Miami
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With a swift kick to her opponent’s face, wrestler Atomic Banshee started to dominate the ultimate combat of the night on a moist night in Miami Beach. The match was a part of the world championship of Sukeban, the all-female Japanese wrestling league, and the defending champion, sporting studded black apparel, horns, and ghostly white make-up, was scrapping with Ichigo Sayaka in a bubblegum sailor costume.
Sayaka rolled out of the ring and into the media pit, with Banshee in pursuit. Photographers and reporters (myself included) cleared out of the best way as Banshee grabbed her challenger’s head and twin pink braids and slammed her into the metallic barrier.
In the lead as much as the showdown, the group had been chanting different competing wrestlers’ names all night time — Crush Yuu! Crush Yuu! and Stray Cat! Stray Cat! — gasping and cheering as the ladies carried out backbreaking physique slams and dramatic airborne finishers. Now they watched as Sakaya fought again in opposition to Banshee, each out of and in the ring, finally grabbing her by the horns to drive her face-first into the ring’s springy ground.
Two years in the past, Sukeban exploded onto the scene with fighters in latex, corsets and bomber jackets, throwing down with full make-up, wigs and acrylic nail artwork. The league takes its identify from Tokyo’s rebellious lady gangs of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, and as such, they’re organized as rival teams in the ring: the Harajuku Stars, Cherry Bomb Girls, and Dangerous Liaisons, to call a couple of. They typically combat collectively, two-on-two in the ring, or providing their allies assist with a well-placed kick from the sidelines.
A cross between sport, style and theater, Sukeban was co-founded by the British designer Olympia Le-Tan, alongside along with her brother-in-law Alex Detrick and wrestler Ian Fried. You could have heard of the league should you’ve attended a significant artwork honest or anime conference not too long ago. They are inclined to host their sold-out matches throughout main cultural occasions, similar to Art Basel Miami Beach, drawing in the artwork or style set together with wrestling followers.
In 2023, Sukeban hosted one in all its first fights in Miami throughout the identical buzzy artwork week, however in a skate park beneath the Interstate 95 freeway.
“It felt quite ‘Warriors,’” Le-Tan mentioned in a cellphone name, referencing the 1979 movie, which follows clashing New York avenue gangs. “It was raw and gritty.” In the early matches, there was no music, nor a give attention to movie star cameos — although Japanese actor and radio DJ Kunichi Nomura joined up with them early to MC the matches. The occasion earlier this month got here full with thumping music, a reside efficiency by Miami-based rapper JT, and appearances by “Drag Race” alum Violet Chachki and Gottmik, who joined in on two of the fights. (Serendipitously, the pair had been already sporting glittering and cinched wrestling-inspired appears whereas touring for his or her “Knockout” tour).
“We’ve evolved and we’ve learned,” Le-Tan mentioned of their matches.
In many nations, she famous, girls’s leagues are secondary to males’s, however that’s not the case in Japan, the place the high-flying, theatrical joshi puroresu (skilled girls’s wrestling) noticed a growth in the Nineties, reworking from a distinct segment sport into a large popular culture phenomenon that has continued to affect worldwide wrestling right this moment. Le-Tan and her companions had been in bringing a league to Western audiences — Sukeban is headquartered out of New York, whereas the wrestlers are Tokyo-based.
Pro wrestling has at all times combined flamboyance and would possibly — and style, definitely, in a campy, spandex form of manner. But Sukeban deliberately performs that facet up. Though its wrestlers have lengthy histories in different professional leagues (Atomic Banshee, whose actual identify is Ram Kaicho, has been wrestling for 20 years, for example), every of their Sukeban personas is unique to the league, conceptualized by Le-Tan primarily based on their personalities and preventing types. Their commissioner is the legendary, now retired Japanese wrestler Bull Nakano, who helped scout their full roster.
Backstage in Miami, the wrestlers had been quiet as they went by means of hours of hair and make-up and ate dinner earlier than last touchups, snapping into character when their appears had been full and the cameras had been on. Stray Cat, in full black latex, mimed licking her paws. Delirious Dolly held up her doll doppelganger, eyes vast. Maya Mamushi — one in all Sayaka’s Harajuku Stars teammates — put her arms on her hips to movie a clip for NCS, and, with blue braids whipping round, unleashed a roundhouse kick inches from our photojournalist’s face.
In trailers behind the Miami Beach Bandshell, the place the combat passed off, esteemed make-up artist Romero Jennings utilized crimson hearts across the eyes of Queen of Hearts, whereas celebrity-favorite nail artist Mei Kawajiri buffed the nails of Crush Yuu earlier than making use of an acrylic set of sculpted miniature candy treats like waffles and donuts to her tiny canvases.
“I definitely make them shorter and shorter every time,” Kawajiri mentioned of the nail units, laughing.
“To me, this is almost like fashion week,” Jennings defined. As MAC Cosmetics’ international director of make-up he’s a mainstay throughout Paris and New York Fashion Week, in addition to the Met Gala. “It’s about doing these detailed looks in a very short amount of time, and the wrestlers are gonna sweat and perform. It’s fashion week for wrestling.”
Le-Tan sees the forged as an evolving set of characters, collaborating with the wrestlers on how their appears and personalities develop over time. During hair and make-up, Atomic Banshee mentioned by way of translator: “Even I’m excited to see how I turn out tonight.”
Banshee added that her message to Sayaka, seated a couple of chairs down, was to “Watch your neck and be prepared.” But her reign as champion would quickly finish. Two hours later, Sayaka unleashed her last ending transfer and was victorious. She climbed the nook pole to cheers, then accepted the Marc Newson-designed championship belt, as her fellow Harajuku Stars in flouncy color-coded attire barreled out to affix her.
Video by Jacqui Palumbo, Carlos Martinelli, Max Burnell, Angelica Pursley