[1992-04-25-AJW-Wrestlemarinepiad] Manami Toyota vs Kyoko Inoue

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

(IWA World Women’s Title Match) Kyoko Inoue © vs Manami Toyota

Whenever a lot of people talk about this feud it gets brought up how similar their styles are. I thought the story of this match was a good example of how diffrent they can be as well. Toyota when on offense just went a million miles an hour most of the time, hurling whatever attack she can think of off the top of her head at Kyoko. Inoue on the other hand seemed to put a lot more thought into what she was doing, she'd match Toyota speed for speed but often it was done more to outsmart her or to take advantage of one of Toyota's mistakes. Toyota would go for a dive, miss & Kyoko would hit one of her own or Toyota would go for something else and Kyoko would quickly counter or move out of the way, stuff like that. And when she wasn't doing that, Kyoko put a lot more effort into other attacks like using various holds to wear down Toyota. Toyota for her part does a good job of selling it all too and putting over the fatigue as the match goes on and when on offense she hits all her big moves perfectly on this night. Final stretch sees all the usual near falls you'd exspect plus a few you wouldn't with Kyoko using a lot of stuff she normally doesn't like choke slams to try and get the win. In the end though it's Toyota who outsmarts her and hits her with the JOCS out of nowhear to pick up the win and the title. Really great match, one of the better ones in the feud.

[MJH]

Good match, but they'd do better later. That said, people should really watch this next to their JGP '91 match both to see how quickly they were developing their acts, and also because they work this match with the earlier one in mind (namely the rolling surfboard finish).

[Loss]

Dave went gaga over this at the time, which is why this is on here. It's also one of those matches that sometimes pops up on lists. But wow, it does NOT age well. When I see what was happening in the rest of the world, context makes liking it at the time understandable. These two were probably the most well-conditioned athletes in wrestling, and they both had a pretty wide range of moves and cut a frenetic pace. But I'm not sure I got anything out of this match other than that. Okay, they're wrestling fast ... so what? Even as a spotfest, it's not particularly special. The pacing is more special than anything, and pacing/cardio alone is not enough to make a match great.

 

I don't want to make this about Dave, but I think he sees matches as "feats". The best ones are the ones that are most impressive, the ones that pull off things that seem difficult. I'd much rather watch Kong/Kudo from December '93, or Hokuto/Yamada. I mention both of those matches because there are plenty of Joshi matches that are better and more highly regarded, but those matches are really great examples of basic wrestling done well.

 

I get that Toyota wants to win. She wrestles so desperately that it's pretty obvious. I get that Kyoko does too. But it just seems lacking. I think calling this self-indulgent, which is usually a term thrown around by matches that are overblown like this, would be wrong. It's not a show-off spotfest. But it's not particularly engaging either. I too am impressed that these two could wrestle at this pace for nearly a half hour, but they didn't do much to make me care about the match.

[jdw]

Dave went gaga over this due to the massively, seamlessly edit TV version of the match. Don't know if the Yearbook has the commercial version of the match. It actually would have been an interesting thing in the Yearbook to have put both on the set, TV first and commercial second, and see what people thought. The TV version wasn't that long. This is similar to how everyone rated the Jaguar vs Lioness based on the similar short, seamless TV edit.

 

John

[MJH]

It cannot be stated enough; AJW's editors were the best by a ludicrous margin. If you watch any Zenjo TV, you think you're watching complete matches every time, and with their general pacing being what it was, you're not surprised that it's fast early. It's only when you see them working towards the finish much quicker than you know they would've that you realise there's been stuff spliced.

[jdw]

Totally agree.

 

Hokuto-Kandori I on TV is edited. Not a ton relative to say Jaguar-Lioness or Toyota-Kyoko, as I think over 25 minutes of it aired (they did two Dream Slam I tv shows including a special if I recall, so they were able to get in more stuff in). But things like Jaguar-Lioness or Toyota-Kyoko are edited vastly more than Ohtani-Sammy.

 

I cut Dave a little slack on AJW TV ratings because it's almost unique in being Seamlessly Edited Matches rather than even JIP Matches where you can kind-sorta-maybe guess what happened before (Ohtani-Sammy, 5/94 & 6/95 Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue). I don't think Dave grasped the way they did the editing.

 

John

[FLIK]

Agree on AJW's editors being great, watched a lot of 92 JWP recently and seeing how badly they choped stuff up made me appreciate them all the much more.

 

That said, 100% of the time i'll always prefer to see the full match. Couldn't imagine how clipping out large chunks of Kyoko/Toyota would make it anything but worse.

 

The shorter is better/fuck the build skip to the end bandwagon is one i'm def not hoping on and would just as soon blow up with a land mine

[Tim Evans]

I can see why people could go crazy over this. It was fast paced and very spotty like a female version of a Davey Richards match. I liked the 96 matches better but this was fun. Can't get over how skinny Kyoko was compared to how she looked in 96. Did she get pregnant or something?

[FLIK]

Did she get pregnant or something?

Heh, naw. Well she has had a kid but that was like 2 or 3 years back. In the 90's she just gradually got fatter. Hell, Kyoko was skinner then this in 90/91

[El-P]

Way overrated, and Inoue was a much better worker than Toyota already. Still better (I think?) than the also way overrated Toyoa vs Yamada series.

[Kevin Ridge]

Haven't seen a whole lot of their matches but found this to be pretty good actually. Toyota hit 3 consecutive dives to the outside on Inoue. Good action for the last few minutes. Did notice myself how smaller Inoue looked.

[Zenjo]

Quite the mixed bad here. Had its plus points but not one of the best from their long rivalry.

 

There was a fair bit of matwork in the early going. It didn't take that long though before the pacing reached lightening speed. Both girls had huge movesets and the execution was good here also. They certainly weren't lacking in big match ambition either, going full out for a classic. That wouldn't happen as severe structural problems arose in the 15-20m period. The fake stretch was poorly done. They should never have gone back to holds instead of doing the finish. That hurt it badly. Still fun despite its flaws.

[MikeCampbell]

I really wanted to love this, but I just wasn't into it as much as I felt like I should have been, considering it's AJW in '92. So reading these other posts tells me that it's not just me.

 

I liked the idea of Toyota going after Kyoko's arm, but it was just filler. Kyoko going after Toyota's back in hardly a new concept, and there was some cool visuals of Toyota getting stretched out, but it never led anywhere. It would have been cool to see Toyota try the Cyclone and lose the bridge, a la Kawada's German in the 12/93 tag. Yes, their pacing was awesome, but at the end of the day, it just came off like a spotfest to me.

[Tim Cooke]

I just watched the final 4 minutes of the match and it's easy to see why Dave was super impressed with this at the time.

 

Toyota hits a german suplex for a near fall, a tope, a plancha, top rope moonsault, and then a tiger suplex for a nearfall - all in a row. Toyota misses another moonsault, with Kyoko getting a surfboard. Kyoko hits her top rope reverse elbow drop for a near fall. Kyoko tries for a powerbomb and Toyota rolls through for the closest near fall of the match. Kyoko gets a headscissor roll up for near fall. They pretty much peaked in terms of crowd heat here as the rest of the near falls aren't nearly as big as the prior but they still bring out a top rope suplex, Kyoko sit down powerbomb, Toyota with a Japanese Ocean Suplex, Kyoko chokeslam, and then a Toyota Japanese Ocean Cyclone suplex (first time she ever did it?) for the win.

 

That's an enormous amount of high spots for 4 minutes of a match, which in 1992, especially on AJW TV with seamless edits, seemed like *****++ as Dave gave it back in the day.

[WingedEagle]

Kyoko looks a lot slimmer here than I recalled. After an opening spring things slow down for a while as they kill some time without much structure or focus. The stretch run follows a series of Toyota dropkicks and big giant swing and is clearly why this got such acclaim at the time. Toyota pulls out 3 dives including a moonsault to the floor from the middle of top rope. Toyota wins the IWA Women's Title with the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex.

 

Seeing some of the earlier comments it makes sense that this was so highly touted based on a clipped version of the match, as the complete just isn't anything epic. Pretty funny in retrospect to see how highly it finished in the Observer's MOTY balloting based on the clips / word of mouth, as it wasn't even the best match on the show that night.

 

***3/4

[PeteF3]

Lots of holy-shit spots here, and I can't believe Toyota is still alive after Inoue splattered her with the springboard ass drop and the back of her head hit the bottom of the guardrail. Just a sickening-looking event.

 

I dunno...I liked this a lot. Now, I won't disagree that ***** MOTY is overrating it, but I've seen overlong meaningless joshi bullshit already on these Yearbooks like that fucking interminable Toyota/Kong draw from 5/91. And this smokes that pretty easily. For all the spots there are very few of them that are blown and there was some "smaller" stuff that I liked, such as Toyota repeatedly countering into the rolling cradle attempts before successfully applying it. None of the transitions looked particularly out of whack, either. It wasn't a psychological masterpiece but it was up there with the best Steiner Brother bombfests. The only part I was really down on was a sort of anticlimactic ending, but since the JOCS seems to be Toyota's "no can defense" finisher of death, it was far from the worst finish I'd seen.

[garretta]

I wasn't the biggest fan of this one. I thought Inoue's submission work was tremendous; I really liked her going back to the Boston crab and camel clutch variations time after time in an effort to either make Toyota quit or break her neck and back in the attempt, and that giant swing toward the finish was absolutely insane. That must have gone at least twenty revolutions, which I've never seen another wrestler attempt before, male or female.

 

The problem was Toyota's selling. She was fine in the holds while she was in them, but the idea of not only having enough spring in her legs to execute dives and multiple dropkicks, which is at least explicable because of adrenaline, but to bridge out of multiple pin attempts, is absolutely ludicrous. Signature move or no signature move, there are times when it should be illogical for her to use it, and after having spent most of the match in holds designed to fracture her spinal column is one of them. I know I just defended Tenryu for using the powerbomb on Flair after having his knee torn apart for the better part of a half hour, but there's a difference in my eyes between having the strength for one quick move that uses an injured body part and using a move that depends on that part exclusively. If it's part of the so-called "house style" of AJW, then there's something wrong with the style and it should be changed. I'm surprised they incorporate things like that which they know can expose the business, to be perfectly honest.

 

I didn't dislike the match, but it was more about the spots than putting them together logically, as some have said before me. In some ways, I prefer the out-of-control brawls involving people like Aja and Bull because I don't expect any sort of logic from them. When I expect logic and don't get it, like in this match, I can't shake my feeling of overall disappointment, even if there are some things about the match in question which I like.

[dawho5]

I was mixed on this one.  I really like Toyota on the mat because she keeps things moving through different holds instead of just resting.  Inoue does too, but is more willing to sit in something she has to keep Toyota grounded.  As the match goes on Inoue goes back to a crab, which may seem odd in a match with this kind of pace.  But I think it was more about her trying to sap away Toyota's momentum, which is her biggest strength.  That triple dive by Toyota was super fucking impressive. 

In regards to the "feats" thing Loss mentioned, it did cross my mind that both of these two are insanely in shape and have motors that refuse to quit.  And with Kyoko you wouldn't ever guess it looking at her.   Manami Toyota doesn't really look all that athletic, just kinda average really.  Both would have run circles around 85% or more of wrestlers given the ridiculous pace they can maintain when they have to.