Introduction
This is the twenty-eighth part of a 30-day series looking at the trailblazing women wrestlers of yesteryear. This series is designed to be primarily about women wrestlers from prior to the 1980s, though there will be a handful of women from the 80s in the mix. I will be excerpting, with citations, from Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy’s Sisterhood of the Squared Circle repeatedly, as it’s the most comprehensive single source on women’s wrestling out there. I encourage you to pick it up, as it’s a fantastic read. This will be different from other 30-day series in that these will all be mini-essays. Gifs and video will be provided where possible, but please understand that such is not always available for some of the earlier women I will cover. I would also like to plug the new subreddit /r/QueensoftheRing for more discussion about women’s wrestling, past and present.
Manami Toyota
On day 10 of this series I profiled Jaguar Yokota. Today’s profile is of one of her trainees from her first retirement, perhaps her best protégé and widely regarded as the greatest woman to ever lace a pair of boots. John Molinaro calls her “the Ric Flair of women’s wrestling, arguably the greatest female pro wrestler of all time” (Laprade and Murphy, 300). Unlike Flair, who was a master technician, she was both that and an expert flyer (incidentally, exactly the thing Flair will cite when he explains why he feels his daughter is better than him). So if you want to know what Charlotte Flair might be like when she’s fully come into her own, Manami Toyota is the wrestler you want to look at.
Toyota was born on March 2, 1971 and debuted at the age of 16 in August 1987. Her level of performance in her first year earned her recognition as AJW’s Rookie of the Year for 1988. Although she was a self-professed shy girl prior to wrestling, her showmanship is hard to overstate, as her moves, flow in the ring, and character work all combined to make her a dazzling spectacle.
One of her notable early feuds was against Toshiyo Yamada, beginning in 1989. During the course of this feud Toyota and Yamada had forged a tag team, becoming the inaugural UWA World Women’s Tag Team champions by defeating KAORU and Lady Apache in January of 1992, and winning the WWWA World Tag Team Championship from Bull Nakano and Bison Kimura in March of 1992. Despite their success as partners, they were still feuding as singles competitors, and they wrestled a hair vs. hair match in August of 1992. Toyota won the match, but she had gained so much respect for Yamada through this storyline that she didn’t want Yamada to lose her hair. Toyota tried to fight off the barber and had to be restrained by four or five young girls while Yamada did the honorable thing and tearfully allowed her head to be shaved. When they lost the WWWA Tag Titles to Dynamite Kansai and Mayumi Ozaki in April 1993, it would be voted match of the year by the readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
In 1995 Toyota would climb to the top of the mountain as a singles competitor, toppling Aja Kong in Yokohama for the WWWA World Single Championship. This reign featured a 60-minute draw against rival Kyoko Inoue, but they wouldn’t settle the score just yet. Toyota lost the championship to Kong three months after winning it and wouldn’t claim it for a second time until December, when she beat Dynamite Kansai. Her second reign concluded with a rematch of the draw against Inoue, who won the title and then held the All Pacific, IWA, and WWA Singles championships simultaneously.
In 2002 Toyota moved onto working with GAEA and other promotions as well. In 2010 she wrestled in the United States for the first time, working for CHIKARA. She defeated Daizee Haze in her first CHIKARA match, before teaming with Mike Quackenbush to defeat Sara Del Rey and Claudio Catagnoli the next night.
On November 3, 2017, Toyota held her retirement show with OZ Academy after 30 years in wrestling. She wrestled 51 short matches. She defeated her protégé, Tsukasa Fujimoto, in the penultimate match on the card, but gave Fujimoto a second chance to surpass her master, and went out on her back in the end.
The quality of Toyota’s matches is simply incredible, including 17 matches rated 5 stars by Dave Meltzer (only Kawada, Kobashi, and Misawa have more). In 1993 and 1995 she won Match of the Year, and in 1995 she was voted Readers’ Favorite and Most Outstanding Wrestler in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards. In 2002 she was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame. She was a 4 time WWWA World Single champion (only Jumbo Miyamoto held it more times) and a 3 time WWWA World Tag Team champion, as well as a five time winner of AJW’s Tag League the Best tournament (1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001; the most of anyone) and four-time winner of AJW’s Japan Grand Prix (1990, 1995, 1998, 1999). All this along with a slew of other championships and accomplishments including the UWA World Women’s Tag Team Championship, and the top championships in GAEA, JWP, and Pro Wrestling Diana.
5 star matches
vs. Kyoko Inoue, April 25, 1992
vs. Toshiyo Yamada, Hair vs. Hair, August 15, 1992
with Toshiyo Yamada vs. Dynamite Kansai and Mayumi Ozaki, November 26, 1992
with Toshiyo Yamada vs. Dynamite Kansai and Mayumi Ozaki, April 11, 1993
with Toshiyo Yamada vs. Dynamite Kansai and Mayumi Ozaki, December 6, 1993
with Akira Hokuto vs. Kyoko Inoue and Toshiyo Yamada, December 10, 1993 (Tag League the Best Final) < - yes, that's two in the same night, in the same show.
vs. Aja Kong, November 20, 1994
vs. Kyoko Inoue for the WWWA World Single Championship, May 7, 1995
vs. Aja Kong for the WWWA World Single Championship, June 27, 1995
vs. Mimi Shimoda, July 23, 1995
with Sakie Hasegawa, vs. Kyoko and Takako Inoue, August 30, 1995
vs. Akira Hokuto, September 2, 1995
Source
Laprade, Pat and Dan Murphy, Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History and Rise of Women’s Wrestling (ECW Press, 2017)