This series will revisit the best matches in AAAW Championship history, celebrating a title that has been fought over since 1996 and remains a symbol of excellence today.
There is a volcanic tension throughout. You can all but feel the rumbling underground, see the smoke rising, watch the lava gurgling. The power of Manami Toyota vs. Toshiyo Yamada comes from that smoldering intensity between two former tag team partners.
It’s an underrated match during a lengthy (but not exactly active) AAAW Championship reign for Toyota. A physical battle that left the champ in need of dental work.
Let’s travel back to that bout and admire the handiwork of a Hall of Famer and her badass friend-turned-foe.
When GAEA Japan headed to Korakuen Hall on January 12, 2003, for its Wild Times taped event, Manami Toyota had long been a massive star. She’d won the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Most Outstanding Wrestler award three times. That publication had inducted her to its Hall of Fame a year prior.
The black-haired warrior won the WWWA Championship four times. She’d beaten the likes of Nanae Takahashi, Aja Kong, and Kyoko Inoue. She’d headlined events at Osako-Jo Hall, Ryogoku Kokugikan, and the venue that housed this title match: the famed Korakuen Hall.
Her legendary ‘90s run now behind her, Toyota still thrived in the early 2000s.
Across from her on this night stood a most familiar face. Yamada had teamed with Toyota (as 1987 Team Gold Combo) from ‘91 to ‘97, the pair winning the WWWA Tag Team Championship twice. And at times, they sang together, too.
Like just about every wrestling alliance, however, their partnership ended and morphed into a fierce and enduring rivalry.
Yamada was a hard-nosed fighter with nasty, hammering kicks. She brought a realism to her matches, partly from her moveset complete with judo-style throws, but also due to her intense presence. She looked and moved like a trained ass-kicker. Like a member of a biker gang looking for a trouble at some shithole bar.
We got to see plenty of that presence in 2003 with the AAAW Championship on the line.
The former tag partners began glaring across the ring at each other as streamers cascaded around them.Then came the strikes. First, an exchange of slaps tinged with disrespect, and then Yamada’s famous kicks rattling against Toyota’s flesh.
The champ was taken aback at the power and ferocity in front of her. She had to recover in the corner as the ref paused the action. This was quite the dramatic opening, the legend visibly vulnerable; the challenger in control.
At some point during that opening flurry, Yamada knocked out Toyota’s front teeth. Hence, the ref’s involvement and Manami continually reaching for her mouth. This provided a prominent representation of her toughness much like blood on a wrestler’s brow has so often done.
The Black Widow fought on regardless.
It got no easier, either. The action shifted to outside the ring where Yamada suplexed Toyota to the floor before flinging her into the stands. On that wood floor, the champion disoriented Yamada with a Manami Roll, spinning her at the base of the bleachers.
Toyota had evened things up somewhat, momentum finally in her grasp. The foes hit hard. Their power moves resounded. But both women managed to shake off the other’s best shots and lift themselves defiantly off the mat. Moxie filled all the empty space in the ring.
Yamada spammed Toyota with suplexes. Manami withstood all of them even if she had to walk on shaky legs afterward.
The match degenerated then into a slow-moving scrap as both women were exhausted, spent, unable to land anything crisply. How much of this was botched suplexes and how much was in-ring storytelling, it’s hard to tell.
Either way, it added to the drama. This in no way looked like rehearsed fight-esque choreography; rather it looked like an ugly street fight.
A recurring image was of both Yamada and Toyota trying to hit some version of the Ocean Cyclone Suplex, but each time their opponent fell off their shoulders or they would crumple under the weight of their foe. It made it feel like we were just one good suplex off the shoulders away from ending this. The warriors just couldn’t deliver a killing blow.
But even when the former tag champs landed the move, the other would kick out. They didn’t have the energy to lift their face off the mat after, but they did manage to avoid the three-count each time.
Yamada had Toyota in serious trouble moments later when she had her gloved hand pressed against the champion’s mouth with a vicious crossface. Toyota could only roll herself and Yamada into the ropes in desperation.
This was one of the tenser moments of a match built on them.
Having tried big homerun blows and failed, the wrestlers both opted then to try to win via inside cradle. Never mind if it’s viewed as a less definitive win. They would take any measure of victory at this point.
Yamada could barely stand and used the ropes at her back to hold herself up. Toyota’s open mouth filled with blood; the gap that has replaced her missing teeth sat in the center of a scowl.
The intensity that they had brewed over the course of this bout was reaching its boiling point now. The volcano was set to erupt. Manami drew the last drops of vigor from her gut and just straight punched Yamada. Two battering blows to the jaw.
And then came a devastating brainbuster that planted Toshiyo’s head into the GAEA Japan logo in the center of the mat.
The end finally arrived then with the champion still in possession of her gold. But it’s not as if she was in any shape to celebrate. Ringside staff crowded both her and Yamada. Toyota had to lean over and let her bloody mouth drip into a bucket. Not exactly a victory lap.
Damn what a powerful image, though. It speaks to the violence of this match, to the lengths she and Yamada had to go in the name of besting each other.
There was no happy reunion after this as Yamada refused to shake Toyota’s hand. The rivalry lived on as the two clashed once more in singles action in Yokohama a year later.
Yamada has long been more well known for her tag team work, and of the entries in this rivalry, their Hair vs. Hair match from 1992 is far more highly regarded.
This collision in Korakuen, though, is a worthy showcase of their long-standing animosity. Its heartbeat is its ferocity and its striking images, the indelible images of Toyota’s missing teeth and her spitting blood into a bucket like some prizefighter of yesteryear.
Be sure to check out the first edition of the Iron Heart series:
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