[1990-06-17-AJW-Grand Prix] Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

- (JGP FINAL) Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta

Toyota rushes Hotta at the bell, going completely wild and being maybe more agressive then i've ever seen her before. She tosses her over the guard rail and hits a giant dive off the top into the crowd. Hotta eventually gets up and is super pissed and the fights on. Somewhear in all of this Hotta starts bleeding from above the eye but it's not enough to stop her and she takes over on Toyota. Long long controll segment w Hotta slowly wearing her down little by little to the point whear when Toyota finally does change the momentum she can't make that much of an energetic come back. Instead Toyota just starts grabbing holds of her own to wear Hotta down. In the end I thought it made for a cool moment as they both really put over the fatigue factor real well I thought. The final stretch really did seem like a battle of attrition with both having to dig down deep to put the other away and it's Toyota who gets the win after out smarting Hotta and rolling her up. Really good match, best of the show.

[Loss]

What happened to this Toyota? The aggression, the pacing, the strikes ... everything here just really works for me. She has even more of a mean streak than Hotta, *and* manages to balance that with some really excellent selling that plays the crowd like a fiddle, *and* works in her trademark athleticism. She looks like an amazingly complete wrestler, and I'm baffled by why she narrowed her approach as she became more seasoned.

 

This match was awesome. Hotta stretching Toyota so much in Boston crab that she's able to roll completely over into another hold was a wow moment. I was completely hooked into the story of this -- Hotta torturing Toyota to a ridiculous level; Toyota finding a way to hold on and kick out when it looks like all hope is lost; and Toyota displaying some amazing resourcefulness and putting together a desperate, but effective comeback. She goes from fighting for her survival, to fighting to prove her superiority. Now Hotta has to dig deep and responds in kind and it's anybody's game. Toyota pulls off a victory that really looks like she has accomplished something substantial.

 

Total MOTYC.

[Childs]

I loved the way Toyota opened this match -- maybe the best three minutes I've ever seen her produce. That dive into the stands was such a badass way to put over the recklessness of her attack. I had some quibbles with what followed structurally. Hotta's long run of offense felt really long, without a lot of teased comebacks from Toyota. And when Toyota finally did turn the tide, she instantly seemed as fresh as she had to start the match. There were also some moments of really dodgy execution to go along with the cool stuff Loss mentioned, like that Hotta Boston Crab. I don't want to criticize too much, though, because they did achieve the war-of-attrition feel by the late stages. As usual, I can't see a MOTYC in Joshi, but it was good.

[PeteF3]

Fantastic aggressive opening from Toyota just pounding the shit out of Hotta in the corner, then tossing in a "Fuck you, Hokuto" dive *over* the guardrails. This turns into a really fun clash of styles between Hotta's kicks and suplexes and Toyota going back to her go-go-go style after the opening flurry. Big trading of near-falls towards the end and Toyota ekes out a victory. Yeah, I had a lot of issues with the execution towards the end as these girls did not seem to be on the same page at all at that point. Not in a "this didn't look cooperative enough" sense but with weird moments like Toyota just letting go of a Northern Lights suplex instead of Hotta kicking out of it. The holds also lost me, but maybe that's because it's 2 am. You can't accuse the ladies of using "restholds" and Toyota is so ridiculously flexible that routine submissions look absolutely deadly. But...they did go on for awhile. Good match with Hotta really bringing something different to the table as far as 1990 joshi goes and Toyota working outside of her comfort zone, but there is no way this is a MOTY contender.

 

EDIT: Good action in the post-tournament highlight reel, but hey, let's add a fucking slo-mo of Hokuto destroying her leg. Stay classy, AJW.

[soup23]

May be in between Loss and Pete/Childs here. I thought this was a very good match that flirted with being great. I was also somewhat let down as the emotional joshi matches have been some of my favorite matches lately and reading about this one set the stage that I was prepared to make this in my top 5 for the year. I thought the opening was fantastic and also loved the Hotta control segment and struggle. I had more problems with the freshness that Toyota had on the comeback and the execution in a lot of the moves in the finishing stretch looked rough. Some stuff in this match really worked for me but there was also more noticeable flaws making it perplexing to rank overall.

[Kevin Ridge]

Again Toyota attacks early and bloodies up Hotta. But similar to last match her opponent is able to take over. This time Hotta kicks her repeatedly. Hotta follows up with her own submission including a nasty looking Boston Crab that had Toyota’s neck bent back. Toyota gets in a long sleeper. Really only time Hotta has looked vulnerable. But Toyota gets stronger towards end of match. Toyota gets a pin off a roll up in the corner to win title. Good match.

[Zenjo]

I loved the duelling fan chants. Girls for Hotta, guys for Toyota. First half was really good with a super blitz start and then ManToy being stretched. Is there anyone better at being stretched? I was wondering how on earth I hadn't thought this was a good match first time around. Then I remembered as the 2nd half fell to pieces. It lost all cohesion and neither wrestler had any control of the match. They had absolutely no idea what move was coming next towards the end and it was a mess. These two would have some teriffic matches in later years but this wasn't one of them.

[stunning_grover]

Impressive. 1990 AJW Grand Prix tournament final. Toyota starts off the match with a lot of energy and aggression. The execution of the final minutes wasn’t all that great though (especially on Hotta’s part). You can’t really blame them though, because this was Toyota’s second match of the night and Hotta’s third match of the night. I'm a big fan of joshi puroresu, but I wouldn't call this a MOTYC.

[Cox]

There were parts of this I liked. Toyota's aggression to start the match is really good, and one of her main assets as a wrestler is her crazy flexibility, which make these submissions look nasty and her bumps look brutal. But I can't say this did a whole lot for me as there were parts of it that dragged. There was some good stuff here for sure, but I can't call it a MOTYC.

[TravJ1979]

Great stuff from one of my all-time favs.

[ohtani's jacket]

It was fun seeing the kind of transitions/counters Toyota did before refining her act, but to echo the sentiments of others, this was no MOTYC. There were a lot of holes in the stretch run, not the least of which was the ref telling Hotta her shoulder wasn't down on the Japanese Ocean Suplex, but I won't hold it against them since they were still kids. Hell, Toyota was only 19. The start was definitely better than the finish and Toyota's dive at the beginning was probably the highlight.

[Loss]

I just rewatched this. To this point, this is the match I think I got the most "wrong" (aside from Thunderqueen, but that's another story) the first time around. I still think I like it more than a lot of you, but it works more as a glimpse at what these two might be able to do with some seasoning than it does as a great match. Neither Toyota nor Hotta are really complete workers at this point, and the skeleton of a great match is there in the sense that they are doing a lot of the right things. But the execution of the layout doesn't live up to the layout itself. I respect what they were going for but neither had a 20+ epic in them just yet, and their inexperience shows.

[garretta]

Great match, especially for a tournament final. You could see the desperation with these two, as they each tried to win before they dropped over from exhaustion. Some of the execution might have been a bit sloppy, but you would expect that after two or three hard matches for each participant, especially since Toyota was just nineteen.

 

I guess the cut on Hotta's head must have been hardway, since Toyota didn't work on it throughout the match.

 

Joshi's still new and exciting to me after years of watching American women's wrestling, so I might be a little more forgiving than some of you. This isn't a match of the year candidate, but it's an early contender for my Japanese Match of the Month for June.

[Codysseus]

This didn't do a whole lot for me. I'm relatively new to Joshi and didn't see any of the rest of the tournament (or any AJW from 1990), so I don't know if I missed much, but yeah!

Toyota's attack at the bell was really fun and, if not desperate, emotionally charged. I was expecting Hotta to come back in after regrouping herself and put her in her place, but Toyota's barrage of offense did enough (BLOOD) to keep Hotta at bay even after she got a few well-placed kicks to the face in. Hotta putting Toyota in hold after hold in the middle of the ring worked for me (whatever it was that boston crab evolved into being a highlight), but I was disappointed Toyota's comeback didn't. After the flash pin attempt from her back, I thought the transition was done a little too quickly. More teases probably would've helped, as Childs pointed out above 3 years ago.

 

After that there were a couple of good nearfalls mixed into a bit of a mess of a tit-for-tat closing stretch. They looked like they were consciously taking turns and it probably didn't help there were a few blown spots and moments of obvious cooperation.

 

That start though!

[drew wardlaw]

Interesting to me that the girls would be chanting for Hotta and the guys for Hotta, and not the reverse. I really don't know anything about Hotta and know very little about Toyota but I figured her to be a big hit with the younger crowd. Anyway, wow, that's as hot an opening as you'll ever see, like everyone else has said. I have to say though, the middle lost me. Toyota didn't have a lot of hope spots, and it kind of felt like everything was escalated in the opening stretch, and it was just kind of meandering suplexes and shots and holds until Toyota came back. The finishing stretch was good too though, and I don't know if it was a botch or what, but I really loved the kind of block on the tiger suplex from Hotta that Toyota did, where they just kind of collapsed. That felt very real. In the post-match video, when it shows the Hokuto injury, it looks like you can see the bone. Gruesome!

[Chess Knight]

I said to myself "of course" when Toyota started this with a sprinting dropkick. Little did I know she would follow that up with some of the more aggressive offensive outbursts I've seen in the 1990 viewing so far. Hotta was already bleeding a little by the time she tried to mount an offense of her own, and that she did, by delivering several violent palm strikes and kicks (at least a couple to the face). Hotta tries to put Toyota away with some disgusting looking Boston crabs before the five minute mark and Toyota struggling so early made for a great context that maybe her early hastiness was ill-thought. There was one single leg Boston crab where Hotta was leaning in such a way on that it almost looked like a Fujiwara armbar. Toyota took a beating with of course more than just Boston crabs and, despite all that, I liked the bridge up kick out as a sign of defiance. Hotta was clearly tiring herself out too which to me, added some believability for a potential opening Toyota could find to work her way back. That moment of course did come, and while Toyota was her go-go-go sprinty self for some of it, I liked how she initially just tried to choke Hotta out because it put over her own punishment. This did however fall kind of into the trap of spotty sell territory, though both women were also clearly exhausted which made me see them as mostly pushing past pain and fatigue instead of ignoring it. Mostly. Could have done without that much running from Toyota. I still thought this was pretty great overall.