This one is a little hard to take seriously because of who it is. But anyway, Weekly Pro reports that wrestler is Sakura Hirota, who is leaving WAVE to run for a seat in the House Of Councilors in Aichi Prefecture. Hirota debuted in GAEA Japan in 1996 then retired in 2005 when the promotion closed, but unretired in 2009 and in recent years has been a comedy wrestler, often impersonating various wrestlers-male and female-under the ring bane Shin Sakura Hirota, but has been based in WAVE. She is now leaving that promotion but it’s not known if she is retiring again.
Wrestlers do have a track record of becoming politicians in Japan, most notably Hiroshi Hase who served in the upper house of the Diet (Japan’s version of Congress in the US) while wrestling in All-Japan, the late Osamu Nishimura who served in various local and national roles, and also Shinichiro Kawamatsu who reversed the roles as a politician in Tokyo who has appeared a few times in DDT over the last couple years. And let’s not forget Atsushi Onita double-dipping.
