Lioness Asuka | Japanese Women Wrestler
Lioness Asuka
Tomoko Kitamura (born July 28, 1963) is a retired Japanese Professional Wrestler best known for her work in All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling as Lioness Asuka. She debuted in 1980 and made an immediate impact, winning the AJW Junior Title within her first year. She would hold the AJW Singles Title twice. In 1983, she and Chigusa Nagayo formed the Tag Team the Crush Gals, who would be hugely successful, both in terms of titles won and in terms of television ratings. They were 3x AJW WWWA Tag Team Champions, and, long after their initial breakup, they won the GAEA AAAW Tag Team Titles. Asuka also competed for Aja Kong's ARSION, NEO, Jd' and various other promotions. She made her PPV debut in the women's match at Survivor Series 95, where she was on Team Bertha Faye, and was the first one eliminated, courtesy of Alundra Blayze. She was inducted into the AJW Hall of Fame in 1998 and into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 1999.
Early in AJW she inspired many young girls to become pro wrestlers as The Crush Gals overcame the Atrocious Alliance trying to run roughshod over the company. But then she was forced to retire. That Asuka continued to work for AJW almost exclusively for the first two years of her return suggested she wasn't that bitter about it but when Nagagyo founded her own company capable of standing on near equal footing with AJW, GAEA, which largely made up of women inspired by The Crush Gals, Asuka lead a hostile takeover with the help of other AJW veterans, which included some of The Crush Gals' old Atrocious Alliance enemies, in order to put the new comers out.
An informed attribute, as Lioness Asuka was such a tomboy she made another tomboy in Nagayo look girly by comparison, but Asuka was one of the top stars of Jd' during its "beauty athlete" phase all the same and gave the even more girly "athress" period a chance, wrestling three matches while some of her contemporaries abandoned the promotion all together.
After returning from her forced retirement Lioness Asuka gained a reputation for taking on multiple "rookie" wrestlers at once. She didn't always win, but on an August 1997 Jd' show she beat Yuko Kosugi and Miyuki Sogabe rather easily, shaving the latter.
Tag Team
The Crush Gals are only the most successful women's tag team of all time. They were Zenjo's hottest draw and their reunion gave GAEA its greatest financial success.
Averted in Jd', where Lioness Asuka's only reign with the TWF World Women's Tag Team Titles was the result of a victory during over then champions Sumie Sakai and Megumi Yabushita by herself when Sakai was forced to forfeit due to an injury. Rather than defend the belts against tag teams solo Asuka awarded the titles to FMW wrestlers Crusher Maedomari and Drake Morimatsu.
Finishing Moves: K Driller(reverse pile driver), LSD(fisherman's buster), LSD II(fisherman's version of Hayabusa's falcon arrow), LSD III(cut throat falcon arrow), Towerhacker Bomb(Argentine back breaker to sit out power bomb)