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>[Stardom] Maika will be absent for the time being after the 6th of her triumphant return... Nakano Tam's retirement, Iwatani Mayu and Shirakawa Mina's departure from the company "are not a crisis at all"
>Maika from the women's professional wrestling group Stardom will show off her courage at a homecoming tournament (on the 6th, Fukuoka Island City Forum).
>On April 27th at the Yokohama Arena tournament, she lost to Sendai Girls' World Champion, Chihiro Hashimoto, and failed to take the title. At a press conference the following day, Maika announced that she would be taking a long break from tournaments, ending with the Fukuoka tournament on the 6th of this month, due to reconstruction surgery on the medial collateral ligament in her right elbow.
>Three or four years ago, she injured her right elbow, and fatigue from matches accumulated, leading to a doctor's decision to stop her wrestling. "I thought it was normal for me to get injured as a wrestler, and the adrenaline makes the pain go away during matches. So I just kept on letting it get to me, and before I knew it, it had gotten really bad. Now it's affecting my daily life to the point where it's painful to even wash my hair and hold a drink. It's not good to hold back too much, and I realized I was failing as a professional," she said with regret.
>At the end of 2023, she was crowned the group's highest World Champion for the first time at the Ryogoku tournament, and although she lost the title in July 2024, she won the single league tournament "5STAR GP" the following month with a perfect record. Last year, a split in the group erupted with five main wrestlers leaving, but Maika was reluctant to miss the event due to her sense of mission to support the group as the world champion.
