>One wrestler has emerged from a life as a recluse to become an icon of women's pro wrestling. Mayu Iwatani (30) belongs to the popular organisation STARDOM. A film about her life, Runaway Wrestler, is due to be released next spring, and she encourages young people who are finding it hard to live, saying: 'If you don't give up, your dreams will come true'.
>Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Due to a dispute with a friend, she dropped out of high school and began to stay at home. 'I heard a lot of rumours and became afraid of the way people looked at me. While she felt at ease reading manga and staring at the ceiling, she also felt anxious because she could not see her future.
>At the end of 2009, in the second year of her life, she was shocked by professional wrestling, which her brother was watching on TV. She was impressed by the spectacular skills of the wrestlers and thought, "People are amazing". At the beginning of the year, she watched a match for the first time in the prefecture and imagined herself in the ring.
>Around that time, she found out that a new organisation, Stardom, was recruiting its first term members. I want to change my life." When she sent an email to those involved, she immediately received a welcome reply. After that, when she told them that her parents were against it, they kindly offered to talk to them.
>Such correspondence was a source of support for Iwatani, who was struggling with her relationships. When she told her mother about her decision to go into professional wrestling, she vehemently opposed it, saying that it was impossible because she had never accomplished anything, but in the summer of 2010 she left home and went to Tokyo, where the organisation was based. When she arrived, she had only 3,000 yen in her pocket.
