9 Best Women's Wrestlers From The 1990s, Ranked

As many wrestling fans know, the 1990s weren’t the best time for women’s wrestling. While both WWE and WCW attempted to kickstart women’s divisions, WWE’s devolved into eye candy exploitation with the Attitude Era while WCW’s quietly vanished after about 13 months.

While it certainly seemed dire, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t great female wrestlers working at the time. The West certainly had some solid talent, and at the same time women’s wrestling in Japan was experiencing a renaissance. Let’s take a look at 10 of the best women’s wrestlers from the decade, including some who wrestled for WCW and WWE.

9 Luna Vachon

A vicious brawler whose focus wasn’t on looking pretty, Luna Vachon was a bit ahead of her time, especially as female talent was relegated to those aforementioned eye candy roles. Initially showing up in Championship Wrestling From Florida, Vachon — a second-generation talent — brought her talents to WWE and WCW, where she never managed to capture a belt but put on feuds with Madusa, Sable, and other notables. The only downside to Vachon is that she was never able to really reach her full potential, as she left WWE in 2000 amid frustration with the company’s booking of its female talent.

8 Madusa (a.k.a. Alundra Blayze)

When WWE restarted its women’s division in 1993, the endeavor was built around Alundra Blayze, a former AWA star who previously went under the ring name Madusa. This pre-Attitude Era women’s division was far more competitive as Blayze showed off her considerable in-ring talent against opponents like Japanese standout Bull Nakano and became a three-time WWE Women’s Champion. Of course, in 1995 Blayze delivered an infamous moment when she dropped the WWE belt in a trash can upon returning to WCW. Known as Madusa again, she was the focus of WCW’s new women’s division only for it to sadly peter out.

7 Jacqueline

Another 1990s female wrestler who performed for both WWE and WCW, Jacqueline is one of the more underrated female wrestlers of her era. After an impressive run in the Texas and Memphis scenes, Jacqueline made her way to WCW, where she managed Kevin Sullivan and Harlem Heat and wrestled Disco Inferno, but sadly never competed in the women’s division.

In 1998, she jumped ship to WWE, where she was at least able to compete in matches against other women, and eventually captured the Women’s Title on two occasions.

6 Lioness Asuka

A major force in the 1980s as one half of the wildly popular Crush Gals tag team with Chigusa Nagayo, Lioness Asuka proved even more successful as a singles star in the following decade, although Nagayo gets more of the cred. Western fans may remember her appearance at the 1995 Survivor Series, where she joined heels Bertha Faye, Aja Kong, and Tomoko Watanabe in an elimination match against Alundra Blayze, Chaparita Asari, Kyoko Inoue and Sakie Hasegawa. In Japan, Lioness Asuka proved to be a highly decorated champion, holding the TWF World Women's Championship three times in the JDStar promotion.

5 Megumi Kudo

The 1990s saw the rise of deathmatch and hardcore wrestling thanks to the innovations of outfits like Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling and later ECW, though the contribution of women to the style is often overlooked. In FMW, the obvious standout was Megumi Kudo, who used the deathmatch style to tell some legendary in-ring stories. While her career only lasted 11 years, in 1997 Kudo delivered an epic swan song, wrestling a retirement match against rival Shark Tsuchiya with tremendous stakes: the unified FMW Independent Women's & WWA Women's Championship was on the line in an exploding barbed wire match.

4 Chigusa Nagayo

The other half of The Crush Gals, Chigusa Nagayo, proved to be a legend in her own right. After putting women’s wrestling on the map as part of a tag team, Nagayo established herself as one of the top wrestlers in the world thanks to classic matches with Bull Nakano and even her old partner, Lioness Asuka.

On top of her in-ring accomplishments, she also was influential as a trainer and promoter, founding the women’s promotion GAEA Japan and building up some incredible talent like the legendary Meiko Satomura.

3 Bull Nakano

For many fans, the Japanese wrestler of the 1990s was Bull Nakano, who (as stated) competed against Alundra Blayze during the New Generation Era and even followed her to WCW’s women’s division. In 1994, Nakano not only dethroned Blayze for the WWE Women’s Title, but did it at one of the biggest all-female shows of the decade: All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling’s Big Egg Wrestling Universe. But that’s only her interactions with Western talent — in Japan, she put on legendary bouts with Kyoko Inoue as well as the woman below.

2 Akira Hokuto

Another one of Madusa’s WCW rivals — albeit one that fans may not remember — Akira Hokuto ended up becoming the first WCW World Women’s Champion, although there were only two. But that’s only a minor part of Hokuto’s story. Nicknamed “Dangerous Queen,” Hokuto was a standout rookie in AJW in the 1980s but really came into her own in the 1990s. In particular, 1993 is often looked at as Akira Hokuto’s peak, as she took part in one of the best women’s matches ever when she took on Shinobu Kandori in a memorably stiff bout.

1 Manami Toyota

Manami Toyota with the WWWA World Championship

Pretty much all of the above women have been considered GOAT status by fans, but there’s only one who can be considered the GOAT of all GOATs: Manami Toyota. While she never competed in any major Western promotion, Toyota’s greatness can’t be overstated. She was a supremely gifted in-ring competitor, with legendary bouts against Aja Kong and the aforementioned Akira Hokuto among others. Innovative and compelling, Manami Toyota hits the kind of greatness levels where fans have compared her to all-timers like Ric Flair and Kenta Kobashi.