Ryōgoku Cinderella Champions Fiesta

Promotional poster for the event, featuring various Stardom wrestlers

The **Ryōgoku Cinderella Champions Fiesta** was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event promoted by World Wonder Ring Stardom (Stardom). The event took place on April 29, 2013, at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, Japan. The event was the biggest event in the history of the promotion, drewing 5,500 fans the promotion's higgest attendance. It was the first *joshi* event held in *Ryōgoku Kokugikan* in six years after Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling (LLPW) held a event at the arena on February 12, 2007.

The show was headlined by the retirement match of Yuzuki Aikawa facing Yoshihiko in her last match. Another high-profile match scheduled for the show featured Meiko Satomura against Takumi Iroha. Another title match for the show featured Alpha Female defending the World of Stardom Championship against Io Shirai.

Three other title matches included Kimura Monster-gun (Hailey Hatred and Kyoko Kimura) defending the Goddess of Stardom Championship against Ho-Show Tennyo (Kairi Hojo and Natsumi Showzuki), Natsuki☆Taiyo defending the High Speed Championship against Yuhi and Dark Angel defending the Wonder of Stardom Championship against Act Yasukawa. Wrestlers from other promotions that participated in the event included Lin Byron, Makoto and Syuri from Wrestling New Classic (WNC), freelancer Manami Toyota, Meiko Satomura from Sendai Girls' Pro Wrestling, Risa Sera, Rutsuko Yamaguchi and Tsukasa Fujimoto from Ice Ribbon and male wrestlers Gota Ihashi, Hikaru Sato, Kota Ibushi and Michael Nakazawa from DDT Pro-Wrestling and former AJW ring announcer Nagaharu Imai, who died from gastric cancer just three months later on July 29 after the event.

## Background

After retiring from professional wrestling on March 29, 2010, Fuka began training Yuzuki Aikawa, a gravure idol signed to Platinum Production, the same modeling agency as her, for a career in professional wrestling. In April, Fuka was approached by Hiroshi "Rossy" Ogawa, the former promoter of JDStar, where she had spent most of her career, about starting a new promotion built around Aikawa. On September 7, Ogawa held a press conference to announce that his new promotion's name would be World Wonder Ring Stardom. Originally, Ogawa had contemplated naming his promotion Bito (美闘, "Beauty Battle"), before deciding to go with Stardom which was later given to one of Fuka's trainees Yoko Arai as a ring name. Stardom held its first event on January 23, 2011, in front of a sold out crowd in Tokyo's Shin-Kiba 1st Ring, which was also the location of Stardom's training dojo. Originally, Stardom would promote their events in "seasons", with one season lasting, on average, two months per event with most of their events being in the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring, but during its first year also held two events in Korakuen Hall, commonly used by *joshi puroresu* promotions for their bigger events. On August 5, 2012, Stardom announced it was going to run *Ryōgoku Kokugikan* on April 29, 2013, becoming the first joshi promotion since Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling (LLPW) in 2007, to hold an event in the arena with a capacity of 13,000. On December 18, 2012, Stardom's arguably biggest star, Yuzuki Aikawa announced that she would be retiring from professional wrestling at the show. Aikawa revealed that she had contemplated retirement throughout the year, feeling that professional wrestling had started to get too tough on her near thirty-year-old body, finally deciding to continue until the event. The match card was revealed on April 2, 2013, featured four of Stardom's five titles on the line and was headlined by the retirement match of Aikawa.

## Aftermath

According to Stardom, the event was attended by 5,500 fans. A special movie edition of the event, featuring backstage material, was premiered at a theater in Ichikawa, Chiba and released on DVD on September 28, 2013. Following the event, Stardom started what it was referred as "Chapter Two"; the post-Aikawa era. The promotion attempted to fill the void left by Aikawa by giving a push to the new idol tag team of Kairi Hojo and Natsumi Showzuki, known collectively as Ho-Show Tennyo. This plan was quickly foiled by Showzuki suffering a cervical spine injury in May 2013, which led to her quitting Stardom the following July of the same year. On June 2, 2013, Stardom held its first event in Korakuen Hall following Aikawa's retirement, which was attended by 935 fans, down from 1,250 for the previous event at the venue and the second lowest number of attendees ever drawn to the venue by the promotion. Attendance also dropped in Shin-Kiba 1st Ring following Aikawa's departure from the promotion. Stardom's August 17 event at Korakuen Hall was attended by 860 fans, the promotion's lowest attendance ever at the venue. Meanwhile, Stardom would continue to try to find a replacement for Yuzuki Aikawa and in late 2013 introduced gravure idol Yuuna Suzuki, who was billed as the "second Yuzupon" and made her debut for the promotion on January 12, 2014, under the ring name Yuna Manase. She, however, resigned from the promotion just a year later, following a string of injuries. Eventually the promotion would fill the void that Aikawa made with establishment new of stars such as Mayu Iwatani, Io Shirai, Kairi Hojo, Kagetsu, Arisa Hoshiki, Hana Kimura and Giulia. On October 17, 2019, following Bushiroad's acquisition of the promotion, Bushiroad founder Takaaki Kidani announced the plans to held Stardom's 10th Anniversary Show in January 2021 at the arena.