The MT. Rushmore and GOAT debates are always fun to have on any subject, especially in sports. In pro-wrestling, the debate who is the best female wrestler of all times always involves The WWE 4 Horsewomen, Moolah Lita, Trish Stratus and Mae Young, but ignores one key person that’s actually the GOAT, and that is Manami Toyota.
The inspiration for this editorial came after MVP responded to a fan calling Charlotte Flair the GOAT of women’s wrestling and he mentioned Manami Toyota on his tweet.
The fact that Manami Toyota’s name is sometimes ignore by female wrestlers as the GOAT is one of the most bizarre things. Some could argue that she is not a well known name among more casual fans or wrestlers that grew up with WWE, but we have access to the internet and watching Toyota’s matches it’s not hard to do, especially since most of her best work can easily be found on YouTube and Dailymotion. There’s also a lot of ways to study her career with hundreds of articles dedicated to Toyota’s career, and yet, some wrestlers prefer to ignore or not study Manami Toyota’s work.
More wrestlers, especially female wrestlers, should study as much as they can about Manami Toyota and AJW. Wrestlers like Bryan Danielson or Kenny Omega are just a few of names that have studied Toyota’s work and has been an influence on them.
Her in-ring work was out of this world. the elegance and way she would execute any move was nonparallel and her storytelling abilities were so good that they transcended language and cultural barriers. When it comes to selling, there’s no one better than Toyota, but a few wrestlers. Evryhting about Manami Toyota’s game was perfect.
Recommending Manami Toyota matches is hard thing to do because all of them are worth watching if I’m being honest. I always recommend checking out all matches awarded 5 stars by Dave Meltzer as a starting point, or you could go to Cagematch and check the best rated matches there.
If you haven’t watched anything related to Manami Toyota, do it as soon as you can and after watching the first match with her, you’ll realize how good she actually was. The debate about the GOAT women’s wrestler should not exist because Manami Toyota is the actual GOAT and there’s very few names that be compared to her.
