In a recent interview with Proresu-TODAY, KAIRI (fka Kairi Sane in WWE) shared her insights as to how to attract more attention to women’s wrestling in Japan.
She discussed her experiences from WWE, the importance of in-ring psychology and creating drama on-screen, the need to appeal to lightweight fans by improving character development, appearance, content, and promos, how WWE teaches reducing the number of techniques used in matches and focusing on storytelling and drama, working within those confines, how that experience has made her better, and more. She said,
“In order to expand and create a boom (in the Japanese women’s wrestling scene), we need to attract lightweight fans, so we need to make it easy for them to understand and watch. We need to make the characters and appearance, the content of the matches, the microphones, and so on, more and more. There are many good fighters in Japan.”
“I felt that many people came to see the fighters (in the U.S.), not so much for their skills or the content of the matches, but more because they wanted to see this fighter. This may be unrelated, but in WWE, we are taught to reduce the number of techniques. That is why even John Cena, for example, only does very simple moves. The higher you get, the less moves you really do. The higher you get, the less techniques you do. When the bell rings, the audience is at its peak just by standing on their feet. The reason is that there is a deep story and drama leading up to that point. Triple H often told me that while technique is important, I should learn, ‘Make a story’ (psychology), think about it, and create drama. Dangerous techniques such as head and neck drops are forbidden… and since the referee has absolute authority and the rules are very detailed, I had to think hard about how to make the event more exciting with these restrictions in place. I was thinking about how to make the matches more exciting with such restrictions.”
