Every hero needs a villain, and All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (AJW) had quite the number of heroes.
The all-female promotion, known for producing some of the greatest professional wrestlers in Japan and globally, experienced its golden age in the 1980s with the popularity of fan favorites like the Crush Gals rivaling even that of Hulkamania in the United States.
Dump Matsumoto | AJW’s Queen Of Villains
Yet, the same fans needed someone to boo just as loudly as they would cheer other wrestlers, and they found that individual in Dump Matsumoto.
With extravagant hair, face paint, and an affinity for brutality, Dump Matsumoto has been a name that fans have loved to hate for decades.
Straight out of AJW’s training system, she took the best that the promotion had to offer to the limit from the get-go and will be remembered as one of the greatest villains in Japanese professional wrestling history.
The Class of 1980
Despite their future heated rivalry, Dump Matsumoto and Chigusa Nagayo, of the Crush Gals, would form a strong friendship during their time in the AJW dojo.
The dojo itself was known to have adopted a brutal training regime, and the pair’s time in the system wasn’t made much easier by the fact that they were set to graduate in the same year as Nagayo’s future Crush Gals tag team partner Lioness Asuka.
By all accounts, Lioness Asuka had a level of skill and athleticism that, at first, was far above that of Matsumoto and Nagayo.
It was up to the pair to match her level in the eyes of those who had to judge whether they were fit to debut on an AJW show at some point in 1980.
On a number of occasions, the pair almost dropped out of the dojo entirely due to how senior wrestlers would treat them.
Luckily for us, the two continued their training, and both made their debuts in 1980. However, there wasn’t necessarily immediate success for either.
When it came to Dump Matsumoto, she certainly showed glimpses of the brutal offense that made her a star but lacked the overall look that helped her to stand out from the rest later on.
Matsumoto only featured occasionally in her debut year but picked up her first win while teaming with fellow Class of 1980 graduate Crane Yu as part of a group led by Devil Masami, AJW’s top heel at the time.
The Atrocious Alliance
For the majority of her first few years on the AJW roster, Dump Matsumoto used her real name, Kaoru Matsumoto.
She only became Dump Matsumoto at the dawn of what was, in essence, a rebirth for the future star.
This came about in January 1983 when she debuted the Dump character, a complete 180 from the vanilla wrestler in a generic swimsuit fans had been used to for the two years prior.
Her shoulder-length black hair had been trimmed and dyed blonde with highlights of whichever color felt right on the day. Her face had been painted similar to that of fellow Japanese heel Mr. Pogo, a form of kabuki makeup used to signify anger and cruelty.
These changes, combined with black leather and a kendo stick, made Dump Matsumoto someone worth taking seriously, not that she had discussed much of these changes with the AJW higher-ups far in advance.
Long after the character was born, Matsumoto revealed that she had written a note to her mother early in her career promising that her daughter would be hated by all of Japan and that she should believe that her eldest daughter is no more. How right she turned out to be.
This new character’s ferocious attitude translated well to the ring. She also showed a complete disregard for the rules, which fans despised.
Most of her matches saw her beating her opponents down with strikes, be it with her own fists, a kendo stick, or a chain, as opposed to more traditional holds.
That’s not to say that Matsumoto couldn’t go hold for hold with her opponents, and she often used them to wear down her opponents quickly.
Though she would undoubtedly be a credible threat on her own, the addition of a few others to her cause made her girl gang aesthetic seem all the more believable.
Crane Yu, Bull Nakano, and Condor Saito all joined up with Dump Matsumoto, even adopting her look, to form ‘Gokuaku Domei,’ or as they were known in English, the ‘Atrocious Alliance.’
The formation of the group made fans hate Matsumoto even more, as the group had just a big a disregard for the rules as she did.
Dump vs. The Crush Gals
Dump’s old ally within the AJW dojo, Chigusa Nagayo, had found extraordinary success as part of the Crush Gals tag team with Lioness Asuka.
The two were the top faces in the promotion, beloved by fans across Japan. The Crush Gals appealed to the younger female audience more than most, given that they had recorded a number of music albums aimed at that demographic.
This gave AJW a unique opportunity. When they ran a feud between the Crush Gals and the Atrocious Alliance, they were not merely pitting the top faces against the top heels, but they were able to paint it as two young girls standing up against their bullies.
This spoke to an audience that were already more than willing to listen, and the clashes between the two groups produced a fan reaction not seen before.
The feud itself kicked off partly when Dump Matsumoto defeated Lioness Asuka for the AJW Championship, which wasn’t the top championship in the promotion but nevertheless held some prestige.
Lioness Asuka won the championship back in June of the same year but it was a series that helped to push Matsumoto on to the next step.
The most part of the feud between the Atrocious Alliance and the Crush Gals started in 1984 with a series of tag team bouts that usually ended with the Crush Gals victorious.
Though Dump Matsumoto usually wouldn’t be the one to take the fall, and she would give the fan favorites one hell of a beating each time she faced them.
However, when it counted, Dump Matsumoto and Crane Yu were able to defeat the Crush Gals for the WWWA Tag Team Championships in 1985.
Their reign was cut short due to Crane Yu’s retirement, which might seem like it came too early but AJW had set a mandatory retirement age for their women to comply with Japanese tradition. From then on, Matsumoto’s main partner in the group would be Bull Nakano.
Fans could’ve happily watched any pairing from the Atrocious Alliance go up against the Crush Gals forever, but AJW sought to move the feud onto the next stage in the second half of 1985.
By giving the two women not originally thought to be at the level of their dojo peers a chance to go one-on-one prior to Matsumoto and Nakano’s success in AJW’s Tag League that year.
Matsumoto and Nagayo’s singles match had to be unique, so Nagayo challenged Matsumoto to a hair-vs.-hair match in August.
Matsumoto’s hair had become a crucial part of her look since she debuted the character, and at that point, it would’ve been strange to see her without it.
Nagayo, on the other hand, was supposed to look likeable, and a full head of hair definitely helped with that.
Losing hair would be embarrassing for either wrestler and would drastically change the fans’ perceptions of them, as Matsumoto would look weaker and Nagayo would appear less relatable.
The match was as brutal as everyone expected and the referee let a lot go so that the two’s passion could spill all over the ring.
The fans reacted as loud as usual, with cheers going up for Nagayo on the few occasions where she got the upper hand and screams of concern when Matsumoto laid down a beating on the fans’ hero.
During the match, Chigusa Nagayo was busted open by Matsumoto’s relentless attacks with a pair of scissors, and blood trickled down from her forehead like something out of a horror movie.
A final chair shot to the head from Matsumoto sealed Nagayo’s fate. Nagayo could not stand up after a ten count and thus would have her head shaved after the match.
Dump Matsumoto pulled out the hair clippers after Nagayo’s allies had finished pleading with the referee to stop what was about to happen.
As Matsumoto began to shave Nagayo’s hair off, fans around the arena reacted as though they were witnessing a murder.
Some screamed, some cried, and some probably tried to jump the barricade to stop her, but by the end of the night, only one of the two women in the match left the arena with a full head of hair, not that Matsumoto could get out of the arena for some hours after.
It’s Hard Being The Heel
Being a heel, especially in the 1980s, came with its many downsides. Most fans found it hard to separate the fictitious nature of professional wrestling with the person behind the character they portrayed in the ring and this was no different for Dump Matsumoto.
AJW chairman Takashi Matsunaga ensured that Matsumoto was to play the heel even outside of the ring.
Matsumoto was only allowed to be seen in public with other heels in the promotion, meaning that friendships she had formed amongst the faces, like the one with Chigusa Nagayo, became strained.
This wasn’t helped by Takashi Matsunaga spreading rumors that one hated the other on the build-up to their eventual singles match in order to make the hatred they would display feel more real.
Matsumoto, who had experienced bullying back in the AJW dojo, also became somewhat of a safe haven for those who were experiencing the same issues, but of course, these interactions were few and far between for the faces of AJW.
Multiple altercations with fans occurred beyond the arenas. Matsumoto’s car was vandalized a number of times, along with her parent’s house, and she was even stalked by people intent on doing her some serious harm.
One incident saw Matsumoto punched in the face by a male security guard who blamed her for the way the fans had harassed him on their entrance into the arena for a show.
These issues were just the tip of the iceberg for Japan’s most hated heel but it was a cross that she would have to bear for as long as she was a member of the AJW roster.
The Rematch To End It All
Fifteen months after Chigusa Nagayo had her head shaved by Dump Matsumoto, with the Crush Gals now firmly in the past, Nagayo sought to get revenge on Matsumoto in a rematch.
Since the match, Matsumoto had won the AJW Tag League with Bull Nakano, appeared in the WWF for two bouts and spent some time on the sidelines.
By this point, both Matsumoto and Nagayo had realized that Takashi Matsunaga had spread the rumors that they hated each other and were friends once again, but it didn’t change much inside the ring.
The rematch had just as much of a story to it as the first encounter, with Nagayo now desperate to take Matsumoto’s hair in an act of revenge, with Matsumoto having no intention of giving her opponent what she craved.
The pair had also changed their looks to an extent. Nagayo had swapped out the swimsuit singlet for tights while Matsumoto had turned her bobbed hair into a huge, colorful mohawk and adapted her face paint to cover her whole face.
Straight out of the gate, Matsumoto attempts to get the match thrown out by attacking the referee with her chain, causing him to bleed from the forehead as Nagayo had in the first match.
Once Matsumoto got serious, things took a turn for the worst for Nagayo, who once again found herself covered in her own blood, having been beaten with every weapon available and paraded around to the crowd with Matsumoto’s chain wrapped around her neck like a noose.
Matsumoto did have one fatal flaw on the day—overconfidence. She thought that she had Nagayo beat, as Nagayo hadn’t moved for some time when the ref started his ten count in a similar fashion to the ending of the first match.
Matsumoto started to celebrate early, and this gave Nagayo the chance to roll Matsumoto up for a three-count.
Needless to say, Matsumoto continued on as the heel and threw the referee to the ground in anger, which was probably the nicest thing she had done to him all day.
She attempted to leave before she could have her mohawk shaved but returned when Nagayo called her something akin to a coward. With that, Chigusa Nagayo had gotten her revenge on Dump Matsumoto and Dump left the arena while being pelted by trash.
Dump Matsumoto spent her final years in AJW teaming with Yukari Omori, and she continued to terrorize the faces of AJW up until the very end in 1988, when she reached AJW’s mandatory retirement age of twenty-six.
February 25, 1988, saw Dump Matsumoto’s final bout play out. She teamed with fellow soon-to-be retiree Yakurai Omori against a briefly reformed Crush Gals.
There was chaos from the outset, and after thirteen minutes, the match ended in a no-contest as the ref lost control. Lioness Asuka was, at this point, a heel, unlike Chigusa Nagayo, and the Crush Gals could no longer coexist.
This produced a strange but interesting end to the story between Dump Matsumoto and Chigusa Nagayo, in which the match would restart with them on the same team.
The two embraced at the end of it all as their story came to an end, along with the career of Japan’s greatest villain – Dump Matsumoto.
Dump The Entertainer
Life after professional wrestling around this period was incredibly different for women than it was for men. Most men could expect to retire in their forties or beyond but for the women of AJW they were to retire at twenty-six to settle down and start a family.
For a lot of these women, that was not the dream, and it wasn’t for Dump Matsumoto either. She believed that she could use her career as a successful heel to launch herself into the entertainment business as an actor.
She had already appeared in another form of media back in 1986 in the form of a video game.
The video game company SEGA had evidently saw the appeal behind the Dump Matsumoto character as they released ‘Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto’ for their SEGA Master System in Japan.
Matsumoto’s acting career was most notable for her appearance in Ryoichi Ikegami and Kazuo Koike’s Crying Freeman series, where she lent her voice to the character Bái Yá-Shàn. She also appeared in Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat in 1991 and Okoge in 1992.
Back For More
Not that Dump Matsumoto seemed to have much of a desire to return to the ring but she nevertheless did so in 2003 with the same promotion she had worked for the whole of her career.
At this point, Matsumoto was forty-three, and you may be asking why she was able to return to a promotion who wanted their stars to retire as young as twenty-six.
It appeared as though AJW’s desire to see their stars retire at such a young age was their downfall as it birthed their own biggest competition.
Most of the retired AJW women still had a lot to offer the business and didn’t have any real intention of settling down.
This led to many of them starting up their own all-female promotions as a haven for women over twenty-six and trainees who wanted to learn a different way to the AJW dojos style.
Chigusa Nagayo was one of many who started up her own rival promotion, GAEA Japan, and that, in particular, ate into AJW’s stranglehold on the business in the region.
By 2003, AJW were desperate to attract the fans and stars on a failing budget; so they offered Dump Matsumoto an opportunity to return to the promotion and work short singles matches in order to try and pull a crowd.
Granted, this didn’t do much to change AJW’s fortunes, and Matsumoto’s matches in GAEA Japan around this time pulled more fans in than most of her AJW appearances. By 2005, AJW had no choice but to fold, and Dump Matsumoto started a career as a freelancer.
Her first endeavor was an attempt to pull fans to Yumiko Hotta’s promotion, Major Girl’s Fighting AtoZ, but that closed down a year later in 2006.
Matsumoto then frequented IWA Japan and Shinobu Kandori’s Ladies Legend Pro Wrestling amongst a whole host of other promotions in Japan, be them all-female or not.
Eventually, Dump Matsumoto reunited with Chigusa Nagayo in Nagayo’s second promotion, Marvelous That’s Women’s Pro Wrestling, and helped out with some of the younger talent.
The two even produced a 40th anniversary show together to celebrate their debuts and Matsumoto also produced a freelance tour to celebrate her sixtieth birthday.
The Queen of Villains
There are plenty of female wrestlers in Japan that deserve their own drama series but perhaps none have quite the story that Dump Matsumoto does, with plenty more to be discovered down the line.
The popular streaming service Netflix have put together a drama series entitled ‘The Queen of Villains’ to showcase the story of Dump Matsumoto for an audience that otherwise may not have a clue who she is.
From September 19, 2024, professional wrestling fans and those that just like to sit at home and watch television have the chance to see everything that really made Dump Matsumoto one of the greatest villains that Japan has ever seen.
Playing the main star is Yuriyan Retriever, who started out on season fourteen of America’s Got Talent as a comedic dancer.
Retriever certainly looks the part to play Dump Matsumoto and it will be interesting to see whether this, along with Netlfix’s WWE partnership, spawns more series about the greats of Japanese wrestling.
Whether fans came to know Dump Matsumoto from her time in the ring or her time on other screens, her impact on women’s wrestling in Japan is unquestionable.
She was the heel that you loved to hate and without her women’s wrestling in the eighties would not have been anywhere near as crazy or as loud as it was.
Many have tried to recreate the magic of the Atrocious Alliance and its leader but none have thus far succeeded, at least not when success is measured in decibels.
