At this year’s SummerSlam, SKY became champion.
Following the Raw Women’s Championship match at WWE SummerSlam 2022, the trio now known as Damage CTRL (Bayley, IYO SKY & Dakota Kai) arrived. Throughout their year-long run together, they’ve held the Women’s Tag Team Titles and fast forward to SummerSlam 2023, Kai and Bayley were in the ring celebrating with the newly crowned WWE Women’s Champion IYO SKY who cashed in Money in the Bank.
SKY returned to Japan to do media as she is on the cover of Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine. Along the way, she sat down with Tokyo Sports for a chat. There was a point when IYO was not active coming off a broken ankle injury at NXT Stand & Deliver. During that downtime, she thought about returning to Japan.
SKY said it’s not that she didn’t like America, but at the time, she felt if she went back to Japan, there would be more for her to do, plus the STARDOM promotion had grown and so did she. What made her want to stay was not wanting to give up. SKY was determined to work hard until her WWE contract ended. She shared that her contract was set to expire a month after her return at the Premium Live Event.
I thought about it (returning to Japan). It wasn’t that I didn’t like America, but that if there was nothing I could do here, I thought that if I went to Japan, there would be more things I could do… and I have grown a lot since I left Japan, so I was confident that I could show a different kind of work in Japan this time.
It was my policy not to give up… I set a goal to work hard until the contract was over, and I stayed there for about a year. I appeared at SummerSlam (2022) when my contract was about to end in one month.
Circling back to the title win at SummerSlam 2023, SKY felt her sense of responsibility increase. She feels everything happened so quickly in regards to her return, being on the main roster and now being champion.
I was deeply moved by the fact that I was able to take center stage, and at the same time, my sense of responsibility increased. I had the feeling that it would take two years for what I was doing to reach the world, but I went from appearing on Raw to champion in one year. I feel like I’m running through the American Dream at the breakneck speed of Usain Bolt.
On the 9/22 Friday Night SmackDown, IYO is going to defend the WWE Women’s Championship against Asuka. She touched on their history as a part of ‘Triple Tails’ with SKY’s sister, Mio Shirai. She stated that Asuka was like an additional big sister. SKY lacked confidence at the time and Asuka helped her improve in that category.
We (SKY & Asuka) were working together in a unit called Triple Tails. She was like a big sister to me and treated me well. At that time, I lacked confidence. To be honest, Asuka picked it up for me. Now, we say things like ‘baka’ to each other in Japanese, but I am a city girl from Tokyo, so I can’t win verbally when someone starts talking in Kansai dialect. But this title with the ‘IYO SKY’ plate on it won’t move from my waist.
The upcoming match against Asuka is going to be IYO’s second defense of the WWE Women’s Title. Written and audio coverage of the 9/22 SmackDown will be provided here on POST Wrestling.
