Manami Toyota vs Aja Kong (AJW - 11/20/1994)

At this stage of the game, I like my wrestling when it's at its most simple. When I first started broadening my horizons and checking out Japanese wrestling it was the All Japan stuff I went to, because I read about the storytelling and psychology and all that. It was a new way of looking at pro-wrestling, a new way of thinking about it and processing it. It felt like something more than I'd been used to, like this stupid hobby could be an art form and not just carny nonsense. Now I'm old and I don't really need the deep narrative or anything especially intricate from a match structure standpoint. The less I need to think, the happier I am. And this was about as simple as you can get, worked pretty much perfectly for the Dome setting. Aja was on a tear in 1994 so Toyota comes out swinging, but before long Aja is trying to bend her in two. These were some of the nastiest Boston crab variations you'll see, and even if Toyota's screaming is a dead talking point by now I thought for once it was less of a distraction and actually added to how visceral the beating was. Toyota has to get mean in return and at one point she full on booted Aja clean in the face. Aja's "oh you silly motherfucker" reaction was amazing because you knew she'd make Toyota pay, and of course she absolutely took the jaw off her. Finishing run has the big bombs you'd come to expect with Toyota having to up the craziness, but nothing went overboard, it all looked great and at around 19 minutes it felt properly compact, which again made sense given their audience. Maybe Toyota's best match and I've got no real problem calling this a Tokyo Dome classic.

Holds up as a heck of a match.

I've heard that Aja Kong had 2 matches (totalling over 40 minutes) after this match on the same night