{"id":27600,"date":"2018-10-08T01:37:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T05:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=27600"},"modified":"2018-10-08T01:37:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T05:37:48","slug":"joshi-star-aoi-kizuki-officially-retires-at-age-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2018\/10\/08\/joshi-star-aoi-kizuki-officially-retires-at-age-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshi star Aoi Kizuki Officially Retires at Age 29"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joshi star <strong>Aoi Kizuki<\/strong> officially retired from the ring today, following a 13-year career in Japan&#8217;s\u00a0<em>joshi<\/em> circuit. In her Retirement Produce event,\u00a0<em><strong>Final Happy<\/strong><\/em><em>,\u00a0<\/em>Kizuki was on the losing side of a 6-woman tag match, as her and her teammates,\u00a0<strong>Mei Suruga<\/strong>\u00a0&amp;\u00a0<strong>Riho<\/strong>, lost to a team featuring\u00a0<strong>Emi Sakura,\u00a0Hikaru Shida<\/strong>\u00a0&amp;\u00a0<strong>Makoto<\/strong>. Kizuki is only 29 years old, but announced her impending retirement this past May. She&#8217;s done a series of farewell shows, before her retirement show this past Sunday.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">*sniff* Goodbye to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aoi_kizuki?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@aoi_kizuki<\/a>. Congratulations on a wonderful career and thanks for everything. <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/aoikizuki?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#aoikizuki<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%83%8F%E3%83%83%E3%83%94%E3%83%BC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#\u30d5\u30a1\u30a4\u30ca\u30eb\u30cf\u30c3\u30d4\u30fc<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yCeK9OgTka\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/yCeK9OgTka<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Xyon McKell (@xyonmckell) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/xyonmckell\/status\/1048993846170808320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 7, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Aoi Kizuki was trained by long time\u00a0<em>joshi\u00a0<\/em>legend Emi Sakura, a 23-year veteran of the likes of <strong>All Japan Women&#8217;s Pro Wrestling (AJW), Japanese Women Pro-Wrestling Project (JWP)<\/strong> and <strong>Frontier Martial-arts Wrestling (FMW)<\/strong>. In 2006, Sakura founded the <strong>Ice Ribbon<\/strong> promotion, where Kizuki debuted in the company&#8217;s inaugural year. A freelancer for most of her career, Kizuki would always remain loyal to Sakura, first in Ice Ribbon, and then in Sakura&#8217;s second promotion, <strong>Gatoh Move Pro Wrestling<\/strong> in Thailand.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"{Ice Ribbon} ICEx\u221eChampionship:  Aoi Kizuki \u00a9 Vs. Hamuko Hoshi (12\/31\/15)\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"357\" src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=x3lbpsf&#038;\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; web-share\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Over the course of her 13 year career, Kizuki would wrestle for a multitude of\u00a0<em>joshi\u00a0<\/em>promotions, including <strong>Stardom, OZ Academy, Pro Wrestling WAVE, Diana, JWP<\/strong> and more. In 2017, she made her American debut, with a four match run with <strong>SHIMMER<\/strong>. Throughout her career she was a tag team specialist, winning the International Ribbon Tag Team titles three times with Ice Ribbon, as well as the REINA X World Tag Team titles and Asia Dream Tag Team titles with Gatoh Move.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"{JWP}  Tag League The Best 2015 Finals: Aoi Kizuki &amp; Kayoko Haruyama Vs.  Command Bolshoi &amp; Kyoko Kimura (3\/22\/15)\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"441\" src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=x2l2e0p&#038;\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; web-share\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Although she won more tag gold than singles, Aoi Kizuki still managed to compete at a high singles level, winning Ice Ribbon&#8217;s top title, the ICExInfinity Championship in 2015, and the <strong>Union Pro<\/strong> Fly To Everywhere Championship (Union Pro was a sister company to <strong>DDT Pro<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"{Ice Ribbon} ICE\u00d7\u221e Championship: Aoi Kizuki (c) Vs. Yuuka (6\/27\/15)\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"359\" src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=x2znuq6&#038;\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; web-share\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joshi star Aoi Kizuki officially retired from the ring today, following a 13-year career in Japan&#8217;s\u00a0joshi circuit. In her Retirement Produce event,\u00a0Final Happy,\u00a0Kizuki was on the losing side of a 6-woman tag match, as her and her teammates,\u00a0Mei Suruga\u00a0&amp;\u00a0Riho, lost to a team featuring\u00a0Emi Sakura,\u00a0Hikaru Shida\u00a0&amp;\u00a0Makoto. Kizuki is only 29 years old, but announced her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":27605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13,317],"tags":[3553,2902],"class_list":["post-27600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-women","tag-aoi-kizuki","tag-ice-ribbon"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}