Mariko Yoshida

[8.0] "Mariko Yoshida stands out for having innovated the Air Raid Crash and the spider twist submission, as well as for her dope late 90s early 00s black and red spider web attire. Very technical and shoot style influenced wrestler, and in her early years in AJW she was considered a high flyer though if you compared her to other high flyers like ASARI or Toyota or Momoe I dont know if Im being honest I just always found her a bit bland. Shes proficient and remarkable for her contributions and has a strong look, but I always felt like she was missing some charisma or something since she is often regarded as one of the GOATs."

[9.0] "There is a vocal minority of retro joshi fans who believe Mariko Yoshida to be one of the greatest technical wrestlers of all time. To be clear, she was an excellent technical wrestler, better than any joshi wrestler from that era, but she was nowhere near the level of someone like Kiyoshi Tamura, Volk Han, or Jushin Liger - the actual best technical wrestlers of the mid to late 1990s. I say this because over-extolling her technical prowess in ARSION masks how awesome she was in AJW as a fast-paced, high-impact worker, and how great she was at getting the crowd behind her."

[9.0] "Someone who deserves to be mentioned up there among the GOATs in joshi. In her first decade or so in wrestling she was a skilled athletic high flyer, albeit had a lengthy injury layoff which meant she sadly missed a chunk of the huge inter-promotional wars AJW were having in 93-94 (joshi was doing the 'forbidden door' stuff long before Tony Khan coined the phrase). By the time AJW talent went on a mass exodus when business slumped, she reinvented herself into a technical mat connoisseur and became one of the faces of the ARSION promotion. She was also an extremely selfless worker and did a lot to help the younger generation, something that was rare in joshi as she was surrounded by pretty jaded and selfish veterans of her era. During joshi's darkest days in the mid 2000s, Yoshida ran a series of highly underrated shows under the Ibuki banner to help re-train (by that time a lot of women were being poorly trained as 'idol' wrestlers) and bring up the next generation. She continued wrestling at an amazingly high level."

[10.0] "One of the best matworkers ever. Mariko Yoshida was perhaps the Joshi equivalent to Kiyoshi Tamura or Masakatsu Funaki. Her ability to transition into flash submissions or grapple with amazing counterwork was second to none. She was very innovative for her time, going all the way back to her AJW days where she came up with the Air Raid Crash. An injury forced her to sit on the sidelines for nearly two years before she returned with a more technical style, and she transitioned into it brilliantly. Her matches with Yagi, Fukawa, and Fujii may be among the best I've ever seen."

[10.0] "Mariko Yoshida has always been one of my favorite pro wrestlers, regardless of gender, and my favorite Joshi of all time. The great ones always have several attributes in which they achieve mastery. Yoshida checked basically all the boxes in terms of in-ring work. From her early work as the plucky high-flyer, to the one who would drag her opponent into the deep waters with astonishing cardio and technical perfection, Yoshida is always a joy to watch. There's a reason why so many great pro wrestlers admire her to this day."

[10.0] "Yoshida is a master of grappling, submission style, strong style, with excellent technique, and in the past successfully used high-fly style, she is also the founder of the ARSION promotion, in which she trained future joshi. Among other things, she has excellent selling and self-presentation, in her matches there is a psychology of rivalry and the beauty of movements, her pros can be listed endlessly, but she has no cons"

[9.0] "Was a relatively solid high-flyer in her prime but perfectly reinvented herself in the mid to late 90's as a sharp technical wizard, focusing on more of a shoot style of wrestling as it was a relatively popular trend at the time. To put it bluntly, her matches shit on many so-called "submission experts" and "shoot-fighters" of today, with a masterful sense of pacing and psychology, knowing when to transition between offense and defence, when to strike, and when to turn the pace up. Even today, I've never seen people be capable of pulling half of what she did with the elegance and realism that she had, smooth submissions mixed with just some nasty ground and pound. It just sucks that a good amount of her material is massively obscure and barely known because she was one of the best in the world in those years. It's going to be a long time before we get someone who just embodied technical wrestling as much as she did. Underrated gem."

[9.0] "The fact that she's never mentioned in the women's G. O. A. T debate is mind-blowing to me... She was a technical marvel."