Joshi Spotlight: Bull Nakano Interviews Manami Toyota

Here’s the second a series of interviews Bull Nakano did on her YouTube channel with various women’s wrestling stars! These were recapped by my buddy MoskowDiskow (on Twitter) and posted here with his permission.

My Notes are in Bold, titled “Jab’s Notes” so you know it’s not me trying to take credit for his hard work, lol.

– They start off talking about Toyota’s retirement match, which was a “50 person gauntlet” match with 1 minute rounds. Bull can’t really remember how it worked despite taking part. Bull says it must have been hard, Toyota compares it to a public execution (lol). Toyota says that really, she just wanted to experience working with all the people who helped her along the way one last time. Bull says that for her one minute segment, she couldn’t really move around well so she just did some posing to let Toyota get some rest.

– When asked about why she decided to retire, she noted that the wrestlers in the scene were getting smaller while Toyota was getting bigger (Jab’s Notes: Despite looking in the ’90s like a slender “pretty girl” wrestler, Manami was 5’6″ 160-170 lbs.- she was MUCH larger than even the ’90s generations of rookies, much less the stick-thin idols common today). She felt that her unique style was based on running and jumping, and she couldn’t really do it anymore at her size. “I’ve just become a random fatass that can’t fly” is her direct quote. The smaller size of modern wrestlers also meant that there was nobody that could catch her safely even if she tried a dive or something, which created a significant injury risk (Jab’s Notes: catching people is actually one of the most dangerous routine spots in wrestling in terms of breaking bones and the like). Since it was her 30th anniversary, she decided the timing was right to retire.

– Toyota talks about how she originally was looking forward to quitting at 25 (1997) but decided to stay on when the Zenjo meltdown happened because she wanted to properly pass the torch to the wrestlers that remained loyal to Zenjo and help raise the next generation (NanaMomo etc) who were rookies at the time (Jab’s Notes: this refers to the Matsunagas losing their shirts and nearly their company- Nanae Takahashi and Momoe Nakanishi were rookies at the time). She says that she and Hotta were the big seniors at the time, and were called the “Mom & Dad” of Zenjo respectively, which Bull finds very amusing.

(Jab’s Notes: This is pretty interesting- Toyota thinking about retirement in 1997 DEFINITELY reads if you watch her matches at this point, as she essentially half-asses it from 97-99 until others start getting good and over, and suddenly she improves again to compete with them, lol. She’s in some of the laziest veteran bouts of the era, usually laughing off rookies. That she didn’t retire until VERY recently after thinking of quitting 26 years ago is pretty surprising)

– They talk about Toyota leaving Zenjo to become a freelancer in 2002. Bull asks if it was hard to leave, Toyota says that she wasn’t unhappy there, but felt she had done everything in Zenjo and was ready to move on. The two talk about how despite the poor treatment at times, they both had a great time overall and still think fondly of the company. They laugh about how outsiders always talk about how terrible it was in Zenjo, but the actual wrestlers enjoyed their time there for the most part. They joke about Zenjo being like a religion (subtext is more like a cult with the Matsunagas as the leaders).

(Jab’s Notes: Don’t let the internet hear you say that! Zenjo training and the office must always be demonized for their cruelty! Never mind that New Japan & UWF were just as brutal! Women are weak and must be protected!)

– They talk a bit about Toyota’s early days, suddenly moving from Shimane province (rural area on west coast) to Tokyo and struggling to communicate because of dialect differences. She says that every time she spoke, the others would laugh at her accent, which was highly stressful for a 16 year old as one might imagine. Toyota says that she has a rep for being shy, but that this was exacerbated by everyone laughing at her whenever she spoke. She says she almost quit once early on, and called home to tell her family to come pick her up, but they were cheering her on and supporting her so much that she felt guilty for thinking about quitting so soon into it. Bull talks about the pay phone outside the Zenjo dorm being the site of many tears shed over the years.

(Jab’s Notes: Japan is rather small but has a lot of distinctive regional accents, like the UK, and so “I can’t understand you at all” would be a bit more common than you’d think among speakers of the same language. And there is a MASSIVELY classist undercurrent to a lot of it, with people from Osaka- who are usually more laid back- being stereotyped as country bumpkins by the people of more metropolitan Tokyo)

Moskow’s actual remarks: “I’m far from fluent in Japanese so I didn’t include stuff I’m not at least 90% sure about. Some additional stuff I think they discussed but I might have gotten wrong:

-I think they had a brief “you can’t argue with the results” type of dialogue regarding Zenjo’s harsh training. Even though it was tough, nobody can say they weren’t good at pro-wrestling. Most Zenjo alumni carry this pride forward to the current day so I think this is what they were talking about

– when talking about the dialect difficulties, Toyota said she couldn’t even pronounce “10” (ju) correctly when counting, pronouncing it like ZIEU or something. I *think* Bull makes a comment that this kind of pronunciation became trendy for awhile but not sure this is what they were lolling about. Or maybe it’s a gangster way of pronunciation, or something similar that I didn’t pick up on.

– Toyota is from Shimane, which is like the Alabama of Japan as a comparison. She had the equivalent of a very thick Southern accent that was hard for others to even understand at times. This is a big part of Toyota’s character that I think a lot of overseas fans miss.”

– when talking about being laughed at for her speech, Bull says that she often laughed when she heard Toyota say words she’s never heard before, but never realized at the time that it might be hurting Toyota’s confidence. Bull felt sorry for this when she heard it.”

Part II:

-They start off talking about more about when Toyota first arrived at Zenjo. Bull makes fun of her haircut, which was a very rural looking bob when combined with Toyota’s straight faced expressions made her look like a stereotypical country bumpkin. Bull shares her first memory of Toyota, which was at a TV shoot. Bull wondered who this country girl was, and suggested she work hard and start wearing makeup that highlighted her looks. Bull goes on one of her rambles here, but basically she’s saying “I knew right away that you could be a successful ‘pretty girl’ wrestler.”

-Toyota remembers that the office had little expectations of her when she arrived, despite doing well in training. She says she was looked at as the least promising of her class (Yamada, Mita, Shimoda, Hasegawa) for the first year or so, almost like an afterthought. Bull is really surprised by this. This motivated Toyota to work even harder to surpass them. Toyota talks about winning the 1990 Grand Prix by mistake when Akira Hokuto was unexpectedly injured.

– They talk a bit about Toyota’s German suplex, which was one of her first trademark techniques. She says she first saw it used by Chigusa, and started practicing it from there. Toyota says she practiced it so many times that the skin peeled off her face from contacting the mat during her bridges. Bull remembers being put off by the idea of taking Toyota’s German due to the hierarchy gulf, but she thought that Toyota had a good future so she agreed to it.

– They talk about tag team vs singles wrestling. Toyota says that she prefers singles, because has a personality that doesn’t really mesh well with others (Jab’s Notes: lol, that’s what I’ve always heard about Toyota, too). She talks about having constant arguments with Yamada while they were teaming. Bull talks about big fights breaking out in front of everyone (not sure if she’s referring to Toyota/Yamada or her own experience).

– They talk about the mandatory retirement at 25 rule. Toyota says that it’s not the worst idea, as she was at her best in her early 20s and that after 25 injuries started to become more serious. Bull jokes about that being “1 vote for the Matsunagas!” on the topic. They talk a bit about some of Toyota’s spectacular botches (“98% missed” -Bull), like smashing her head off the apron doing quebradas and what not. Bull says that she was baffled at how Toyota would just shake it off and get right back up every time. (Jab’s Notes: this feels a BIT harsh, haha. While Manami would botch a move here and there, I typically didn’t see it during most of her best run, from 1992-96 or so. Certainly not in her biggest matches, save for an infamous Kyoko/Manami botch-fest)

-Toyota talks about how she always healed much more quickly than most. She tells a story about breaking three bones in her foot just before a scheduled trip to Mexico. She worked on the broken foot, and was given time off when she returned to Japan but noticed that her foot suddenly didn’t hurt at all anymore. She got an x-ray and it was already nearly fully healed. She says that people jokingly called her a lizard because of her miraculous healing capabilities.

– Toyota says that the first three years were difficult (junior years, when overloaded with chores and training), but after that, she mostly saw her job as being fun. Bull brings up Freedom Force, which was supposedly the group where all the bullying victims were put. Toyota is laughing a lot because she was under the impression that it was the faction of “goody-goods” (as in the wrestlers that followed the rules and didn’t bother anyone). She says that Yoshida had a similar experience as Toyota due to her accent (Yoshida is from Hiroshima).

(Jab’s Notes: Freedom Force, humorously sharing a name with Mystique’s team of government agents from the X-Men comics, was Toyota leading a stable of Kaoru Ito, Mariko Yoshida & Sakie Hasegawa. They lasted about a year or so, and Sakie- a “Future Ace” to the office and pushed as such, retired young)

Moskow later adds: “I don’t think Hasegawa and Ito were bullied much if at all. They were the ones that reached out to Toyota and Yoshida who were kind of being shunned a bit at the time. Bull’s memory is notably iffy on her show, and I suspect she just assumed they were all in the same boat.

The 1989 class was both tough and well liked, and their immediate seniors were the ’88 group, which was Kyoko, Takako and Yoshida…not exactly the most terrifying group behind the scenes.

All four in the Freedom Force group were known to be goody-goods to an extent, though. Toyota and Yoshida were close with the office, Hasegawa was an innocent/naïve country girl, and Ito was Very Responsible, acting as the locker room accountant handing out draws etc for the office. Definitely not the wild ones of the bunch.

It’s not even that Toyota and Yoshida were aggressively being bullied at that point, it was more like being ignored/not having a friend group. The Freedom Force origin story was always that Ito found Toyota crying alone in an elevator one day and thought the situation sucked. So the next day Ito and Hasegawa (both ’89 group) came over to sit with Toyota to eat lunch. They all became friendly with each other and then the office made them a gimmick stable.)”

– Bull talks about coming back from America one time, and ending up eating alone with Toyota at some event. She suspected that Toyota was being bullied/shunned and asked her about it, but Toyota just said “it’s fine, its OK” etc., which concerned Bull because she felt that if Toyota kept avoiding addressing the situation, she might break all at once down the line. Bull says she wasn’t sure if it was actually OK or not, so she tried to boost Toyota by pointing out how strong she was.

-Bull goes on an extended tangent here and ends up talking about going to see a movie with Jaguar and Asuka in the 80s and getting ideas for new techniques. They talk a bit about how wrestling techniques are all built upon and inherited over time, and Toyota talks about seeing videos of what Tomi Aoyama was doing in the 70s and thinking it was really cool, which led her to want to emulate it. Toyota started by doing squats constantly to build up her leg strength, even while showering.

(Jab’s Notes: Aoyama invented the “leap unassisted onto the middle of the top rope” move that Manami would make a trademark. Toyota’s love of squats would contribute to issues later on, as her deceptive body weight below the waist would make her surprisingly hard for weaker wrestlers to lift, causing a lot of botches, haha)

– Toyota says that she disliked practice in general, and got a rep as being lazy, which was frustrating because she was doing all this hard work on her own time when nobody was watching. Bull talks about how the only wrestlers who could leap directly to the top rope were Aoyama, Yamazaki (Jab’s Notes: Itsuki, of the Jumping Bomb Angels), and Toyota. Bull says Hokuto used to do it too, but stopped at some point. Bull brings up Manami’s no-touch springboard spots, which Bull describes as having a “one of a kind success rate” Toyota insists that she didn’t botch them at least 50% of the time. Bull pantomimes a classic Toyota rope-wobble-crash moment. Toyota says that she sees clips from her old days from time to time and surprises herself at how well she moved when she was young.

Part III (aka the one with all the drinking):

-Toyota begins by talking about her ongoing shoulder issues, saying that she needs another major surgery. She talks a bit about the injury in detail, and describes the pain she faces on a daily basis. Toyota then starts looking for other injuries, and finds a bruised knee suffered when she fell over drunk the other night. On a more serious note, she says that she might need an artificial hip down the road, but not yet. Toyota worries that she might end up not being able to walk.

– Bull says that she also was told she might need an artificial joint, but she heard that they only last 20 years or so and she opted not to get the surgery, since she’d require a replacement surgery every 20 years and that wouldn’t be fun when she was old. Bull jokes about her show becoming an artificial joint infomercial. Toyota says that she’s an old lady that just talks about her ailments these days.

– Bull abruptly shifts the topic to “marriage or boyfriend?” Toyota’s answer is that “Shockingly, nobody will accept an alcoholic that gets drunk every day like this.” She also doesn’t get out much these days. Bull asks if there’s any men in her life, Toyota says yes but they’re mostly just random uncles she knows from riding her Harley.

-They make a light-hearted appeal to any viewers watching, with Manami hoping to score someone younger than her (she’s 51). Toyota says she likes people within 5 years of her, so they can communicate on the same wavelength. When Bull asks what Toyota is looking for in a partner, she says “someone who is nice and will get drunk with me every day.” Toyota talks about wanting someone to cook for (edit: she makes legit great food at home) . Oh and you have to be good looking, obviously.

-Toyota says that she’d always wanted to try the marriage, but now that she’s over 50 she’s not really interested anymore. She spends most of her time drinking alone at home (Jab’s Notes: Her Twitter confirms this). She says she buys 4L of whiskey at a time and just drinks that until it’s gone, without paying attention to how much she drinks per day. She says she recently got a big bottle of fancy stuff from a friend and was wondering how long it would last, but it was gone the next day. Toyota jokes about being the lonely drunk cat lady of Twitter. Toyota reassures everyone that she gets regular health checkups and is fine, though. Bull says she still looks great etc.

– Bull closes by asking Toyota about her future. Toyota says she hasn’t reintegrated into normal society yet (since retirement). She says that after wrestling for 30 years, she just wants to take it easy and enjoy each day as it comes.

(Jab’s Notes: Holy hell, the bits about her drinking. This led to a lot of concern from dorks online, and to be fair, it’s equal parts amusing and horrifying. Like MY GOD. If you watch her on Twitter, it’s pretty much a list of what she’s drinking each day, and she frequently gets absolutely SMASHED. As Bull herself has ended up with liver disease over her drinking, Toyota ain’t alone)

And that’s it for another one of these! Thanks go to Moskow for annotating this! Next week will be a Zenjo/LLPW show review!