Manami Toyota retires

Yesterday joshi puroresu said goodbye to Manami Toyota, probably the greatest joshi wrestler of all time. Her retirement also marked her 30th anniversary in pro wrestling. This show was yesterday at Osanbashi Hall in Yokohama. In 1995, Manami made history by facing 30 opponents in successive one minute matches. It was called Manami Toyota vs The World. This was a record for many years. But in recent years, a couple of wrestlers broke her record as a tribute. One of those wrestlers was Ice Ribbon's Tsukasa Fujimoto who has become very close to Manami. She suggested Manami face 50 opponents in her retirement match. Supposedly this record will never be broken. All the names you would expect are here. The one major name missing is Aja Kong who has been very close friends with Manami for 30 years. They had a match on the Oct. 29 OZ Academy show and Aja said farewell then. She said "There's no me without you". The match began with the OZ Army with Mayumi Ozaki, Yumi Ohka, Alex Lee and of course Police. This was the only three minute match. The rest were one minute except for the final match. Most of them were draws. Who cares about wins or losses. Among the participants were Meiko Satomura, Sakura Emi doing a dance, Tsubasa Kuragaki, AKINO, Risa Sera and the entire Ice Ribbon roster, Drake Morimatsu, Cherry, Yuki Miyazaki, Bolshoi Kid, GAMI and Sakura Emi dressed as Manami Toyota, Kaori Yoneyama, Sokoko Kato, Leon and the entire Pure-J roster, Yu Yamagata, Kaori Kobayashi who loses via the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex, Hikaru Shida, Hiroyo Matsumoto who places a Godzilla mask over Manami's head, Ayako Hamada and the entire Pro Wrestling WAVE roster and Chikayo Nagashima who loses via 30 rolling cradles. Then they take a break. Sonoko Kato sings as a gag and is followed by a real singer Mikimi Akiko. Then Manami is presented a bouquet of flowers by retired wrestlers Kyoko Kimura and her daughter Kana, Toshie Uematsu, Sugar Sato and Dynamite Kansai. The match resumes with guys like Hidaka Ikuhito, Akemi Papillon, somebody dressed as a grandfather, Massuro Kanajiro, Kid, Small Antonio Inoki, Masayoshi, Isami and Ryuji Ito who brought a barbed wire board. The match resumes after a talk show. Carlos Amano is the first opponent followed by Mima Shimoda who brings with her Manami's tag team partner Toshiyo Yamada and Mima's partner Etsuko Mita, Bull Nakano with nunchucks, Jaguar Yokota who trained Manami and all the AJW girls who started in the 80s, Mariko Yoshida who is retiring next month, Nanae Takahashi, KAORU who brings her trademark desktop, Kaoru Ito,Tomoko Watanabe, Takako Inoue and her taser, Yumiko Hotta and Kyoko Inoue. And after Aja Kong and Shinobu Kandori present Manami with flowers, Tsukasa Fujimoto is Manami's final opponent. They actually did three matches with no time limit. Manami won the first two and Tsukasa won the third with the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex. That represented the passing of the torch. Manami gave her finishers to Tsukasa. As I said, these two have become very close. Then Manami had her hair cut in the ring. The hair has been donated to pediatric cancer patients. Then they did the retirement ceremony and the ten bell salute. And that's it. Manami Toyota is officially retired. Thank you Manami Toyota for entertaining us for 30 years. I expect her to commentate on Gaora's OZ Academy broadcasts.