Laurel Anne Hardy

Laurel Saiko Yunokawa, performing under the names Laurel Anne Hardy and Saiko Yunokawa, is a Welsh professional wrestler currently based in Pro Wrestling FRONTIER and appearing in numerous companies including WARPED Wrestling where she currently holds the WARPED Tag Team Championship alongside Evangelista. She is also well-known from Global Extreme Wrestling, where she fought under the name Laurel Guerra as a member of The Asylum and won the 2011 GEW Torneo Extremo deathmatch event, and from Nasty Creations where she was the winner of the second Nasty 8 deathmatch tournament.

Early Life
Laurel Saiko Yunokawa was born in a caravan park just outside Rhyl in north Wales and her birth was never registered; until the age of 18, she wasn't listed in any official government records. Yunokawa and her younger half-siblings, Matthew and Zoe, moved around North Wales as children and Yunokawa claims she never attended school. She spent periods of her childhood living with her father in Japan, and until the age of 18 was known as both Laurel Yunokawa and Laurel Guerra (her mother's maiden name). She is primarily of Welsh, Japanese and Portuguese descent, and also has English, Irish, Spanish, Romani, Korean and Russian ancestry.

Training
From a young age Yunokawa was interested in both performance art and fighting. She cites seeing match between Dragon Takeshi and Arata Tanaka whilst visiting her father in Hokkaido, aged ten, as the moment she decided she wanted to become a wrestler. After backyard training she competed as a teenager in the local semi-legal fighting circuit of north Wales, competing under a variety of names and masks so that her mother wouldn't find out. At 18, she moved to Liverpool, England, to pursue formal training.

While in training, under British veterans Terry Hopkins and Mark "Ribeye" Reynolds, she made the acquaintance of a fellow trainee named Leanne Evangelista. Through Evangelista, Yunokawa met a number of Global Extreme Wrestling stars including Mark Chapman, Baby Dogg, Amy Ngoudje and Damien Synn. These contacts helped Yunokawa and Evangelista land tryout dark matches with GEW during their 2010 British tour, they competed in one singles match each and a tag match, under the respective names Laurel Guerra and Leanne Fontanilla. Although they lost all three matches, they impressed GEW's roster enough for a referral to the Battlegrounds Wrestling Academy in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, operated by former GEW World Champion Shane Tallin and his wife Nikki.

After moving to Ottawa and attending Battlegrounds, Yunokawa's first professional signing was with Baltimore-based indie Death Company Wrestling under the name Laurel Hardy, on the referral of Baby Dogg. However, she only made a few dark match appearances before the company folded.

Global Extreme Wrestling, Super Combat, Helter Skelter


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Hiatus, FRONTIER, WARPED and interfeds


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Personal Life
Yunokawa speaks nine languages to at least a conversational degree (Welsh, English, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Russian and Korean), but did not learned to read or write until adulthood. She now reads and writes Welsh and English, albeit with difficulty.

Yunokawa has two younger half-siblings on her mother's side, Matthew and Zoe, and several half- and step-siblings on her father's side.

She has one tattoo: a vibrant, multicoloured manta ray on her upper back.

Outside of wrestling, Yunokawa is involved with local theatre and street performance art groups. She is known to be a great fan of indie, synthpop, noise-pop and electroclash music.

Global Extreme Wrestling

 * GEW Torneo Extremo winner 2011

Nasty Creations

 * Nasty 8 II

WARPED Wrestling

 * 1 x WARPED Tag Team Championship (current, with Evangelista)

International Journal of Wrestling

 * IJW Rookie of the Year 2011

Wrestling Style
Yunokawa's unique wrestling style has drawn both praise and criticism; she has admitted to viewing wrestling more as a platform for artistic self-expression than a sporting competition, and cares more about creating new manoeuvres or combos and wowing the fans than pursuing victory. Her fighting has been criticised for lacking coherence and strategy, and for the fact she adds impractical or time-wasting flashy elements to even the most basic moves. However, her raw ability, the unpredictable variety of her moveset and her desire to put on a spectacle for the fans have drawn praise.

Signature & Finishing Moves

 * Dragon's Jaw / Dragon's Bite (Full nelson with vertical splits into split-leg bulldog)
 * Flower Plower - Crossarm front flip piledriver
 * Flower Plower Mk.II - Crossarm snap piledriver
 * Flower Plower Mk.III: Terror From Beneath! – Straightjacket front flip piledriver
 * Mass Queraid – Slingshot front flip split kick to two opponents
 * Rest On Your Laurels - Half nelson lift flipped into sitout fisherman buster
 * Party Hardy - Labai throw followed by shining enzuigiri
 * Party Hardy: The Hangover – Fisherman suplex lift flipped into sitout powerbomb
 * Stronger Than Dirt – Corkscrew shooting star elbow drop
 * The Poseidon Misadventure – Diving front flip leg drop to doubled over opponent
 * Armbar DDT
 * Capoiera kicks
 * Diving senton leg drop
 * Full nelson facebuster
 * Hadouken
 * Headbutt
 * Pele kick
 * Rolling thunder
 * Roundoff backflip corner back splash
 * Slingshot dropkick
 * Spear

Theme Songs

 * Dirty Trip - Air (local indies)
 * Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia) - The Flaming Lips (local indies, special events, FRONTLINE)
 * Giga Dance - Deerhoof (Battlegrounds)
 * Wicker Whatnots - The Fiery Furnaces (Battlegrounds, when teaming with Leanne Fontaine)
 * Ave Maria - Andain (DCW)
 * Cum On Feel The Noize - Misako Honjoh (GEW)
 * Asylum of the Human Predator - Hell Within (GEW, as part of The Asylum)
 * Super Duper Rescue Heads ! - Deerhoof Nasty Creations, HSW)
 * Sci-Fi Wasabi - Cibo Matto - (pwF, Nasty Creations)
 * Candy Castle - Glass Candy (WARPED Wrestling, HEW)

Nicknames

 * Off-White Trash
 * Variations on The Living, Breathing, Most Must-See Live Installation Event of the Century

Catchphrases

 * "Are they a band?"
 * "Stay fabulous."

Managers

 * Serena Raine
 * Noumenon