In 2025, the UK was gripped by fighting fever — with Sumo showdowns, WWE spectacles, and Benny Safdie’s sports drama The Smashing Machine setting pulses racing in arenas and on-screen. But as wrestling icon Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson mounts a muscular Oscar campaign for the latter film in 2026, its source material — a 2002 HBO documentary on UFC pioneer Mark Kerr’s exploits in Japan — recalls an overlooked turn-of-the-century Japanese wrestling chronicle that’s bruising for rediscovery. Amidst this fresh wave of wrestle-mania, Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams’ complex and often uncomfortable account of the world of female fighting sports still hits like a knockout.

Produced for the BBC in 2000, Gaea Girls shadows a group of wrestling wannabes as they endure vigorous training regimes under female wrestling (joshi puroresu) legend Chigusa Nagayo. The fly-on-the-wall documentary was conceived to “show a different image of Japanese women — as strong and competent rather than passive and silent,” said Longinotto at Japanese Film Club’s Screen on the Green Q&A in August 2025. But it also uncovered the extreme and often disturbing disciplining of the impressionable young women at the hands of an unyielding mentor. “We were inspired. We were horrified. We were shocked.”, Longinotto told IndieWire in 2001. “We had all these different emotions while filming it, and we didn’t know how it was going to turn out.”

Female wrestling in Japan can be traced back to the exploits of the Ikari brothers — lewd vaudevillians who began promoting the sport as a comical and sexualised novelty in 1948. A tour of the country by Kansas-born Mildred Burke, the first World Women’s Wrestling Association champion, then kick-started wider interest in the mid-‘50s. But it wasn’t until the late ‘60s, with the founding of the All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling Corporation and the first Fuji Television broadcast of joshi puroresu bouts, that it really solidified its place in Japanese sporting culture. Fifteen years later, in the mid-‘80s, a new wave of women’s wrestling was turning the sport on its head — with the Crush Gals tag team achieving popularity previously unheard of in Japan.

Crush Gals comprised Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka (real name Tomoko Kitamura) — two young wrestlers whose relatable image, youthful looks, and thrilling wrestling style stirred up such a buzz that at one point their bouts captured 12% of the entire TV viewing audience in Japan. They released pop singles and albums that topped the charts in the mid-‘80s, and appeared on TV variety shows while their merchandise sales rivalled those of Hulk Hogan in the States. So popular was Nagayo that she reportedly had to move house several times due to the number of fans gathering to see her; thousands of them would likewise flock to audition for the All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling league in their wake, in what was a bona fide pop culture phenomenon.

But in 1989, the two biggest stars in joshi history called it a day — it was the AJW league’s policy to retire performers by the age of 26. In the aftermath, Nagayo explored acting roles and occasionally performed in “special attraction” wrestling matches. She returned to the ring in a bid to launch a new wave of joshi wrestlers in 1994, with her Gaea Japan promotions company emphasising principles of toughness, strength and athleticism. With a TV deal immediately obtained, and debut events drawing sell-out crowds, the brand enjoyed a powerful ascendancy in the years thereafter — becoming one of the most-attended and talked-about wrestling businesses in Japan. In its lively opening scenes, Longinotto and Williams’ film Gaea Girls shows just what all the fuss was all about.

Muscle-flexing in black-and-red spandex and sporting short, peroxide-tipped hair, Nagayo looks entirely at home as she enters a shadow-drenched ring to the rollicking sounds of Republica’s techno-pop smash ‘Ready to Go’. In moments, she and her opponents — including Lioness Asuka, returning in a historic 1999 bout against her old ally — will be launched through ironing boards and slammed to the mat, with Nagayo even spitting fireballs as blood pours out of her face. These are formidable showings that blur the lines of what’s real and what’s choreographed. “A lot of people thought that wrestling [in Japan] was like it is in America, where a lot of it was fake,” Longinotto recalled in 2025. “But when I saw them training, and how tough it was, I realised it was different.”

Indeed, much of Gaea Girls hereafter focuses on what goes on behind the scenes. Nagayo maintains her formidable persona even away from the crowds, as she is revealed to be a tough matriarchal figure to her fleet of budding upstarts. “She wants to provoke the killer instinct in the girls [because] in the ring, if they are lax or careless, they could get killed,” Longinotto told The Independent in 2000. Thus, her military methods are built on physical discipline and vitriolic oral feedback — attributed in part to the abusive relationship she’d endured with her own father. This training environment is soon revealed via caption to be so intense and spirit-breaking that one novice runs away in the night to escape it.

Nagayo’s methods would be the source of shock and criticism in the wake of the film’s release, with a spar between her protegé Satomura and a struggling newcomer providing a truly shocking turning point in the narrative. The rookie, Takeuchi, is physically and verbally chastised in the ring before being ruthlessly drop-kicked to the face by her more experienced counterpart. It’s one of the most brutal acts of violence you’re likely to witness in a documentary. After the fighting stops, the camera reveals Takeuchi’s face to be covered in blood, requiring stitches.

Later attempts by Takeuchi to pass the test to attain professional status are marked by Nagayo’s remorseless put-downs and direct physical attacks on the whimpering trainee — ostensibly a misguided attempt to toughen her up. “I think Takeuchi thought Nagayo might kill her,” Longinotto said in 2000. “There was something truly unhinged about it… and in a way, the more disturbing it got, the more hooked we became.”

In 2025, Satomura, the dispenser of some of that violence, would reflect on these scenes with renewed perspective. One of Gaea Japan’s great success stories, she’d enjoyed broad success in Japan in the years after Gaea Girls, becoming referred to as the “Final Boss” of women’s wrestling, while making appearances in WCW and even WWE in the West. “This is shocking,” she told the audience at Screen on the Green. “This is painful.”

Satomura had joined Gaea Japan at 15 years old, and initially underwent training from 8am to 1am. Trainees back then were so dead set on achieving their dreams that they’d embraced this regime without second thought, she says. “Wrestling was so popular. [And since] lots of people came to see us, everyone thought the method was good and correct.”
“Looking back now,” she continues, “I must say it was outrageous. Some things were necessary for growth, but I can see loads of things that really shouldn’t have happened.”

Gaea Japan disbanded in 2005. Its final show, at Tokyo Korakuen Hall, saw Nagayo defeated in combat by Satomura — her own star pupil. In a way, this outcome would mirror the changing landscape for women’s wrestling in Japan thereafter. Satomura founded her own promotions company, Sendai Girls’ Pro Wrestling, the same year – while Nagayo and Asuka both hung up their boots (the latter citing multiple neck injuries as the reason for her retirement). And though Nagayo would return to found Marvelous That’s Women Pro Wrestling in 2014, Satomura’s practices as coach and leader demonstrate a revised outlook today:

“Things are different now,” she says. “I want the people who come into my organisation to be tough and strong, but I want to see them smiling, happy, and excited about what they do constantly. You can be strong and happy at the same time. In my organisation, we’ve got a [professional] to look after the team’s mental health. I’m doing my best to raise the morale of the team.”

With four herniated discs to her name, Satomura would retire from wrestling in April 2025 with a farewell event at the same venue that had launched her career for Gaea Japan some 30 years prior. It came just months after her former coach, Nagayo, came out of retirement to battle in the same ring in 2024 — the latest chapter in a career that just won’t go quietly.

Japan endures as a mecca in the world of women’s fighting sports today. (The fandom for talents like Seri Yamaoka and Senka Akatsuki reaches as far as London.) Gaea Girls, too, remains a valuable document of its modern development. Takeuchi’s struggles in the documentary have certainly lost none of their shock value — but thankfully, as Satomura confirms, the culture has shifted away from scenes like these. “Change has happened from within,” she concludes. “Contemporary wrestlers are creating a new way.”