[1993-08-21-AJW-Grand Prix] Manami Toyota vs Akira Hokuto

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Great match! Hokuto's selling is on a completely different level from everyone else in Joshi. I love how she sells Toyota's dropkicks by grabbing her jaw. Her injuries are always a bullseye, and after making a good early showing, Toyota gets the chance to work on her taped up knee. Hokuto finally mounts a comeback and dishes out quite the beating, including piledriving Toyota on the floor a couple of times. Both do some nice dives to the floor, which are totally made by the selling as if something terrible has happened. They feel like the most important dives ever. Some of the best nearfalls you'll ever see, including Hokuto countering the straitjacket suplex into a victory roll. Hokuto finally secures the win in the end. Toyota's stock has risen considerably for me in watching the '93 yearbook. She does things that annoy me at times, but she has quite a few strengths too.

[NitroFan]

i know toyota will be toyota (and that i'm 2.5 years late to this particular party, or lack thereof), but getting piledriven on the floor twice and literally less than one minute later doing an inside-out dive followed by two top-rope-to-the-floor dives is way too much for me to handle.

[PeteF3]

Toyota is in fact Toyota, but with enough Japan viewing I've generally gotten over the piledrivers on the floor thing. It just isn't Memphis or Mexico, and the piledriver simply isn't the move of death there--it's to Japan what backdrop suplexes and lariats generally are to the U.S. Anyway, this was terrific, and a match to point to if you were going to make a Best in the World argument for Hokuto. With four and a half months to go I really have no clue who my Most Outstanding Wrestler for 1993 is going to be, but Akira was never seriously in the running until now. Sometimes Toyota as a worker seems akin to how I feel about the Ultimate Warrior (in what has to be the first time those two have ever been compared): she's at her best when she has something specific to zero in on, be it an opponent injury (multiple Hokuto matches) or a very strong and compelling overarching storyline (the JWP stuff). In those settings her style makes her come off as relentless and single-minded, as opposed to someone throwing shit at the wall.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's ironic that this started getting good when Manami worked over Hokuto's knee given that the submission portions of Joshi matches are often the least interesting. Hokuto's selling was excellent, but Manami deserves credit for putting her in interesting looking holds. Her attack was a lot better than Hokuto's earlier unfocused work. She kind of blew that good will with the no-sell, though. As much of a Toyota defender as I am, and as much as I feel that she's a scapegoat for people who simply don't like Joshi, that no-sell of the piledrivers was inexcusable. If there was one saving grace for the no-sell it was that they quickly moved to the finishing stretch, which was nicely balanced and didn't go overboard with the moves or nearfalls. This was often touted as a match where Hokuto reels in Toyota's annoying tendencies, which I think is a bullshit read even with the indefensible no sell (not to mention the fact that Hokuto has annoying tendencies of her own.) The match is more focused (if you want to call it that) because of their past history. If you take away their Japan Grand Prix history this is just another good Toyota match, and contrary to popular opinion there are many good Toyota matches. Judging by some of the other comments about Hokuto, it seems that the yearbooks being released out of order and not showing the full picture makes Hokuto's Dangerous Queen narrative seem less impressive than it was, or maybe her hard luck story doesn't translate well these days.

[PeteF3]

I dunno. I'm watching the Yearbooks in order and I respect Hokuto and love the Kandori matches, but...I never quite saw a Best in the World ™ candidate, either.

 

However rooted it was in real life, I do distinctly remember growing weary of the reoccurring "Hokuto suffers a crippling worked injury and tries to overcome it" story.

[Loss]

I have become a bigger fan of Toyota with time and think I was being unreasonably critical of her earlier on in my watching. I think you'll see a slow move away from that as more years have been watched. The Toyota matches I've revisited thus far from my early watching I have very much enjoyed.

[ohtani's jacket]

I agree that Hokuto being the best in the world is antiquated idea, but it came from a time when people had to pick and choose their footage and "specialised" for want of a better word. One advantage of that is if you were a "Joshi guy" then you tended to watch entire shows instead of just the pimped matches and therefore you probably got a better overall feel for the scene than may be the case these days. It's also worth noting that there were guys like Mike Oles who vehemently disagreed with the Hokuto praise at the time.

 

I can understand getting sick of Hokuto's injury misfortunes. I got bored of it myself. I do think it's interesting though that we both rejected what smarts have traditionally wanted/demanded to see in terms of selling and/or psychology.

[Zenjo]

They had both JGP Semis and the Final on one night. As often happens in sports the SF featured the match of the tournament. The red hot crowd helped provide energy and excitement. Early on Manami was stretched in all directions like only she could be. But it was Hokuto with the weak body part. It was viciously attacked and expertly sold. Akira selling the knees never gets old for me. I guess that if you're only watching selected Joshi bouts then a disproportionate amount of it would feature her. When you've viewed pretty much all the AJW footage from the era then Hokuto matches generally stand out as something different from the rest of the card.

 

This may have been Toyota's best ever aerial performance. No end of spectacular moves and she nailed all of them. This made her look the favourite. Some brilliant 2.9ers down the stretch without going overboard. The structure and duration were spot on. The only drawback was that it was the first of two matches so the NLB got saved for later. There was no time for Akira to revel in her victory afterwards. Excellent performances from both.

[soup23]

Great match with some high impact. Toyota brings an aerial arsenal that has Hokuto reeling and nothing here gets ridiculous down the stretch to bog the match down overall. Really surprised at the lack of restraint a high energy match like this can happen. I really do want to dive into all of the 93 joshi later on. ****1/4

[garretta]

Thie first half of this was excellent, with both ladies working over each other's legs expertly, particularly Toyota. But just like in most joshi matches, the story gets sacrificed for the usual "pull out all the stops regardless" finish, which almost never fits the match it's being used in and most of the time makes it irrelevant and meaningless. If I hadn't paid so much money for these discs, I'd skip right to the start of the 2.9s in joshi bouts, since that's the only section that matters. It's even useless to say who the better worker is in most of these bouts, since that doesn't much matter either. The more of joshi I watch, the more I wish it had been skipped in favor of some lesser but still vital American stuff.

 

Put me in NitroFan's camp when it comes to the piledrivers on the floor. I'll never ​understand why getting your head smashed into a wooden or concrete floor isn't an automatic match-ender and stretcher job, regardless of country or style. What, are the necks of Japanese wrestlers not made of human flesh and bone? Talk about rubbing the fans' noses in how fake wrestling is. How do these promoters escape the same type of wrath and scorn Vince takes on a daily basis? There are times that joshi is about as realistic as Gigante's ridiculous Giant Gonzalez bodysuit.