SENDAI -- A group of professional female wrestlers based in Sendai has shifted its battlefield to actual fields amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
With no prospect of holding pro wrestling matches due to the spread of the virus, members of the Sendai Girls' Pro-Wrestling organization have turned to farmwork. The team was founded in 2006 and has eight wrestlers ranging from 15 to 40 years old. All matches scheduled for April and May have been canceled or postponed due to the coronavirus.
Group leader Meiko Satomura, 40, was worried that the wrestlers would lose income and went all out to find work for them. She ultimately found help from Igarashi-Shokai Corp., a Sendai-based seller of farming equipment and one of the sponsors of the group.
Igarashi-Shokai arranged farming jobs in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures for the wrestlers.
Over a span of about two months, the wrestlers have helped out on eight occasions, including working for a flower grower.
On May 15, five wrestlers participated in rice planting at the farm of Kichiro Iwasa, 79, in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture. They worked hard to help plant rice in a 1.3-hectare area, performing such tasks as transporting rice seedlings from seedbeds to rice paddies.
Some of the wrestlers already had experience with planting, having helped grow rice in areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
"We made good progress. The young people gave me energy," Iwasa said with a smile.
"It's good to have a job like this when we have no matches," said Dash Chisako, 31. "It's tough work because we have to use different muscles [from wrestling], but we want to keep working here until the harvest."
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