Summary

Manami Toyota said she experienced bullying from veteran wrestlers early in her career and, at the time, believed enduring it was normal.

Toyota described younger wrestlers being called into nightly debrief-style gatherings where they were made to kneel for long stretches while being scolded.

She said situations could escalate to physical strikes, and that sessions lasting one hour were considered short.

Toyota added that her personality led her to accept what happened rather than internalize it, and she said similar behavior had been passed down through generations.

Manami Toyota account spotlights how older locker-room norms clash with current standards

Manami Toyota saying these experiences were treated as routine creates a concrete consequence, her recollection adds first-hand context to how much acceptable behavior in wrestling environments has shifted over time.

By noting that today's standards would treat those incidents as a major issue, she framed the gap between past survival culture and current expectations around wrestler welfare.

Quotes

Quote from Manami Toyota

"I might have been bullied, but because of my personality, I don’t really remember it. I just accepted it as the way things were. I thought I had no choice but to put up with it. Even things that would be a huge problem now, I thought I had to put up with. I was afraid to go into the dressing room. I only have one body, but once I went in, I’d get told to do this and that, one after another. I couldn’t do it all at once, but I’d get yelled at if I didn’t. So, there was a ‘gathering’ almost every day… A daily debriefing. When we finished work for the day in the provinces (on tour), a senior would call us over to so-and-so’s room and first make us sit in seiza (kneeling position). It was already late at night. Then they would scold us about how this happened today and how that happened, and if it escalated, they would hit us. All we could do was sit in seiza and say I’m sorry. If it ended in an hour, that was on the short side. We’d be sitting in seiza for two hours or more, so by the time it was over and we tried to stand up, we’d be like newborn fawns, our legs would go all limp and we’d be on the verge of falling over from the numbness… It’s been passed down through the generations. I thought that was normal, and that you couldn’t survive unless you endured it."

Sources

As reported by Fightful.