Maya Fukuda: the eye of the tiger
Today's writing is all about one of the most talented and authentic wrestlers in all of Japan that in 2023 will seek to make a statement, today's subject is the rising star Maya Fukuda. Let's go!
Is there a universal path to follow your dreams?
In life, everyone has something that they strive for, something that makes their inner fire burn and wakes them up in the morning, no matter what it is, there is always something that will drive you to do better, and that is where the meaning of life truly is.
The art of professional wrestling is no different to this and hence there are many paths and ways to follow your dreams in this discipline, some have the pleasure to debut straight away in the promotion of their dreams, others might have to build themselves up from the ground to reach the heights that they desire and some might discover their true passion along the way.
In today's writing it is time to tell the journey of one of the most determined and passionate women's wrestlers in the entire world. Today's main character is the former Actwres girl'Z member, the one and only Maya Fukuda!
Who is Maya Fukuda?
Maya Fukuda is a 22 year old wrestler that started her career in AWG and joined this promotion with the same intentions that many other women had previously done so, Fukuda wanted a way into the world of entertainment which she had aspirations to be a voice actor and even tried to be an idol as well. But even from the get-go we could always see that she always approached stuff differently because she didn’t feel that she was truly accomplished in anything even after being a successful karateka and having earned some wins and podium finishes in the junior divisions of the Goju-Ryu World Championship but her true passion was the entertainment business and hence Fukuda joined AWG. But once again, she didn’t truly feel that being a ring actress was what she wanted to do because after being on ARG (which is the ‘Pro Wres Action Fantasy’ brand of AWG that is more focused on acting rather than wrestling) an Actwres girl’Z representative showed her what LIDET UWF was and after this, she had a realization that this was her true place in the world, so finally after so many years of searching for anything that truly made her happy, she made the jump to wrestle in GLEAT.
This is a move that immediately stands out specially when you put it in contrast with former AWG talents like Tam Nakano, Mina Shirakawa, Himeka, Saori Anou or SAKI.
Many of the women that have departed AWG have went on to join big wrestling companies in Japan like STARDOM or TJPW so it is quite interesting to see that Fukuda chose such a different path.
GLEAT is a promotion that was founded a couple of years ago that has 2 main divisions, the G Wrestling division which is based on regular wrestling with current champion El Lindaman leading the way and then they also have the LIDET UWF division where matches are only held under UWF rules which is basically a hybrid between MMA and pro wrestling with the veteran Minoru Tanaka leading the way. And then in the middle of everything, there’s the joshi division, who currently has just 3 wrestlers signed and is mainly focused in UWF matches as well and those 3 wrestlers are Yukari Hosokawa a.k.a. RinRin to the Gatoh Move fans, Michiko Miyagi who used to wrestle in STARDOM and the main character of today’s story, Maya Fukuda. So just by this few lines of context, you can imagine how much of a challenge Fukuda chose to take on, but what truly speaks for how she really feels about all of this is her passion for the sport, so let’s take a look to her GLEAT journey since its genesis.
A journey in self-confidence:
On October 10th 2020 GLEAT started a series of pre-launch shows that ended up lasting until last year’s summer and this is where Maya Fukuda enters the scene, because on July 1st 2021 she ended up having her first match in her new home. But across the ring there was her opponent, a woman who is one of the biggest talents in the joshi scene, not only because she is one of the very best but also because she is also one of the toughest athletes that there is in the whole world of women’s wrestling, and that woman was none other than Chihiro Hashimoto.
Long story short, for those that might be unfamiliar with Chihiro Hashimoto, she is an amateur wrestling standout, a 5 time Sendai Girls’ World Champion and an all around wrestling machine, so Fukuda did not only have to deal with her emotions on her debut in such a different company from her original Actwress Girl’z home but she also had to wrestle ‘Big Hash’ who is not just a wrestler, but a whole mountain to climb as well. So Fukuda walks up to the stage and you can feel her emotions flowing through her face, limbs and entire body, Maya had to climb mount Everest all by herself on her debut show. Hashimoto ended up beating her in a UWF rules match in just under 5 minutes and even if she was a trained karateka she simply didn’t have enough in the tank to beat her opponent. Many other wrestlers would’ve understood the magnitude of the situation and moved on, but as the talented karateka from Gunma has shown all across her career, every match matters.
This fact is something that has always been remarkable about Fukuda, this feeling that everything matters and that you have to perform no matter what, even if it was just her first match in GLEAT, even if they don’t have either an openweight nor a women’s championship that she can compete for and even if the entire arena had their eyes on her for that brief moment, Maya has always had a chip on her shoulder and whenever she doesn’t perform, she always takes a look at herself and tries to figure out a way to move forward, despite having moments where she wonders if she is good enough to keep going. And keep going is what she did.
If you would like to learn a little bit more about Fukuda, please check this article!
GLEAT Beginning:
Maya felt overwhelmed and impotent after her debut in GLEAT against Hashimoto, she found out by first hand what the true reality of professional wrestling is, it is one thing to watch it but a whole different thing to step up to the squared circle to find out. As expected, Hashimoto defeated Fukuda in dominant fasion but where other perfomers might’ve quit after such a vile defeat, Fukuda was able to eat up her own feelings and use them to keep moving forward, so since she knew that Chihiro would come back to GLEAT, she put pen to paper and exactly a year after her debut for the promotion, she signed with the company.
And this type of mentality is why I think that Maya Fukuda is destined for greatness, it is normal to sometimes feel useless, unskilled, fearful and/or doubt yourself but what separates the good athletes from the champions is that the ones that are able to use those feelings to self-reflect and push forward are the ones that go down not only in history, but also get immortalized on people’s retinas. It is clear that there is a gap between veteran Chihiro Hashimoto and young upcoming talent Maya Fukuda but the former ring actress has the hunger, determination and will to not only become stronger but to also bring women’s wrestling to GLEAT to its highest extent possible, and this is where her Rocky type of journey began, from the deepest of lows to be on her way to reach for the stars.
Rising up straight to the top:
Every time that you join a new company, there is always someone else that is at the top of the division waiting for anyone to try and have the audacity to dethrone them, and GLEAT is no exception to this rule. Maya is a very talented youngster but she arrived to a division that has a former STARDOM talent on top that also decided to take her talents to GLEAT previously, the women’s division has Michiko Miyagi on top, and she is taking no chances at the possibility of anyone pushing her aside. GLEAT’s women’s division is still growing at the moment, they have a pretty small roster and not a title to compete for yet so what the women in the company are currently fighting for is their own pride and place in the power curve, any woman that comes to the company has to go through Michiko Miyagi first and Fukuda knows that, so this is why she has gone out of her way many times to fight the former Oedo Tai wrestler.
Over the course of an entire year Maya has gotten multiple chances to fight Miyagi to not only establish herself within the company but to also prove to herself that she is enough of a fighter to take on any challenge that is presented to her, she had fought Miyagi 5 times in singles competition and she had lost in all of them, but what was truly noteworthy was the confidence that she was developing in the ring, we could see a fighter that was getting further away from the once nervous performer on her debut against Hashimoto and was evolving into someone that was ready to beat anyone in her path the deeper that we went into the match series. Maya’s progress wasn’t matching the results that she was hoping for but in life, if you keep trying and keep working towards your goals, you are fated to make your dreams come true.
November 23rd 2022, Maya Fukuda wrestled Michiko Miyagi once more for a chance to finally prove with empirical evidence that her growth is a reality. Fukuda steps up to the ring and you can just feel it, with how she hypes herself up, with how she approaches the fight but most importantly, you can see it in her eyes, she is ready. The bell rings and Fukuda is out there to make a statement, Miyagi still has the veteran experience to counter the challenger’s hunger for success but her junior keeps moving forward and out of nowhere she catches Miyagi with a knee after the latter attempted a takedown and hence knocks her down for the first time in the match, much like she had done in the past.
This whole series is filled with callbacks and these keep growing as Fukuda faces her senior more times and this match is no stranger to this, much like the brainbuster that Michiko once defeated her with but on this day nothing was working, Maya was showing that she had learned from all of her previous mistakes. The score in the match is 4 to 1, her back is against the wall, if she is going to pull something off, she needs to do it now and thus Maya creates a moment of brilliance, she blocks a new brainbuster attempt, Michiko rushes after having been frustrated all match due to her inability to put her junior away and Fukuda catches her high with a picture perfect kick to the face knocking her senior down and after 10 seconds that must’ve felt like an eternity to the challenger, Michiko is unable to respond to the referee’s 10 count thus meaning that for the first time since she joined GLEAT, Fukuda had not only beaten Miyagi but she had finally scored her first victory in her new home!
The bell rings and Fukuda breaks down in tears straight away, the moment that she had pursued for so long had finally materialized, she had wanted this to happen for so long and with such intensity that you can genuinely grasp her disbelief through the screen as everything starts to settle in. Many could’ve used this moment to boast and brag in the face of their seniors, but she chose to turn around and try to see how her opponent was doing, and that is the true victory of the day, she accomplished something that she was dying for but she still cared enough for her rival to focus on her even after such a massive moment in her career. Maya Fukuda had finally proven that she is a worthy fighter but life would have a new challenge in her way before the end of the year.
GLEAT MMA:
On the past December 14th GLEAT decided to test the waters with an event that would have their roster facing MMA trained talent in a joint show that had 7 matches with talent across different disciplines. Despite her lack of wins in the promotion when the event was announced, GLEAT still decided to go ahead and chose Maya Fukuda to represent the company in their only women’s match of the day thus proving the big faith that they have on her.
The stage was set, Fukuda would have a match on that show, and since she has a background in karate the promotion decided that she would face Minori Kikuchi on a kicboxing rules match set for 3 rounds. It was always going to be difficult for a full time professional wrestler to face an MMA trained athlete but if you want the physical manifestation of what Fukuda’s whole career has been, you just have to watch this bout. Once again, the moment for Maya to step to the ring comes and not only she comes out with a new combination of colors that she had never used in her wrestling gear but she also comes out absolutely fired up, even having a big smile drawn in her face while she’s walking down to the ring. She is ready.
Once gain, Fukuda wastes no time and goes for it as soon as the bell hits but in the same way that Miyagi always had the experience advantage, Kikuchi also has the experience advantage in this fight against her but if we’ve learned anything from Maya’s in ring career it’s that no matter how dire the situation looks, she will always keep pushing herself beyond her own limits. The first round ends and Minori has held the upper hand so far with her fighting experience but going into the second round, Fukuda’s heart of a champion would drive her to try harder and the longer that the fight goes, the more that the momentum shifts in favor of the karateka. We enter the final round and it is anybody’s game, whoever wants it the baddest will take the victory home, Maya knows this so she throws everything that she has at her opponent to the point that you can visibly feel Kikuchi gassing out and trying her best to reach the end of the fight. The bell rings for the final time and since there were no knockouts, it would be down to the judges to decide who was the better woman and thus we wait for the decision.
First judge, 30-29 to Kikuchi.
Second judge, 29-30 to Fukuda. You can see Fukuda putting all of her energy into the universe as she awaits for the deciding decision.
Third and final judge, to break the tie, 29-28 to Kikuchi.
Maya is crushed by this defeat, she is overwhelmed once again and breaks down with tears streaming down her face, it is a heartbreaking defeat but that’s why this match is the perfect representation of her young career, she always kept fighting and chasing for her dreams, even when the odds were against her. But there are many things to take away from this defeat, first of all, she had partaken in the only women’s match on the whole show, she just had months of preparation for a kickboxing fight that she was always going to be at a disadvantage because she had been pursuing professional wrestling full time, she cut down an impressive 9kgs in a matter of months to make the weight requirements for this fight and even if she had undergone mere months of training in comparison to the experience of a fully trained Mixed Martial Artist, she not only almost won but in my humble opinion she was also the closest that any GLEAT representative came to defeat any of their MMA counterparts and for that, we salute you.
Maya Fukuda has had a short career thus far but she has already underwent through one of the most admirable journeys that you are able to see in its entirety in front of the camera, from being insecure and being a handful of nerves in her GLEAT debut against Chihiro Hashimoto, to being ready and even embracing a new situation like fighting an MMA athlete and going toe to toe with her.
So, what's next for her? Well, in her year long GLEAT career she has shown to me that she is alongside Mio Momono, the most determined young joshi wrestler in the whole scene so whether she decides to keep growing the GLEAT women's division until they get a championship, to start touring around other joshi promotions to become stronger or to pursue a new challenge and join another company, she is someone that you must keep an eye out for.
If you want my personal opinion on what she will do next, well... she still hasn't done the one thing that motivated her to keep wrestling in GLEAT, and that is beating Chihiro Hashimoto and thus I have no doubt in my mind that they will cross paths once again next year and hence Maya will try to defeat the one wrestler that lit the fire in her soul.
Thank you for reading <3