5 Best Wrestling Matches of 1992

#2 Manami Toyota vs. Kyoko Inoue – 4/25/1992

The early 1990s was the greatest period in women’s wrestling history. Some of the greatest matches were put together by a group of women wrestling for All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (AJW), including these two. When they clashed in this match, they put on such an incredible spectacle that it blew almost anything else that year out of the water.

Showing just how good women could wrestle ig given the right opportunity, Toyota and Inoue delivered some of the most devastating moves ever seen inside and outside of a wrestling ring. They wrestled at such a blistering pace and used such a wide variety of moves that you never knew what was going to happen. Perhaps most impressively, Toyota and Inoue were only 21 and 23 years old respectively when this match took place.

This is simply a must-see match for anyone looking for a dramatic, back-and-forth grappling contest with devastating moves used throughout.

But if you don’t want to take our word for it, consider the following excerpt, which is taken directly from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter from June 8th, 1992, about a month after this match aired:

“These two are probably a decade ahead of their time when it comes to putting together a match. It was so good, in some ways too good, in that the people were just in awe of it to the point they could barely react. The moves were all new so people had no idea what was coming next.

Toyota's performance in this match, and for 1992 in general, can't even be given words to describe it although she is the outstanding wrestler of 1992, male or female.

The only way I can describe this match is to say that it had the same impact as the first time I saw Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid's match in 1982, in that they were years ahead of their time. Toyota won with a Japanese Ocean suplex, which is a new kind of german suplex. *****”