Bull Nakano is putting her whole career on paper. The WWE Hall of Famer announced on X that her autobiography, Bull Nakano Autobiography: Monster, will be published by Wani Books on January 8, 2027, which is also her 59th birthday.
Nakano pitched the book as an unfiltered account, written three decades after she left the ring. She said it covers “the fun times, the painful ones, and the things I can only talk about now,” and that she has “written it all with complete honesty” (translated from Japanese).
The date carries extra weight. January 8 is also when Nakano held her formal retirement show at Tokyo Dome City Hall in 2012, more than a decade after injuries ended her in-ring career in 1997.
What the book covers
Nakano says the book revisits her years in Gokuaku Domei, the heel stable led by Dump Matsumoto, and Gokumon-to, the faction she formed in 1988 after Matsumoto retired. It also takes on her war with Aja Kong, her steel cage deathmatches and her run in the United States.
That cage history is joshi legend. In their November 1990 cage match, Nakano came off the top of a roughly four-meter cage with a guillotine drop, a spot she recreated on wires at her 2012 retirement ceremony. Kong later ended Nakano’s WWWA World Championship reign in November 1992.
Her American chapter includes a WWF Women’s Championship win over Alundra Blayze in November 1994. Nakano wrote that the book is her answer to “what really happened behind the glamorous ring,” including what she was truly fighting against.
Life after wrestling
Nakano also promises to open up without holding back about her life after retirement. She moved to the U.S. to chase a pro golf career but didn’t pass the pro test, married kickboxer Daisuke Aoki in 2010 and ran her own restaurant. In 2020, she was hospitalized with alcoholic cirrhosis, an ordeal she has since discussed publicly.
This isn’t her first memoir. Her earlier autobiography, Kanaami no Seishun, followed her from a bullied kid through the hazing of All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling to the top of the card. Monster covers far more ground, all the way through her induction into the 2024 WWE Hall of Fame.
Wani Books also published fellow AJW veteran Yumiko Hotta’s autobiography last year. Nakano dedicated Monster to the fans who lived through her era and to everyone supporting women’s wrestling today.
