100 Best Wrestling Moves EVER
96. Manami Toyota | Ocean Cyclone Suplex
If you had never seen the Ocean Cyclone Suplex before, and a wrestler executed it to Manami Toyota’s standard on a big wrestling show next week, your mind would be blown. You’d think you’d just watched a move years ahead of its time.
Manami Toyota created it decades ago.
A double hammerlock bridging German suplex, the name, quite possibly the coolest wrestling name ever, is the perfect descriptor.
The ‘Ocean Cyclone’ articulates the dizzying effect the recipient must have felt when driven to the mat from a scary, gut-churning, unnatural angle. The slow descent compounded the feeling of dread. Beautiful, suspenseful, capped off by a gorgeous bridging pin, Toyota has her detractors as a wrestler who relied too heavily on her supernatural agility - but you’d have to be a miserable bastard not to be enchanted by what endures as a hypnotic GIF that demands to be looped over and over again.
Why don’t more wrestlers use it now? The great Toyota bequeathed it to Ikuto Hadaki and Tsukasa Fujimoto - Blair Davenport drew her ire when using it without “permission” a few years ago - but wrestlers are shameless.
Perhaps it’s because, contrary to the narrative that wrestling is in a constant state of athletic evolution, they know damn well they can’t make it look half as good.