AphroditE’s Stardom Reunion Is Gay As Hell

Professional wrestling is a love story. Sometimes that love story is eternal, like the Golden Lovers, Rhiyo, and whatever Triple H and Shawn Michaels have going on, and other times it's toxic as hell. The current love story in the Japanese women’s wrestling organization World Wonder Ring Stardom is straight cinema of the toxic yuri variety, because it so effectively blurs the line between kayfabe and reality to enhance its doomed romance. But to get to why it's the most exciting thing in wrestling right now, allow me to turn back the clock and explain their lore.

You see, Saya Kamitami had a problem. Back in 2024, Utami Hayashita announced her departure from Stardom. While they were in Stardom together, Hayashita was the faction leader of Queen’s Quest, one of the leading and oldest surviving factions of Stardom before its wrestlers departed for AEW and WWE. Within Queen’s Quest, Hayashita and Kamitani formed their own duo tag team, AphroditE. Although Kamitani was more technically skilled than Hayashita, she never got as over as her fearless leader, what with how handsome she was, with her Tuxedo Mask-esque gimmick of gifting roses to women in the audience and wooing fellow wrestlers. 

Although it's not like the two never squared off against each other, there was always something unspoken about them. An "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" type of situation. 

Still, the two formed an unbreakable bond to the point where they even drunkenly kissed one night out together and thought nothing big of it as a testament to their closeness. Granted, ladies kissing each other in Stardom is hardly a rare phenomenon. It’s been used to send wrestlers off when they graduate from the company, just as it's been used as a kiss of death in the lead up to a big match—the latter of which had Kamitani in her feelings when Syuri, the Japanese women’s wrestling boogeyman, set her sights on Hayashita. AphroditE is basically the wrestling equivalent of T.A.T.U.

Against Kamitani’s protests, Hayashita left Stardom, leaving a void for Kamitani to fill, while Hayashita became the wrestler for former Stardom promoter Rossy Ogawa to build around his newly formed company, Dream Star Fighting Marigold. Outside of becoming Marigold’s big champion and putting on a clinic with former Queen’s Quest leader and WWE superstar Iyo Sky, Hayashita mostly faded into obscurity in Marigold. A phenomenon that, in my humble opinion, Rossy’s disgusting public fat-shaming of Hayashita bears significant blame for, but I digress. Fuck that guy, by the way. 

Meanwhile, Kamitani was struggling in Stardom. In a similar fashion to WWE pushing Roman Reigns by any means necessary and not getting over with the crowd, Kamitani also struggled to stand out from Hayashita’s shadow as the next big thing. It got so bad that she was harassed by fans at an autograph signing—leading her to swear off attending future fan meet-and-greets.

But from that experience—be it a work or otherwise—came an opportunity for Kamitani to rebuild herself as the Phenex Queen of Stardom. Gone was her golden-trimmed green-and-white gear, replaced by dark sequins and heavy dark eye makeup. She finally turned heel. 

What’s more, she started her own faction of wrestlers born from the flames of her own harassment from the fans that rejected her as Stardom’s next big thing: H.A.T.E. (Harassment, Abuse, Terrorize, Eradicate). Her heel persona, a send-up of heels of yesteryear like Dump Matsumoto, absolutely terrorized Stardom. With her new persona, Saya was able to get the edge on her opponents, not by changing her wheelhouse of high-flying moves as most wrestlers do, but by adding more animosity and spite into her moves. 

Her meteoric rise not only saw her retire Tam Nakano, one of, if not the last vestige of Stardom’s era when Hayashita was around, but it also saw her finally standing at the top of the promotion. She became a measuring stick rookies would try and fail to best, all the while, she’d giddily laugh at them from on high. Then, everything changed when Hayashita returned to Stardom. 

Their reunion saw Kamitani face a ghost of her past. One she’d eclipsed when Hayashita was at her peak, sure. But Hayashita also served as a grim reminder of the weak girl Kamitani was before. After all, the woman she’d cling to like a child and cried over her leaving made a surprise return. Not only that, Hayashita said she’d never kept her eyes off Kamitani, even when she was at another promotion. And that sting hurt all the more because Hayashita wasn’t even jockeying for a title shot against Kamitani. 

Despite being a legend in her own right, she wanted to start fresh by working her way up by wrestling the rookies. But to Kamitani that meant their reunion would be prolonged. Their fateful meeting depended on Hayashita’s success in a Stardom she’d leveled  Kamitani’s dominance backfired, turning into a new twisted version of her still being the bridesmaid to Hayashita’s career while she gave other wrestlers her attention in the ring. Girlie is suffering from her own success and she’s seething. 

What makes AphroditE’s reunion the best thing in wrestling right now is that it’s a testament to the medium’s uncanny ability to tap into soap opera-esque long term storytelling. It’s storytelling that has just as much to do with what’s seen on screen as it does to the real life circumstances, and both those elements dictate how events play out. These are all things that viewers are tapped into, and they elevate wrestling’s storytelling when it blurs the line between real life and fiction in a way only it can. 

It’s why a mid-card wrestler’s parody of a luchador gimmick can get him more over than Goku in Mexico. It’s why the debut of one of the biggest wrestlers from a rival company leads to a paradigm shift in wrestling. And it's why rivalries like Hayashita and Kamitani’s, built on years of yearning, bring new meaning to their eventual reunion, now colored by their history inside and outside of the ring. 

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