Manami Toyota Knew It Was Time To Retire From In-Ring Competition When She Started Hurting Wrestlers With Her Moves

She spoke candidly about the pain she had been in.

30-year veteran in pro wrestling, Manami Toyota is considered by some former and current wrestlers as one of the greatest in-ring performers of all time.

There is a feature piece on Toyota that was pushed out by Sports Graphic Number. In 2017, Toyota wrapped up her full-time in-ring career. She said she knew it was time to retire when she started hurting wrestlers with her moves. She said she thought she was going to accidentally take someone’s life if she didn’t stop.

Toyota said she was in a great deal of pain from the injuries she had sustained throughout her career. As she was preparing to end her career, she still had dates remaining and was getting nerve block injections to get through matches. She opened up about her shoulder issue and said she’s still dealing with that because she never rehabbed it properly when the issue first arose. She is now doing that rehab.

“When OZ rookie Nao Komatsu—who was actually a junior of mine back in my (All Japan Women’s) days—and Mika Nishio got injured from my moves, I thought, If I keep this up, I’m going to kill someone someday. I figured that if I couldn’t execute my own fighting style, it would be better to quit gracefully, so I retired at my 30th anniversary. Even so, it was a long run. It was too long. I really feel like I missed the right time to quit.

Right before I announced my retirement, I had excruciating pain in my neck and was starting to feel numbness in my hands. But I knew that once I announced my retirement, I’d have even more matches. So I was getting a nerve block injection every other day and still competing. I was going to a pain clinic. The part that still hurts a lot now is my right shoulder joint. My arm won’t go up past here (pointing to her shoulder), so while I can barely wash my hair, I can’t use a hair dryer, and it’s really difficult to hang up laundry…

After retiring, I had two surgeries to have it (the shoulder) fixed with screws. Part of the reason I’m still in pain is that I left the hospital too soon and didn’t do my rehab properly. I’m still in constant pain and take painkillers. I still do rehabilitation once a week and have a check-up every two months.”

Toyota retired from full-time in-ring action in 2017, but made an in-ring return in 2019 for the Ice Ribbon promotion.