Wrestling Opinions/Rants

Io Shirai To IYO SKY: What Just Happened?

Alright let me get this off my chest: honestly, I'm very tired of WWE just changing NXT Originals' names to something stupid like Erik and Ivar, The Viking Raiders, or, when they debuted in 2019, the Viking Experience.

Many more would fall into that new rite of passage: Matt Riddle, Keith Lee, Raquel Gonzalez, Riddick Moss, Pete Dunne, Marcel Barthel, WALTER, and, not recently, Io Shirai.

To me, "IYO SKY" is a knockoff version of her original ring name and to hear that name makes me cringe. Not just that, whenever they say that ring name, I would imitate "Broken" Matt Hardy from IMPACT in 2016, and repeat this, no matter how annoyed my girl is, "That is not her name".

Do any of you find it petty? It could be, but at least I watched enough episodes of NXT to remember her ring name and not call her anything else though and I know how to be a wrestling fan instead of claiming to be one: act smart, memorize the names, don't give a shit about competition, and enjoy wrestling no matter what style it is.

Like seriously, I have this pfp for a reason and why I have this thing saying "I SIMP FOR IO". I do simp her because her name is what made her the best women's wrestler in the world. She built that name from the ground up and for WWE to let her keep the name when she arrived in NXT because of how important it was, but when she gets called up and her name is changed, to me, that's disrespectful to,  not just Masami Odate, the woman behind the wrestler, but the legacy she's built for almost 15 years.

"Io Shirai" is a name that I grew up with and I can't call her "IYO SKY" because I just find that name cringey and forgettable. People might troll me and might find this as a rant, that I'm a crybaby, and how I'm not really a wrestling fan, but I'm just explaining how I hate the name and why it should be reverted back to the original.

I'm really, deeply sorry if I wasted anyone's time with this, I just have to get it all out so I don't have to worry about it as a burden anymore.

Look, I have no problem with name changes, they can shorten the names like Tomasso Ciampa to Ciampa, which can be good because that's how they'd like to be called sometimes, but if you change the name as a whole, you're asking people to forget about who you are and what you've done throughout your career.

Ring names are important to a wrestler and they have to define that gimmick/character. If the name's changed, then what's the point of the wrestler's existence? This is something that should be considered in today's wrestling because if you have a ring name, and you get it very popular, then you change it, it affects not just your character, but your career and the fans' intelligence.

If you guys agree with what I said, please let me know what you think because I just think Shirai's name change is controversial and what I said above is explanatory enough.

One more thing, her real ring name is "Io Shirai", it will never be IYO SKY to me. And with me repeating "That is not her name" so many times, the only time I'll stop saying that is when I'm dead.