Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Kyoko Kimura wants you to forget about all those deathmatches

Kyoko Kimura
On this Saturday's PANCRASE show, veteran pro wrestler Kyoko Kimura will make her MMA debut against women's MMA pioneer Megumi Yabushita who is also a pro wrestler. As has been noted, Kyoko is known mainly for doing crazy death matches with light tubes, chains and other crazy weapons. This goes back a few years in Big Japan Pro Wrestling. I don't think she does them anymore. So today PANCRASE held an open workout and interview with Kyoko and her coach and Sakaguchi Family Dojo president Yukio Sakaguchi. Apparently Kyoko is his first female trainee. Kyoko says she has been a pro wrestler for eight years and has done thousands of matches all over Japan. She used to work 300 matches a year. I don't think she's that busy today. She thinks it's funny that she is primarily known for the BJW death matches considering all her other work. Last year she decided to try MMA and started training. Of course she knows that Yabushita is much more experienced in martial arts. She says she may have wrestled Yabushita a couple of times but she's not sure. I don't think they have worked for the same company very often. So she sparred with Sakaguchi. He says he trained her the same as a male fighter. He says he knew about her death matches so he knew she was tough. But she has shown a lot of courage in training and he's very proud of her. Kyoko said that she knows it doesn't make sense that she can beat the vastly more experienced Yabushita in her debut. But that's what she intends to do. She says her ultimate goal is to fight Rin Nakai. This Saturday's PANCRASE show is at Shunjuku FACE.

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