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[1996-01-22-AJW-Champion Legend] Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta


Loss

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  • 3 weeks later...

1996 I expect to be an interesting year for AJW matches, because I never hear anyone talk about anything that came out of the year. We're off to a good start for this promotion, as Toyota and Hotta deliver a really strong match. Toyota's screaming drives me crazy, but I'm trying to learn to condition myself to it so I can be somewhat objective about her. But really, there was a lot of hate and fire and blood, and of course the typically insane variety of Toyota suplexes and dives.

 

Pretty sure this was Toyota's first defense on a big show (I might be off on that), and this seemed like a good way to establish her.

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  • 1 month later...

Jesus, that's a lot of streamers!

 

Manami is the type of wrestler who will put on interesting matches with just about anyone. But I have to agree that her screaming gets to me these days. It's stuff like screaming Toyotas that makes people not want to watch joshi. And I don't want to watch it right now. Maybe I will come back to it. We'll see.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 6 months later...

Some of this was like FUTEN with lady parts; just harrowing violence. Toyota's one of the more polarizing wrestlers you'll come across. I don't really have much of an opinion on her either way, but she isn't afraid to take a complete ass stomping and she takes a fucking ASS STOMPING here. Even on offense she takes some reckless bumps, including a missile dropkick to the floor where she lands right on her tailbone. There's been a lot of talk in the '93 Yearbook section about how Hotta either chose not to pull any strikes or simply wasn't good enough to know how (among other things), and well, she REALLY lays in the kicks here, full on straight in the face. She also rifles off a knee right to Toyota's nose that looked disgusting and throws some headbutts that sounds like someone knocked two bowling balls together. Whole match is basically built around Hotta throwing the nastiest, stiffest strikes possible and Toyota not just trying to survive them, but give back as good as she gets. Final few minutes are really weird, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if Hotta legit rung Toyota's bell with any number of those strikes. Hotta goes for a powerbomb and Toyota kind of slips down her back and crumples in a heap. So Hotta kicks her in the face a bunch more. She goes for another powerbomb and the exact same thing happens, so she kicks her in the face some more. Then she tries a wheel kick and completely misses, so she gets up and naturally kicks Toyota in the face again. The third time she goes for the powerbomb Toyota manages to successfully stay upright when she slips out of it, but she looks really groggy and just sort of grabs Hotta and slowly and awkwardly turns her into position for a powerbomb of her own. Thought this was really good, but that ending hurts it.

 

 

No mention of the awesome lime green suit the ring announcer was wearing?

That was some pimp shit.

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There's been a lot of talk in the '93 Yearbook section about how Hotta either chose not to pull any strikes or simply wasn't good enough to know how

 

Former not the latter, there's plenty of matches whear she doesn't go full blast on people. It was always a concious decision as she could work fine without the stiffness when she wanted to.

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  • 1 year later...

Shit this match has some violence to it! Trying to ignore the screaming is impossible though, so every Toyota match feels a little bit like work for me to get through. The sloppy ending actually works for me as they both should be so exhausted that they can't flip around any more.

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  • 4 months later...

This show was notable for having the final televised appearances in AJW for Akira Hokuto and Bull Nakano. Neither match warranted inclusion on the Yearbook, and Hokuto would debut for GAEA in September.

 

In the WWWA Title collision we have the bridesmaid of the time Yumiko Hotta, falling just short once again. Compared with their bouts from previous years this was a disappointment. They took quite an interesting approach with Toyota standing up to the kicker and going toe to toe. It was Hotta that ended up bleeding from the forehead and the nose. Very stiff and it looked sure to end up being a good one. It would have done if they had just ended it with a finisher instead of both kicking out of the others marquee move. It was a sign of bad things to come stylistically, and I thought it so fitting that this mistake ruined the match. A perfect example of bad Karma. They must have blown about 5 moves in record time. It was terrible beyond belief and killed it ending on such a downer. Come to think of it their 6/17/90 match was like that too, falling off a cliff.

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  • 1 year later...

After watching their last two matches together it's clear these two match up better than I might have thought--Hotta isn't afraid to totally sandbag her opponents but in this case it works, because it means this match can't delve into Toyota's frantic go-go-go style. And Toyota can certainly play sympathetic babyface, which matches up perfectly with Hotta's stiff kicks. This was shaping up to be a fine match but the ending was marred by some truly hideous and cringe-inducing execution on multiple moves. Toyota busts out a new power bomb variation for the win but performs it so slowly, sloppily and gingerly that the ending is an anticlimax.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Agree that this match kind of sets the tone for January 1996 as a whole to me so far minus Sammy vs. Otani. Some good stuff and the pieces are there but everything doesn't completely come together. I loved this at parts but that final stretch was some of the worst Hotta tendencies and took me out of the match a good deal. Interested to see joshi in 1996. (***1/4)

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  • 2 years later...

These two take it to each other in the beginning and don't let up. There's not too much in the way of selling, in that one girl will often be right back on offense after taking a string of big moves, but it's not in the sense that the moves come across as not being significant -- you can tell they're accumulating damage, and the way they wrestle especially towards the end gets that across well. Toward the middle of the match I was thinking this was really good, but by the end they had passed into "it should have been over by now" territory. And the actual ending, after all that, was awkward and underwhelming. But the first half of the match, more built around strikes, was really good and the strikes were super nasty. Mainly coming from Hotta, but one great moment in the match is Toyota firing back by grabbing her head and landing a flurry of knees. Good match over all, would have been closer to great with some of the kickouts at the end shaved off.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1996-01-22-AJW-Champion Legend] Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta

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