At last night’s Night One event for Fight Club: PRO‘s Dream Tag Team Invitational, Japanese joshi legend Meiko Satomura defeated CCK‘s Chris Brookes to become the new FCP Champion. With the win, Satomura not only ended Brookes’ 280 day reign as FCP Champion, but became the first woman to hold the top singles title in a major UK indie promotion. Fight Club: PRO was founded in 2009 by Trent Seven and Martin Zaki in Wolverhampton, England.
Thank you supporting me!! My pleasure!! #fightclubpro #仙女#Champion #Championship @trentseven pic.twitter.com/IMEjvYEAqM
— 里村明衣子 meiko satomura (@satomurameiko) March 31, 2018
Meiko Satomura is one of the top wrestlers in the world, having started her legendary career in 1995 with former Crush Gal Chigusa Nagayo‘s GAEA Japan promotion in 1995, remaining loyal to the promotion until it’s demise in 2005. As a teenager, she made her North American debut at 17 with WCW in 1996, as part of the revamped WCW Women’s Division. She had several matches on Nitro and took part in the tournament to crown the new WCW Women’s Champion (losing in the first round to eventual winner Akira Hokuto). The following year, she competed in the tournament for the WCW Women’s Cruiserweight title (a title that was all but abandoned once it was won in April, but still defended in GAEA until the summer when it was retired).
Following GAEA’s demise, Satomura and Jinsei Shinzaki (aka WWF’s Hakushi) founded Sendai Girls’ Pro Wrestling, one of Japan’s top joshi puro promotions, which still runs to this day. Satomura has also worked with other joshi promotions such as Stardom, Japanese Women Pro-Wrestling Project (JWP), Oz Academy, WAVE, as well as Pro Wrestling EVE in the UK.
In 2012, she brought a team of her Sendai Girls to compete in CHIKARA‘s King of Trios tournament (teaming with DASH Chisako and Sendai Sachiko). The Sendai trio made it to the semi-finals before losing to Team ROH (The Young Bucks and Michael Bennett). They returned again in 2016, this time with Cassandra Miyagi replacing Sachiko, and the trio made it to the finals, defeating fellow joshi team, JWP (lead by another joshi veteran in Command Bolshoi). They returned to last year’s King of Trios in England, making it to the finals once again, before losing to the British Strong Style trio of Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate and FCP’s Trent Seven.
A 2x AAAW Champion in GAEA, plus World Championships in Stardom and Sendai Girls, Satomura can now add the FCP Championship to her gold collection as her 20+ career only gets better.
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