>>4772747Well, I was watching NXT....
One thing to keep in mind is that the top stars of Chigusa's era and the 90's didn't really go away for the most part until the 2010's. And some of them are still hanging on by some miracle in Oz Academy. It's really hard to remove them from that question. Chigusa and Lioness were by far the biggest stars up until GAEA closed in April 2005. Oddly, All Japan Women's also closed the same month.
Post AJW/GAEA, Meiko Satomura, Mariko Yoshida and Nanae Takahashi are some of the bigger stars. Everything gets kind of messy during that whole period as a bunch or promotions fight for position. M's Style, A to Z and Ibuki all get created around that time period and are end up dying within a few years. Yoshida stops being a full-time wrestler by 2008 and Meiko starts up Sendai Girls, which isn't in Tokyo, doesn't make tape much and puts her on a smaller schedule.
Around the latter half of the 2000's, I'd say Fuuka, Ayumi Kurihara, Azumi Hyuga and Nanae are the biggest stars. Fuuka wrestled for Jd' which eventually became the first promotion to try idols as wrestlers. Everyone craps on it and hates it, but they end up providing the blue print for what joshi becomes in the 2010's and on. Ayumi Kurihara had a weird career as she got her start in AtoZ which died, then got more work in M's Style, which died, but she really picked up steam on the indies and in Neo. Problem was that she was a freelancer and nobody would give her the belt because of it, so her career suffered. She ended up retiring early at her peak. Nanae was an old AJW girl but was a piece of the last big AJW generation and gets really good as she loses weight and wins some titles. Hyuga should be mentioned. She was part of a golden era of recruits for JWP along with Ran-Yu Yu, Carlos Amano and Kanako Motoya. She stuck around JWP mostly though and JWP was always a smaller company.
See P2
