IYO SKY goes by many names. Long time fans will know her as Io Shirai, WWE fans will sometimes call her the "Genius of the Sky," and many people will call her arguably the best wrestler walking the planet today.For the past 19 years, SKY has rose through the wrestling world to achieve things that some women could only dream of. She's a Grand Slam Champion in both STARDOM and WWE, became one of the women to bring Joshi wrestling back to the forefront of the Japanese scene, and has reached a level of quality with her matches that you can always rely on her to produce one of, if not the best match on whatever show she is on. To put it simply, there are very few wrestlers in the business today that can say that they are on the level of IYO SKY.Throughout International Women's Month, we have cherry-picked some of the most popular female athletes in the business today and celebrated their greatest matches. IYO SKY has already featured as an opponent for some of the women already covered, but now it's time to see if those matches feature here because if we can be honest, SKY has been involved in some of the greatest matches of the century so far, so narrowing this list down to a "fab five" was very difficult.Because of this, some honorable mentions need some recognition.Both of SKY's matches for Marigold against Utami Hayashishita and Mayu Iwatani are blistering packages of action. Her involvement in the Black Lotus Triad vs. Pentagon Dark bout from Lucha Underground is the best part of what was an already great match, and her tag team match as part of Thunder Rock alongside the aforementioned Iwatani where they face off with Meiko Satomura and Kairi Hojo (Kairi Sane to WWE fans) is one of the best tag team matches you will ever see.With all of that out of the way, let's take to the skies and shine a spotlight on the five greatest matches in the career of IYO SKY!
The ace of STARDOM taking on the ace/creator of Sendai Girls, this will be alright won't it?By the mid-2010s, Io Shirai had earned herself a reputation for legitimately one of the best wrestlers in the world, and was leading the new wave of Joshi wrestling. The 2000s was a dark period for Joshi as both All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling and GAEA ceased operations, legends of the previous era started retiring left, right, and center, and wrestling as a whole took a downturn in interest during this time. With companies like STARDOM, Joshi wrestling rose to prominence once again and Shirai was at the forefront of that, but in 2015, the World of STARDOM Championship was around the waist of a true Joshi icon, the original final boss before The Rock came along, Meiko Satomura.Satomura took the title from Shirai's close friend Kairi Hojo, and later defended it against another close friend of Shirai's in Mayu Iwatani. Shirai wanted to bring the title back to STARDOM as Satomura was mainly working in Sendai Girls, a promotion Satomura herself founded and reigned over as world champion. The feud between Satomura and Shirai needed a line drawing under it and the date was set, December 23, 2015, at the legendary Korakuen Hall in Tokyo at STARDOM's final event of the year, Shirai vs. Satomura.To say that this match is a classic would be an understatement. It isn't the easiest to find as STARDOM didn't have a proper streaming service at the time, but when you do eventually find it, it's like you've won the lottery. Shirai refuses Satomura's handshake at the start, setting the tone for the entire match, which plays out in an almost teacher vs. student sort of battle. Satomura is ferocious with her strikes, particularly her kicks, and Shirai sells them as if she's been shot out of a cannon. But Shirai doesn't stop throughout this whole thing, even when her aerial offense comes back to haunt her, result in some nasty spills.These two compliment each other perfectly, with Shirai being the "Genius of the Sky" that we know her to be today, flying all over the building at times to keep herself one step ahead of the veteran. However, Satomura beats the life out of Shirai at times, and even ties her up in submissions to the point where you think Shirai might end up passing out. In the end, Shirai's constant onslaught of moves leads to her channeling her friends in Hojo and Iwatani, before landing her trademark Moonsault for the win. She earns the respect of Satomura, solidifies herself as the queen of STARDOM, and stands tall at the end of one of the best matches of the 21st century.
After her match with Meiko Satomura, Io Shirai celebrated her victory with the Heisei-gun stable in the ring, as well as Kairi Hojo who she was extremely close with. Shirai was cutting a promo and offered the microphone to Mayu Iwatani, but Hojo decided to take the microphone for herself, thanking Shirai for bringing the World of STARDOM Championship back to the company. Hojo paid her respects to her friend, but did make sure to note that she wanted to be the first challenger to Shirai's newly won title, to which Shirai accepted, confirming the match for the company's fifth anniversary event. Yes, two of IYO SKY's greatest ever matches took place within one month of each other.Given that this match took place one month after the match with Satomura, it's interesting to see how Shirai adapts when facing a much more erratic opponent like Hojo. Unlike her title win that saw an intense stare-down to start, Hojo bullrushes Shirai and the action basically doesn't stop for the first five minutes. For a woman known for being the "Genius of the Sky," Shirai is the one who has to stop the absolute tornado that is Hojo throughout this match, and seeing Shirai essentially be the Goliath to Hojo's David at times is particularly funny considering Shirai is just a shade taller than five footlong Subways stacked on top of each other.Hojo is also to adapt to Shirai's offense in ways that Satomura couldn't. When Shirai takes Hojo into the crowd to do a Moonsault off one of the walkways, Hojo sees it coming, hides, and sneaks up on the champion to put herself in position for a Flying Clothesline off that same ledge. It's little details like this that make this match, and all of the bouts these two would have, so entertaining as Shirai was undoubtedly the favorite, but Hojo was someone who had the IQ to work Shirai's strengths to her own advantage.In the end, it's Hojo's desperation in the closing stretch that tips over the edge from being a great main event to a must-see spectacular. Literally clinging to Shirai's leg as the champion is going for a Moonsault as she literally doesn't have the energy to get up and knows what's coming, but still chooses to fight until the very last moment. This match is dangerously close to reaching the 30 minute time limit, a testament to how determined Hojo was to survive as she just would not stay down, but the champion maintains her composure and gets the win in the final 30 seconds. A show of respect afterwards from Shirai to Hojo is well earned, and you knew that the next time these two women faced off, there was every chance that the outcome might be different. This one's also a bit difficult to find, but seek it out if you can, it's an absolute firecracker of a match.
18 months after her big victory over Meiko Satomura, Io Shirai is still the World of STARDOM Champion, but the fact that she is one piece should have been considered a borderline miracle. She was dangerously close to surpassing the 602 day record for longest reign as World of STARDOM Champion held by Nanae Takahashi, but the staggering 14 title defenses during her 546 day reign left Shirai battered and wounded, especially after suffering a neck injury against Toni Storm that would ultimately postpone her move to WWE by an entire year. Shirai was on the ropes already, and it didn't help that her 15th title defense would be against one of her closest friends who knew her like the back of her hand, Mayu Iwatani.Iwatani had already challenged Shirai twice during this reign, with Shirai getting her hand raised at the end of both bouts. However, each time you could sense that Iwatani had learned something in defeat, meaning that depending on when the third match takes place, Iwatani would have the best possible chance of dethroning the seemingly unstoppable "Genius of the Sky," and that's exactly what happens.By this point in the title reign, Shirai had morphed more into a dominant heel who was just too good to boo, effectively using her hard-hitting offense to generate heat as the babyfaces she was facing had so much energy that you couldn't help but cheer for them. Iwatani on the other hand knew that she had an ace up her sleeve, her Dragon Suplex. If Iwatani could land that, it could be curtains for the already beaten up champion, but Shirai did not go gently into that good night as she pummelled Iwatani from pillar to post, and even used Iwatani's own Dragon Suplex against her in the closing moments, as well as Kairi Hojo's Insane Elbow Drop.However, much like the Toni Storm match where the match had to be briefly stopped to check on Shirai's neck, the closing stretch was more about if the champion could reach the time limit and escape with a draw, but the challenger wasn't having it. Iwatani arguably became more aggressive after the restart, hitting a Piledriver and three Dragon Suplexes to finally put Shirai down for the victory. Ever the sportswoman, Shirai offered to put Iwatani's newly won title around her waist as a show of respect, only for the moment to become increasingly awkward as Shirai couldn't fasten the straps, leading to Shirai hilariously shout "MAYU! YOU'RE TOO SKINNY!"Any one of the the Shirai/Iwatani trilogy could have featured in this spot, but the cathartic moment of Iwatani being the one to dethrone Shirai is too good to pass up on, and another example of why STARDOM was firing on all cylinders during the 2010s. An absolute must-see match that would have been Shirai's swan song in Japan had she not gotten hurt two months earlier.
The best way to describe WWE WrestleMania 41 is that it was like a rollercoaster ride. It had a slow start, gradually got better, peaked right in the middle, started to slow down, and finished with Travis Scott stuck in your head for the rest of spring. Some would argue that the peak of WrestleMania 41 was the Triple Threat Match between CM Punk, Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins in the main event of night one, but the actual peak of the event came at the beginning of night two with another three-way dance.The WWE Women's World Championship direction heading into the event was one that was never going to disappoint. Originally, people believed that it would be Rhea Ripley vs. Bianca Belair, which would have been great, but then IYO SKY won the title from Ripley at the beginning of March, changing the direction to SKY vs. Belair, another excellent choice. Not one to be left out of a major match at WrestleMania, Ripley decided to insert herself back in the title picture, and just like that, we had ourselves a Triple Threat Match between SKY, Ripley, and Belair.Is this the greatest women's match in WrestleMania history? Potentially yes, and if you wanted to make the argument that this is the greatest women's match in WWE history, there wouldn't be a lot of people arguing with you. There is absolutely no wasted motion here as the match runs for less than 15 minutes, which some people would claim to be insulting given the star power in the match. However, just because a match is long, doesn't make it good, and the fact that everything in this match is executed so perfectly in such a short space of time really shows just how special the three women involved are.Ripley has the power, SKY has the high-flying, and Belair has that nice middle ground covered where she can hit a KOD on someone like Ripley while also being able to execute a picture perfect 450 Splash. They all complimented each other so well and sprinted through all of their offense, meaning that the crowd didn't have a chance to take their seats at any point in this match. There were some great false finishes, particularly in the closing stretch, with Ripley being genuinely shocked about someone actually kicking out of the Riptide. In the end, Belair hits the KOD on Ripley, folds her up, only for SKY to absolutely flatten the pair of them with her Over The Moonsault to escape with the victory.2025 was a year where WWE's in ring product was largely carried by the female side of the company, and three of the best showed out on the grandest stage of them all. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and watch it now.
As mentioned earlier, 2025 belonged to the women of WWE when it came to an in-ring standpoint, making it the perfect time for the company to revive the Evolution event for the first time since 2018.The show itself didn't have it easy in terms of build up and scheduling, originally slated to take place on July 5 in Uncasville, Connecticut, Evolution 2025 was officially moved to July 13 in Atlanta, Georgia, the same day as a Beyonce concert that happened across the street, and the same weekend as Goldberg's retirement match, WWE NXT Great American Bash, and AEW All In Texas. Despite all of that, Evolution 2025 was able to stand out and be one of the best WWE shows in recent memory, and the main event is a major reason for that.Regardless of how you feel about the build up, with IYO SKY basically just saying to Rhea Ripley "I respect you, therefore I will let you challenge me," this match is one of the best main events to WWE Premium Live Event/pay-per-view that you will find anywhere. Compared to the WrestleMania 41 match, this has a lot more meat on the bone as SKY and Ripley have a lot more time to work with, and with Bianca Belair not in the mix due to her finger deciding to go into business for itself, everything breathes a lot more when its just a straight singles match.It's the power against the speed and both women go above and beyond to work that WWE main event style, but they both do it so well. Even the referee going down doesn't hamper this match as it can lead to a lot of overbooking if done wrong, but the action elevates even more as SKY and Ripley brawl into the crowd. SKY's huge Crossbody off the top of the very strategically placed equipment boxes is glorious, the wide shot on the replay makes it look like she just dove into a gigantic hole.You would think that would lead to a huge crescendo full of false finishes and finisher kickouts, and we do get some of that until a new player enters the game at the last possible moment. In the last two minutes, Naomi runs down, cashes in her Money in the Bank briefcase to the surprise of everyone as it was teased that she would be going after Tiffany Stratton. With it now being a Triple Threat Match, Naomi uses the no disqualifications stipulation to blast Ripley in the head with her case, hit the Split-Legged Moonsault on SKY and pull off an all-time great heist. Even without the cash-in, this match would have easily made it onto this list, and both SKY and Ripley would have been deserving winners. However, the introduction of Naomi in the dying embers tips this one over the WrestleMania 41 match for me personally, and was a thrilling way to end a thrilling weekend of wrestling.
