Took me longer to complete this year then any other i've done so far due to the much larger amount of footage available. Just from AJW alone there's almost more matches this year that made tape then 1990 & 1991 combined, add in that I didn't just watch AJW this time and also watched a good 25 - 30 JWP/FMW matches and this was quite the year. With so much going on it wouldn't be fair to limit things to just 10 so
Top 20 Joshi Matches of the Year.
1. AJW 11/26/1992 (3WA World Title) Bull Nakano (c) vs Aja Kong
2. AJW 11/26/1992 (3WA Tag Titles, 2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota (c) vs Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki
3. AJW 8/15/1992 (IWA Title - Hair vs Hair) Manami Toyota (c) vs Toshiyo Yamada
4. AJW 4/25/1992 (3WA Title Match) Bull Nakano (c) vs Aja Kong
5. AJW 7/15/1992 (3WA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (c) vs Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue
6. FMW 9/19/1992 Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyoda vs Bull Nakano & Akira Hokuto
7. AJW 6/21/1992 (JGP 92) Aja Kong vs Bison Kimura
8. AJW 6/21/1992 (No Time Limit) Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada
9. AJW 5/24/1992 Kyoko Inoue & Mariko Yoshida vs Manami Toyota & Sakie Hasegawa
10. AJW 8/15/1992 (Fuji TV Tag Tournament FINAL) Bull Nakano & Aja Kong vs Toshiyo Yamada & Akira Hokuto
11. AJW 8/30/1992 Bull Nakano, Yumiko Hotta & Suzuka Minami vs Akira Hokuto, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda
12. JWP 12/1/1992 Yumiko Hotta & Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki & Hikari Fukuoka
13. AJW 5/24/1992 Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Akira Hokuto & Etsuko Mita
14. AJW 6/27/1992 (3WA Tag Titles 2 out of 3 Falls) Toshiyo Yamada & Manami Toyota (c) vs Akira Hokuto & Kyoko Inoue
15. AJW 11/26/1992 (All Pacific Title) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Akira Hokuto
16. AJW 3/20/1992 (3WA vs UWA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (3WA) vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada (UWA)
17. AJW 4/25/1992 (IWA World Women’s Title Match) Kyoko Inoue (c) vs Manami Toyota
18. AJW 6/27/1992 (AJW Title) Mariko Yoshida (c) vs Etsuko Mita
19. AJW 12/13/1992 (Tag Leauge The Best 92 FINAL) Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada
20. JWP 10/7/1992 (JWP Tag Titles) Cuty Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki (c) vs Dynamite Kansai & Hikari Fukuoka
This was quite a hard list to put together, the top few and bottom few i'm confident about, on any other day I could probably rearrange the middle a good deal. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree but for me giving the Aja/Bull title change the #1 spot was an easy choice. In a stand alone vaccum the Dream Rush tag has better action, it's a fuckin great match, one of the best ever, but at the end of the day it's just a great match. Aja/Bull is a great match AND it's the end of an almost 3 year story that's dominated the entire company for much of that time and it sets up Aja as the undisputed ace of the company which she'd be for the next 2 years. So yeah, easy choice to have that as my #1.
Top 10 Wrestlers of the Year
1. Mariko Yoshida
2. Manami Toyota
3. Akira Hokuto
4. Toshiyo Yamada
5. Aja Kong
6. Bull Nakano
7. Kyoko Inoue
8. Mayumi Ozaki
9. Bison Kimura
10. Dynamite Kansai
Little bit easier list to make. No it's not really reflected in my top matches list but night in night out Yoshida was easily the most talented & consistently enjoyable wrestler in AJW. She didn't have as many opportunities to produce classics as others but she had her share and if I were to rank 21-30 she'd be in a good portion of those. Yoshida's rise up the ranks was a joy to watch too. She's someone who doens't have any natural advantages as a wrestler, she's not big or tall, she didn't have a major sports background prior to becoming a wrestler, not the greatest singer, and while she is very attractive, she isn't hot in that exploitable way that leads to one getting outside deals as a bikini model or whatever. To get ahead in wrestling she had to rely on talent alone so she worked really really hard and started putting on really really good matches. The fans saw this, apreciated it and started cheering her which in turn led to the guys in charge seeing this and pushing her higher up the card accordingly. In this day and age whear most wrestling promoters could give fuck all about things like who has the most skill and who gets the best crowd reaction and just shove whoever they like down the throats of fans until they learn to love it watching Yoshida in 92 was really refreshing. Toyota is an interesting case as she on the other hand was given the most chances this year to produce on a high level and in many of those matches she wasn't even the best preformer in them actually. Still, for every match whear she may have been 2nd, 3rd or 4th best, she had a ton more whear she was #1 and she had so many great matches and moments period that you can't really deny her a top spot. Her vs Yamada would be my pick for feud of the year and I would easily, hands down by a large margin call her & Yamada the best tag team, not just in joshi but in the world in 1992. Aja & Bull being a bit lower on my list this year then in previous years doesn't have so much to do with them slipping as it does more with this year focusing on others besides them a lot more. Bull vs Aja while never a dead issue was cooled off for a while in the early part of the year plus Bull having been on top for so long was starting to run out of fresh feuds. Giving her the CMLL women's title and having her recycle opponents to go after that helped stretch things out nicely though. The Bull vs Hokuto feud in the middle of the year was also one of the more enjoyable things of 1992 too, their 7/15 match is one of the better matches that didn't make my top 20 and their cage match on 7/30 would have been up thear too had it aired in full i'm sure.
Also worth mentioning is that just from a booking standpoint this was one of, if not the companies best years ever and in general so many memorable and historical moments took place this year that it's hard to keep track. This year saw the end (temporarily atleast) of the careers of Yoshida, Bison & Kamiya, the start of careers for girls like Kumiko Maekara & Rie Tamada and the first major pushes for girls like Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito. There was the obvious stuff i've allready mentioned like Yamada vs Toyota, Aja vs Bull, Hokuto vs Bull, Aja & Kyoko teaming up for the first time, Akira Hokuto recruiting Mita & Shimoda and start LCO, Yoshida's awesome little run. Except for the rookies and a few other minor exceptions, pretty much everyone on the roster had atleast 1 standout moment or run of somesort this year that made watching everything in order worth the effort. The running theme of Takako Inoue trying to gain respect, bullying anyone on or below her level and getting the crap kicked out of her by anyone above her level and Bat Yoshinaga continuing to wreck things up on the undercards this year were 2 of my other favorite standout things from this year off the top of my head. Of course, the biggest most important happening this year was the start of the interpromotional wars, first with Shark & Crusher from FMW invading after the main event of the 7/15 AJW show, then JWP getting in the mix and lastly the newly formed LLPW showing up. The original JWP splitting in 2 with half their roster bouncing to form LLPW is also a huge thing that took place this year, I personally didn't see enough footage to really follow having watched nothing from JWP early in the year or from LLPW's first few shows but it's still worth bringing up. The few JWP shows I did watch I really enjoyed, they were a clear #2 and couldn't compare to AJW but they had a few great matches that I got to see and a lot of really good talent on their roster with not just Kansai & OZ but Devil, Cuty, Bolshoi, Plum, Fukuoka, rookie Candy Okutsu and hidden gem Sumiko Saito. 19 years later here in 2011 joshi promotions are still sharing talent and we take it for granted but in 1992 it hadn't been done before, ever, it was new and fresh and exciting. Something that produced a lot of hate filled, emotional moments and a lot of amazing matches. Something that literally changed the entire business forever.
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