{"id":96909,"date":"2021-07-25T09:31:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-25T13:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=96909"},"modified":"2021-07-25T09:31:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-25T13:31:07","slug":"emi-sakura-return-america-aew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/07\/25\/emi-sakura-return-america-aew\/","title":{"rendered":"Emi Sakura Set to Return to America and All Elite Wrestling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/07\/24\/gatoh-move-chocopro-140\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>ChocoPro<\/strong> #140<\/a>, <strong>Gatoh Move Pro Wrestling<\/strong> founder <strong>Emi Sakura<\/strong> made multiple announcements. First, it was confirmed that there were only 4 more shows left in ChocoPro season 8, with the final episode set to take place on August 8. Second, however, was an even bigger story. Sakura announced her return to America, specifically to compete for <strong>All Elite Wrestling<\/strong> once more, following the season 8 finale. In Sakura&#8217;s stead, her promotion will be left in the undoubtedly capable hands of <strong>Mei Suruga<\/strong>, <strong>Chie Koishikawa<\/strong>, <strong>Lulu Pencil<\/strong>, <strong>Baliyan Akki<\/strong>, and the rest of the Gatoh Move crew.<\/p>\n<p>According to Sakura, she is set to return to America with a &#8220;one-way ticket.&#8221; In other words, she could be gone from Gatoh Move for anywhere from a week to a year, meaning that there is no set timetable for her Gatoh Move return following her departure. In a recent tweet, she addressed the AEW women&#8217;s division, stating that she is &#8220;looking at the top,&#8221; focusing especially on the current reigning AEW Women&#8217;s World Champion, <strong>Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I decided to go to America with a one-way ticket. Please look forward to what happens to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ChocoPro?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ChocoPro<\/a> from now on. We are, ChocoPro &amp; we like a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Now <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AEW?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#AEW<\/a> Women Division, you better be ready, Emi Sakura\u2019s looking at the top &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RealBrittBaker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@RealBrittBaker<\/a> looks very interesting. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PpKf4PGhJy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/PpKf4PGhJy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Emi Sakura\ud83c\udf6b (@EmiSakura_gtmv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EmiSakura_gtmv\/status\/1419143781933228037?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 25, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to note that Emi Sakura hasn&#8217;t competed in a North American ring since December 11, 2019. On this night, on <strong>AEW Dynamite<\/strong>, she faced and lost to <strong>Big Swole<\/strong>. This isn&#8217;t to say that the Freddie Mercury enthusiast has been completely out of the AEW fold since then. In addition to the company positioning itself as a sponsor for ChocoPro, Sakura competed in the <strong><em>AEW Women&#8217;s World Championship Eliminator Tournament<\/em><\/strong> earlier this year. Though her matches were filmed in Japan, Sakura performed valiantly, defeating <strong>VENY<\/strong> in the first round before losing to <strong>Yuka Sakazaki<\/strong> in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can watch Gatoh Move on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC2HtPsU4U7TNSv2mSbPkj0w\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a> and support ChocoPro in various ways, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/chocoprolive\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Patreon<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Looking to talk wrestling, pro football, or any number of sports? Head on over to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/boards\/index.php\" target=\"_self\">LWOS Boards<\/a>\u00a0to engage in conversation with fellow fans!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of ChocoPro #140, Gatoh Move Pro Wrestling founder Emi Sakura made multiple announcements. First, it was confirmed that there were only 4 more shows left in ChocoPro season 8, with the final episode set to take place on August 8. Second, however, was an even bigger story. Sakura announced her return to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":96912,"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":[4677,13,6975,6976,5302,12,6,2192],"tags":[6444,4337,5836],"class_list":["post-96909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew","category-international","category-international-wrestling","category-joshi-international","category-joshi","category-news","category-north-america","category-wrestling","tag-chocopro","tag-emi-sakura","tag-gatoh-move"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96909","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\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}