All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW)

[9.0] "The pinnacle of women's professional wrestling, it had never been better before this, it's never been better since, and it'll never be better for women's wrestling. In the 80s and 90s this company was simply brilliant, it had its hits and misses but the roster of talent was amazing - bull nakano, aja kong, manami toyota, the crush girls and the jumping bomb angels .... all legends. some of the greatest matches in wrestling history happened in this company back in the day before it fell away."

"Gonna leave only comments on promotions since its too hard to rate promotions, personally, due to a variety of reasons such as how every company has its highs and lows (for the most part) and it's hard to balance out. Before I start, I want to make it clear that I don't consider myself a supporter of promotions as I think that support should be directed towards the talent no matter what, tribalism is lame. As I've said with others, I'm very limited when it comes to puroresu, but I absolutely love the shit out of what I have found and ended up enjoying. And my goodness, is 1990s Joshi wrestling out of this world, some of the very best pro wrestling matches I have ever seen and some of the most top tier talent that has ever been hired in professional wrestling. I can, at least, say that I consider the first Dream Slam one of the best PPVs of all time and also got a good amount of enjoyment out of Big Egg Wrestling Universe, despite it's length (would have given that show a 10 if it wasn't for the length and undercard, the tournament is one of the best). I don't have any negatives due to my limited exposure to AJW, but from what I've seen, this is a promotion that I know I would really get a kick out of."

[4.0] "Idk, I think this is pretty overrated. While it produced influential talent, it failed to grasp to a broader audience, and was heavily reliant on technical too much. Entertainment was the sideline. The broader approach should be to entertain to the masses. This was one of the first women promotion out there so they should've done more in my opinion."

[10.0] "A 10.0 is the only acceptable rating for Zenjo. I mean there was never a company like them, AJW's peak was unbelievable; firstly because of them being all women's promotion which on the spot makes them "weaker" in a lot of people eyes and secondly their peak was ENORMOUS, they run the Dome, they had at least one banger on every card in the 90's and even when they started to fall they still kept outstanding level of wrestling till the very end. I'm not even gonna mention the amount of "best of all time" talents they produced simply because their number is too big. It really sucks what happened to them, just imagine if Zenjo was still alive today."

[10.0] "Perhaps the best women's wrestling promotion of all time, All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling was basically the catalyst of women's promotions to come."

[10.0] "The best wrestling promotion of all time! There was never a company and probably never will that will ever reach the peak of AJW - at one point in time they had the very best wrestlers, the very best viewership, packed houses (even once the Tokyo Dome) and the monopoly on women's wrestling; every show was filled with exciting matches and unforgettable moments. AJW Dojo produced some of the greatest wrestlers of all time (male or female) such as: Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, Bull Nakano, Akira Hokuto, Jaguar Yokota, Crush Gals, Beauty Pair, Inoue sisters, Devil Masami, Dump Matsumoto, Momoe Nakanishi, Nanae Takahashi, Kaoru Ito, Amazing Kong and MANY MANY more, as you can see those are some of the best names in wrestling history. AJW also had in my opinion the most prestigious world championship ever - the famous Big Red Belt, the WWWA World Championship which was created by Mildred Burke, held by the very best of the company and defended on special occasions in Nippon Budokan or Yokohama Arena for example. AJW had also amazing camera work, it's not often mentioned but their camera shots were just PERFECT. The quality of the matches during the whole existence of AJW is just absolutely enormous - from bangers of Beauty Pair to Cursh Gals and Dump to Manami/Kong and the whole golden generation to their dying years with Nakanishi/Maekawa/Ito/Takahashi. If it wasn't for their stupid mandatory retirement age of 26 i'm sure they would never lose the monopoly they once had but due to many top starts retiring so young they decided to create rival promotions to continue wrestling + the owners, Matsunaga brothers went bankrupt from what i remember in 1997 which costed them a bunch of stars leaving. Even in their dying years after losing the TV deal they still had amazing product to offer but unfortunately the joshi wrestling was declining so rapidly it finally put an end to once the best company in the world. After all i can confidently say AJW was/is the best wrestling product to ever exist."

[10.0] "[9.7] It is genuinely insane how ahead of its time AJW/Zenjo was in so many aspects. It had some bad aspects, the big one as far as the actual product goes being the mandatory retirement age of 25 they had for the majority of their run, which was a direct cause of their monopoly over joshi on a big stage being broken in the 90s and led to the company being really volatile in terms of both quality and actual business, but on the other, is part of the reason the company produced the sheer number of insanely good wrestlers they did. They were also insanely popular, there was a period in the 70s and 80s where you had pairings in the main event like the Beauty Pair and then afterwards the Crush Gals, where they were a bigger presence than both All Japan and NJPW. As I said, also insanely ahead of their time. I particularly think about the 90s for this, when you had people like Toyota and Kong and Hokuto and Inoue all at the same time who could be taken from their primes, slotted into any modern day promotion and instantly be the main event. Far and away the strongest roster of women ever assembled. If there's any particular cool move you like, there's a half-decent chance it originated from Zenjo. Even in the 80s, you have an insanely talented group, between Chigusa, Asuka, Masami, Matsumoto, Yokota. STARDOM has emerged as their successor after Zenjo closed down in 2005, and they're doing fantastic, but Zenjo was just undeniably a peak for women's wrestling--if not wrestling as a whole--that hasn't been reached since and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a peak that proves impossible to ever reach again."

[9.0] "AJW is arguably the greatest women's wrestling promotion of all time. The match quality during their peak years of the 80s and 90s hit like a freight train and they produced all-time greats. No promotion is perfect and some matches feel very unbalanced and Hyper, and for some reason they did a 10 hour show which is just crazy to think about, but they were very much ahead of its time and it shows because the best wrestling today is just barely at the same quality AJW was back in the day."

"Do not get the top score on this website, just a regular Japan promotion. Maybe because of respect from previous years, but right now it's just standart Japan wrestling."

[10.0] "The phrase "ahead of its time" gets thrown around far too liberally these days, but AJW (aka Zenjo) truly was ahead of its time. Far from a gimmicky indie promotion that sizzled out after a few years, AJW was featured on Fuji TV for close to 33 years, and at its peak popularity, it outdrew WWF's Saturday Night Main Event ratings, often average 12.0s. I was aware of some of AJW's trailblazing women and watched a handful of their matches, but watching Queen of Villains provided me a framework of the promotion's major characters and feuds in the 1980s. Of course, the Netflix show dramatizes many aspects, but it still gives viewers new to AJW a place to start when browsing old matches on YouTube. I didn't get into wrestling until the 1990s, so I often struggle when watching old WWF shows as the wrestling is just so primitive. This is not the case with AJW. A great match to watch is Lioness Asuka vs Jaguar Yokota from August 22nd, 1985. This match is filled with spots that western wrestlers simply didn't do in the 1980s: sit out tombstone piledrivers, suicide dives, straight jacket suplexes and the fastest giant swing you'll ever see. One other amazing aspect of AJW was their crowds as they are a spectacle just by themselves. It's like an alternate dimension where the Attitude Era took place but in Japan with teenage girls. The crowds are wild and like nothing you've ever witnessed in any promotion, even including modern joshi promotions. The most famous example of this is Dump Matsumoto vs. Chigusa Nagoya's hair vs. hair match that had everyone screaming and in tears. There is no crowd like it. There are so many great wrestlers that came through AJW that made so many great contributions to professional wrestling: Nanae Takahashi, Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, Lioness Asuka, Chigusa Nagayo, Devil Masami, Jaguar Yokota, Jackie Seto, Kyoko Inoue, Dump Matsumoto, Bull Nakano and a whole lot more that I'll be spending time watching."

[10.0] "The greatest Women's wrestling promotion ever. Had the greatest lady wrestlers of all-time: Manami Toyota, Akira Hokuto, Bull Nakano, Kyoko Inoue, Aja Kong, Chigusa Nagayo, Lioness Asuka, and many more. Even the great joshi wrestlers of today took inspiration from these women. It's sad that the organization is gone, but the foundation of joshi women's wrestling lives on today in great wrestlers like Asuka (Kana), Io Sky (Shirai), Kairi Sane, Mayu Iwatani, and Syuri."

[10.0] "All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling was incredible. The best women's wrestling there ever was. The promotion that gave us a huge amount of the greatest matches in wrestling history. 10 out of 10."

[10.0] "You have no idea how mad I am at the fact I wasnt born during this absolute golden era of wrestling. Thank god for YouTube and VHS tapes but man oh man would I kill to have witnessed just one of the absolute classics put on by this powerhouse of a promotion."

[10.0] "Oh man. You wanna talk about great women's wrestling? None better than All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling. This was a top-notch promotion, and there was none better than that at the time."

[7.0] "Not watched all shows of this Promotion. Definently a great choice for pro wrestling fans. But I dont focus on women's wrestling much. So, I can't appreciate it more. Not a goat company for me. (***1/2)"

[10.0] "If one promotion is going to get a 10.0, it has to be AJW. During the '80s and '90s, they basically put women's wrestling on the map as top-level wrestling. No promotion in history has produced more top workers than AJW did. Their best wrestlers are some of the best wrestlers ever, and their best matches are some of the best matches ever. Particularly during the years 1992-1997, they were an amazing promotion that delivered top-notch shows."

[10.0] "Produced some of the greatest wrestlers, greatest matches and greatest shows ever. If there's a cool move you like today chances are it was first done by an AJW wrestler. Most of the stuff is on Youtube so there is no reason to not check it out. The wrestling business owes a lot to this promotion."

[10.0] "You look back at the heyday of AJW and it's easy to feel devastated that it's not there anymore. One of the most magical wrestling promotions in history, stacked with legendary talent, iconic matches and platinum-plated supershows. The wheels came off in 1997, mainly attributed to terrible investment decisions by the Mastunagas. What followed was an exodus of talent, shrinking box office gates and subsequently a dip in quality. Nonetheless its final 8 years continued to bring sparks of greatness, particularly with the rise of Momoe Nakanishi. Another issue was the failure to build the next generation of stars, particularly those who started as rookies in the early to mid 90s. Despite joshi gaining a renewed following due to Stardom and TJPW today, the scene feels like it's missing its heartbeat, that being Zenjo!"

[10.0] "probably the reason people even got into joshi wrestling in the first place, people like Aja, Bull, Manami, Megumi, Akira, Dump, and Reggie carried a great roster to the top of women's wrestling in Japan"

[10.0] "Arguably the greatest promotion in the history of professional wrestling as far as pure work goes. The amount of home-grown talent raised by the AJW dojo from 1975-1997 is nearly unbelievable,"

[10.0] "I have watched a lot of matches of this company lately and that's incredible how excatly 0 important matches are not amazing matches. Their roster in the mid-90s was stacked like no other roster was, all of the matches with FMW, JWP or LLPW were amazing, the crowds were invested... I just regret that some girls like Megumi Kudo or Plum Mariko didn't wrestle more here, it would have given even more classic matches. Imo the best wrestling company of all time."

[10.0] "Pretty consistently ahead of their time and boasting a history filled with historic classics, All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling is likely the best joshi league and a definite inclusion in my top 3 promotions of all time."

[10.0] "If this promotion doesn't get a 10, no one does. I'd give it 50 if I could. They were way ahead of their time as of match quality and storytelling. It's scary to think these women at their peak, at least the main eventers like Nagayo, Asuka, Masami first and Toyota, Hokuto, Ozaki and Aja then to name a few, were only 20-25 years old. Sadly these women couldn't handle forever that fast paced hard hitting style and in less than 10 years their body were damaged forever. After the success in the 80es they found a new generation that ruled even more in the 90s, but then they weren't able to find another one and in few years they were out of business."

[10.0] "When it comes to women's wrestling, All Japan Women were the pinnacle. They showed, at least to those with an open mind, that women could not only be just as good as the men, but, in some cases, far better."

[10.0] "Esta compañía durante los años 90 lucho cabeza a cabeza con All Japan pro wrestling en cuanto a calidad luchistica, Manami toyota, toshiyo yamada, Aja kong, akira hokuto, lioness asuka, yumiko hotta, y muchas mas luchadoras dieron los mas grandes combates de los años 90 en una lista general, gran compañía de lucha libre."

[10.0] "Many, many 5 star matches, huge stars, and massive tv ratings show why AJW is a must watch place for any wrestling fan in general."

[10.0] "Not only the best women's wrestling promotion, but also 1 of the best wrestling promotions of all time. In the 1980s, the likes of Jaguar Yokota, Lioness Asuka, Chigusa Nagayo and Devil Masami dominated the show, and put on matches that were on par and sometimes better than a lot of the best men's wrestling. However, between 1992 and 1995, the quality of wrestling was insanely good, with many of Jaguar Yokota's students, as well as other Japanese women wrestlers putting on very fast-paced matches full of excitement, strong storytelling, and lot of beautiful yet devastating wrestling moves. A number of the best powerbombs, suplexes and piledrivers were invented by the women in this promotion, and Dreamslam 1 remains the only time to date in which Dave Meltzer awarded 2 matches 5-stars on a single show. Their best matches have to be seen by anybody, and particularly those who think WWE's diva division is worth their time."

[10.0] "They were decent even when they were going down the drainer but this promotion just has to many great moments and matches to give anything but a 10."