Donna Del Mondo is one of Stardom’s most dominant and popular factions today and in the company’s history. As of writing this, the group is made up of Giulia, Maika, Thekla, and Mai Sakurai.
Donna Del Mondo is italian for “Women of The World”, a nod to the Giulia’s italian heritage. Non Stardom fans might already be very familiar with Giulia, the faction's leader, as she is the current NJPW Strong Women’s Champion.
Throughout the three years of the group's existence, people have joined and left the group and championships have been won. Let’s take a look back at the groups history.
The Start:
Giulia started her wrestling career in 2017 in the joshi company Ice Ribbon. In October 2019, she would announce her departure from the company to wrestle for Stardom. This was a bit of a controversial move as the people in Ice Ribbon didn’t know she was leaving and to wrestle for Stardom on top of that.
Despite the drama, her signing to Stardom would be a great investment for the company. Many had already hailed Giulia as a future star despite her not wrestling for long. She just has an aura and superstar look about her.
Giulia would announce after a few weeks that she would form her own faction to which surprised many as Giulia didn’t have any friends on the roster.
On January 14th, 2020, Giulia made a visit to the joshi promotion “Just Tap Out”. On that show, Future of Stardom Champion Utami Hayashishita defended and retained her title against Maika. Maika lost that match but she didn’t leave empty handed as Giulia had come out to ask her to join her new faction in Stardom.
Maika, trained by Taka Michinoku, had started wrestling only in 2019 but had endless potential for a rookie. With a judo background, Maika has a great mix of grappling and powerhouse moves in her arsenal.
About a week later, we would find the third member of this group as Giulia and Maika had a 6 woman tag match scheduled. The third woman was someone else Giulia would recruit from outside of Stardom: Syuri.
Syuri already had a solid career before joining Stardom as a former kick boxer and martial artist and had also performed in many other promotions such as Sendai Girls, OZ Academy, Hustle, CMLL, SMASH and more. Unlike Maika and Giulia who only had a few years of wrestling under their belt, Syuri had about twelve as she debuted in 2008.
Syuri is a shoot fighter with some scary kicks and you’ll see her kickboxing history come into play in her wrestling style.
The group would assert their dominance after winning the Artist of Stardom championships, the company's trios titles, about a month into being a team. More success would follow the group as Giulia won that year's Cinderella Tournament as well.
DDM would continue to get bigger as Giulia teased a fourth member to join her faction. An 8 woman tag match was set for DDM vs STARS for June 21st, 2020. The mystery member was revealed to be former Actwres girl’Z wrestler, Himeka.
Before becoming a wrestler, Himeka was a singer and a part of the idol group, THROUGH SKILLS. They was different from your typical idol group however as they incorporated mean words into their performanes. During songs, the audience would shout back an insult that could be used against the idols. Himeka’s word was “Jumbo” as she was 5’7 and clearly towered over her peers. It was a way to take back the power of those words and was the idea of the group's creator who had experience with online trolls themselves. The Jumbo mantra would follow Himeka into her wrestling career as well.
THROUGH SKILLS performed at All Japan Pro Wrestling and this is how Himeka became a fan of pro wrestling. So when the idol group disbanded in 2017, Himeka had already found her new calling.
Himeka made her wrestling debut in 2017 in Actwres girl’z but also wrestled in other companies such as WAVE and Diana. Though Himeka has a powerhouse look to her, she doesn’t adhere to your stereotypical big and strong bully archetype that usually comes with tall women like her. Himeka is charismatic and charming. She wears lolita style gear and her nickname is “Jumbo Princess”, mixing a strong word with a delicate word. She even says “Big is Cute!"
While all the members of DDM got along, Maika and Himeka were way more close than any of the other members. And while their relationship had hints of romance in it, Maika once even forced a wedding ring on Himeka's hand, the two were great tag team mates and would find success as a team.
At Stardom Cinderella Summer on July 26, 2020, Giulia won the Wonder of Stardom Championship which was Stardom’s second most important belt. It was another accolade for DDM and showed that Giulia was clearly going to be one of their top stars.
The fifth member of what I would call the “OG” DDM would be Natsupoi. She made her debut on October 3rd, 2020.
While Natsupoi did follow the trend of the group being filled with “outsiders”, Natsupoi had wrestled for the company before in 2016 but before coming back to Stardom had wrestled for various joshi promotions including TJPW.
While the group was filled with grapplers, powerhouses and hard hitters, Natsupoi was a small, high speed wrestler. She garnered the nickname, “High Speed Fairy”. Though she is only 4’11, Natsupoi is an intriguing character and is an exciting watch in the ring!
During this reign as a five member faction, the group garnered a lot of success. Syuri would win the SWA Championship, Maika would win the future Stardom of championship, Himeka and Maika would win the goddess of Stardom Championships, Natsupoi won the high speed championship, and Maika, Natsupoi and Himeka won the Artist of Stardom championships.
At Stardom All Star Dream Cinderella on March 3, 2021, every single member of the group held a championship for that one night. This was short lived as Giulia lost her Wonder of Stardom championship (and hair) to Tam Nakano that night. Regardless, it was a really cool moment for the group.
There was also an inter stable match where Maika and Himeka lost their Goddess belts to Giulia and Syuri. And while you'd assume a match like this might cause tension in a group, DDM were able to walk away still as close team mates and with even more respect with eachother.
Change:
The group wouldn’t add any more new people for over a year and some months. However, a shift happened at the beginning of 2022.
A accolade I didn’t mention above was Syuri winning the top belt in Stardom: the World of Stardom championship. And while Syuri was now rising in popularity and now the companies top star, changes were happening in DDM.
The new year would also bring in new people as Giulia decided to bring in more folks to DDM at Stardom Awards on January 3, 2022. The weeks before this night, there were two masked folks who kept attacking different wrestlers. They would reveal themselves as MIRAI and Thekla.
Thekla is an Austrian born wrestler who started her career in 2018. She’s competed in both the Austrian and Japanese independent scene but wrestled in Ice Ribbon for the majority of her career prior to Stardom. The “Toxic Spider” is one of Stardom’s most charismatic and exciting wrestlers. She is a high speed wrestler and is an entertaining chaotic force in the ring.
MIRAI left TJPW in August of 2021. She made her wrestling debut there as well in 2019. MIRAI was someone with a bunch of untapped potential and perhaps a change of scenery was needed to help her unlock it. MIRAI has a great powerhouse style with a very impressive lariat.
At Stardom in Osaka on February 12, 2022 DDM would grow even larger as Giulia teamed up with Thekla and Mirai to defeat Cosmic Angels’ Tam Nakano, Unagi Sayaka and Mai Sakurai in a six-woman tag team match.
Cosmic Angels was a group filled with idols like wrestlers who dance to the ring and pose for pictures. The group was led by Tam Nakano, Giulia’s ultimate rival and who she lost her hair to.
Giulia noticed Mai wasn’t really accomplishing anything with the group and asked her if she wanted to dance, or if she wanted to wrestle. Mai wanted to wrestle, so she left Cosmic Angels to join DDM.
Mai Sakurai started wrestling in 2020. She was in Stardom very early into her career and had her first match there in August 2021. Her switch to DDM was a shocking decision, but absolutely needed for her career. She wasn’t having much success in Cosmic Angels, but under Giulia’s leadership, perhaps she could achieve more.
Mai’s addition to the group would raise the group's numbers to 8. But in a group with that many people, some were bound to feel overshadowed. As said before, Syuri had won the top championship in Stardom. Being the top champion and in a group, Syuri felt as if she was in Giulia’s shadow and she needed to branch out on her own. So on March 21, 2022, at Stardom in Nagoya, after they won their match that night together, Syuri disbanded her and Giulia’s tag team.
Before this, the two already had a match scheduled for Syuri’s red belt at Stardom World Climax on March 26th, 2022. Syuri was successful in retaining her title, and confirmed she would leave DDM to start her own faction.
On Stardom Golden Week Fight Tour on May 5, 2022, MIRAI would show up after Syuri’s match and announce she was leaving DDM and wanted to follow Syuri to her new group. MIRAI was the 2nd member to leave and in under 2 months.
And the group would continue to lose members. The next one being the most devastating one yet.
At Mid Summer Champions on July 9, 2022, it was an elimination tag match between DDM’s Giulia, Maika, Himeka, Natsupoi and Mai Sakurai versus Cosmic Angel’s Tam Nakano, Unagi Sayaka, Mina Shirakawa, Saki and Hikari Shimizu.
It was Giulia and Natsupoi left against Tam Nakano. In a shocking turn of events, Natsupoi would betray her team and superkick Giulia, losing the match for DDM.
Natsupoi tearfully said she was leaving DDM to join Cosmic Angels as she had a long history with Tam Nakano that I can’t possibly go over in this article and was tired of basically being DDM's pet. It was very emotional and seeing Thekla cry still hurts me.
Though they lost 3 members in 2022, they still remained relatively strong and continued to be one of Stardom’s most popular group. And plus, Giulia would challenge Syuri one more time for the red belt at Stardom Dream Queendom 2 on December 29, 2022 where she would be victorious. The match between them was a vicious, grueling and hard hitting affair but showed just how far both woman had come from their early days together in the company.
Giulia winning was not only a new start for her, but for DDM and Stardom as a whole!
Now:
When Giulia won the red belt, people predicted her to hold it for a very long time. She’s one of the biggest stars in Japan right now and could become a world wide name very soon.
At Stardom’s biggest show All Star Grand Queendom on April 23, 2023, Giulia would face her greatest rival Tam Nakano once again and put her title on the line. She lost. While four months isn’t awfully short, it wasn’t the long and dominating reign many were expecting.
Also at that show, Himeka had her retirement match against her best friend, fellow faction member and maybe lover, Maika in a tearful and emotional match. Ever since this Maika hasn't been the same. She's dyed her hair bright red and even said she was now a "different Maika". Perhaps the loss of Himeka has affected her.
But the group is still going strong and Mai, Thekla and Giulia have brought the Artist of Stardom belts back to DDM.
Thekla is still really cool and charismatic. Mai has adapted a “fair lady” gimmick that's gotten her super over where she berates the audience for being poor and commoners. Maika has been teaming up with Suzu Suzuki and Mei Seira and the trio has had some success when they do team up. It’ll be interesting to see where that goes for Maika.
And Giulia has been capturing the attention of international fans and has made her intentions to wrestle overseas known. This means many new fans will be introduced to the badass and strong group that is Donna Del Mondo.
Despite losing members, DDM is one of the most cohesive factions as they have far less inner circle drama than other Stardom factions. They rarely lose when teaming up. They close off most house shows. Their reign of dominance will continue as long as they want.
If you’d like to watch some match recommendations, check out Paladin Writing's piece where she gives her thoughts on some of DDM's best matches!
Arrivederci!
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