Mariko Yoshida

[Control21]

33 minutes ago, Jetlag said:

The 2003 Hotta AtoZ match is sick as hell. I'm shocked almost nobody has brought it up in all these years. They do some really cool grappling and then just rain hell on each other like a high end BattlARTS match. At one point Yoshida took her glove off to punch Hotta straight in the face.

Is that the one from 11/9/2003?

[Ma Stump Puller]

Hotta match is a good example of Yoshida laying it in good. As fantastic as she was as a grappler she was undersold when it came to doing more scrappy Bati-Bati lite matches, because she was VERY good at doing that kind of stuff when needed and had someone willing to go to those same levels (I.E. Kimura)

Makes me even more sad we don't have the Toba/Yoshida tag match documented ngl

 

[Microstatistics]

Potentially the best "joshi for people who don't like joshi" wrestler, alongside maybe Kana/Asuka. A wonderful technician, on par with the BattlARTs guys, as well as a selfless seller.

She is also one of the ultimate peak candidates, with the bulk of her case residing in the 1998-2001 period, even if there was good stuff in 2003-2004 as well. Her 1999 is stuff of folklore even if it falls short of a GOAT-level year for me. The Yagi 2/18/1999 match is her magnum opus but nothing else really reached that level, making a bottom half inclusion much more likely than a top half one.
 

[Ma Stump Puller]

58 minutes ago, Microstatistics said:

Potentially the best "joshi for people who don't like joshi" wrestler, alongside maybe Kana/Asuka. A wonderful technician, on par with the BattlARTs guys, as well as a selfless seller.

She is also one of the ultimate peak candidates, with the bulk of her case residing in the 1998-2001 period, even if there was good stuff in 2003-2004 as well. Her 1999 is stuff of folklore even if it falls short of a GOAT-level year for me. The Yagi 2/18/1999 match is her magnum opus but nothing else really reached that level, making a bottom half inclusion much more likely than a top half one.
 

Definitely agree that her peak was late 90's to the beginning of the rebranding of ARSION to AtoZ (though it's astounding that was even the case afterwards given Rossy's erm, questionable booking of the company + shitty 90's clipping) but I feel like she has a pretty solid case as a longevity candidate as well. She transitions nicely from her peak as rugged ace to reliable freelancer and basically has the same level of quality (especially when pushed) all the way to the end of her career and her consistency during those 10/15 years is next to none on her part.

It's a good bow on top to go with everything else, especially given there are many peak-based selections here that take a massive dive in quality right after (would give examples but there's a few too many to just throw out here lol) 

 

 

[KB8]

I haven't dug THAT deep into post-2003 Yoshida yet, but I'd agree with the notion that she was ultra consistent way past her actual peak. I guess there's a paucity of her later career out there relative to some other joshi candidates, but either way I don't remember watching her in the late 2000s or so and thinking she was anything other than good (and fairly often I thought she was still REALLY good). 

At this point I'm pretty okay in the knowledge that I'll generally value peak more than longevity anyway, and I probably was in 2016 if maybe not to the same extent, but I feel like I still undersold the length of her peak during the last vote. She's incredible in that '98-'01 period and four years of that quality will go a long way with me. Throw in the stuff before and after that period to bolster her case and she's probably landing in my top 20. She'd be top 10 if it were a pure favourites list.