dumped into the “Violence Block”—a name that sounds like a rejected Die Hard sequel—and faced names like Ayako Hamada, Arisa Nakajima, and Hikaru Shida. It was the kind of bracket that chews up rookies and leaves their bones for the janitor. She scored two points—two points earned in blood, sweat, and the occasional dislocated dream. In 2021, she was slotted in the “Potential Block”—that purgatory of promise—and again managed two points. Progress in pro wrestling, like life, is measured in bruises, not belts.
She tried her luck in tag action too. Dual Shock Wave in 2017 saw her teaming with Yumi Ohka as “Boss to Mammy,” a duo name that sounds like it was born in a fever dream involving bourbon and subtitles. They took out Avid Rival in the first round, but fell short to New-Tra, the team of Rin Kadokura and Takumi Iroha—two women who fight like thunder has a grudge.
And then there’s Sendai Girls, the stiffest, coldest mat in Japan. If you can survive a Sendai match, you can probably survive being hit by a small car. Momono debuted there on October 16, 2016, going up against a team featuring Hana Kimura and Kyoko Kimura. Welcome to the deep end, kid. She swam. Not gracefully, not beautifully—but with the kind of raw, frothing determination that makes referees nervous.
She faced Aja Kong and lived to tell about it. That alone should come with a badge and hazard pay. At Sendai Girls Big Show in 2017, she squared up against Kong, Meiko Satomura, and Nanae Takahashi—wrestling’s version of Mount Olympus. She and her team took the loss, sure, but she walked out upright, defiant, breathing. Some girls are diamonds. Mio Momono is more like shrapnel—hard to polish, impossible to ignore, and always cutting someone open.
Her fighting style is a contradiction in motion—cute but cruel, bubbly but ballistic. She’ll smile at you one minute and German suplex you into next Tuesday the next. She’s the embodiment of the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover,” especially if the book has a pink cover and looks like it belongs in the Hello Kitty aisle.
And then there’s that voice. Her promos don’t scream; they sing. But behind the sweetness, there’s an undercurrent of rage—a rage not at people, but at limitation. Every time she steps between the ropes, it’s as if she’s spitting in the face of anyone who ever told her she was too small, too soft, too pretty to be tough. She doesn’t just wrestle her opponents. She wrestles gravity, history, and every goddamn expectation laid on her shoulders.
Mio Momono has never held the world on her shoulders. She’s too small for that. But she’s burned her name into the trunks and egos of some of the best in the business. And if she hasn’t main-evented the Tokyo Dome yet, it’s not for lack of fire. It’s just that the world isn’t always quick to recognize brilliance when it shows up five feet tall and smiling.
In a sport full of giants, Mio Momono is a reminder that heart isn’t measured in inches or weight. It’s measured in how many times you get up after the world drops you on your head. And Momono? She always gets up.
Sometimes bloody, sometimes beaten, always beautiful. Like a poem scribbled on a napkin during a bar fight. Like a cherry blossom caught in a monsoon. Like Mio Momono—still here, still swinging.
