Japanese Region, Osaka Subregion, First Round: (6) June Byers vs (11) Leilani Kai

This is a first round match in the Japanese region. It is a standard wrestling match. It will be held at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka City, Osaka, Japan.





#6 June Byers​

VS. ​

​

#11 Leilani Kai ​

There will be 1 day of discussion before the poll opens. It will remain open for 2 days. Spam rules will apply. In case of a tie the winner will be decided based upon how many people have made a case for them in the discussion thread. One per each poster.

Who wins the match up?

 

June Byers is one of the greatest women's champions of all time. She took the title off Mildred Burke and basically ended her 20 years of dominating the sport. She was very popular, often times her matches would steal headlines in the papers away from the men. And she was working in the same time period as such legendary titans as Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers, Verne Gagne, and Gorgeous George. As a worker and a name she was considered to be "up there" with them, in a general sense.

While there had been plenty of screw jobs before, the match she had against Burke turned into a shoot and Byers basically stole the title. This was one of the times when real life was stranger than fiction. The bad blood that Byers/Wolfe/Burke had for each other carried over into multiple lawsuits and public slandering at every turn. Even the likes of Russo couldn't have written a story that juicy. And it created allot of buzz for the industry.

Leilani Kai was a good champion during the resurgence of women's wrestling in the 80's and was one of Moolah's proteges, but she doesn't compare to one of the pioneers that went on to dominate the sport on nearly the level that Burke and Moolah had done before.

June Byers should win here comfortably.

 

Considering Kai like Byers had a very long NWA women's world championship run toward the twilight of her career, and she too was never actually defeated for that title, she could be considered close in this conversation. But the prestige of the belt wasn't worth a fraction a dozen years ago as it was when Byers controversially ended Mildred Burke's reign.

Kai was never actually featured as well as she could've been in her first national run with WWE, despite being notable for carrying the women's belt into the first WrestleMania. Here reign was a footnote between Wendy Richter's long stint as the Hogan of mid-80s WWE women's wrestling. Kai only had her reign as a means of giving Wendy the big moment of winning the belt at WM1.

Byers' legendary status and influence clearly trump a solid career by Leilani.