Jushin Liger was one of the first two or three wrestlers from Japan that I really dove into back when I decided to devote a quite frankly stupid amount of time to this nonsense of a hobby. There was a point in time where I'd have considered him a top 3-5 wrestler ever, maybe even number 1. Then as the years went by my tastes changed and I guess there was a part of me that got a little bored by him. When we did the PWO GWE poll in 2016 he was just outside my top 40; unthinkable 10 years earlier. I don't feel like he's someone I need to re-evaluate or whatever, because at the end of the day this is supposed to be fun and there's only enough time in the day to treat it as a PhD project.
But over the last few years I've gone back and watched smatterings of him and you know what? That dude was awesome basically right out the gate. The '86 stuff with Fujiwara and Takada and the UWF boys while he was going by his government name? Ruled. Early masked Liger against Sano? Amazing. Peak Liger putting people like Sasuke, Kanemoto and Ohtani in their place? Great. Post-peak defending the New Japan turf against snarling goblin NOAH bastards like Kikuchi? Tremendous. He ultimately works a style that isn't always my favourite and some of the stuff I used to love doesn't do a ton for me nowadays, but that match against Ohara I wrote about the other day was killer and now I want to watch a bunch of Jushin Liger.
We'll see where it takes us.
Any Liger v Sano we can get is a real treat so seeing that this handheld from a quarter-century ago even exists at all is a beautiful thing. Liger v Hashimoto is also one of those match-ups that looks amazing on paper and pretty much always delivers in execution, and this was some of their best stuff together, even on an untaped house show. Liger was fucking great in this. The match starts with him and Hashimoto going at each other with shoulderblocks. Liger manages to keep things at a stalemate on the first couple but probably realises that can't last very long, so on the third he zips past Hash for an extra run of the ropes and hits a diving shoulderblock that sends Hashimoto to a knee, then Liger follows up with a rolling kick right to the top of Hashimoto's head. You know Hashimoto will make him pay for that later, and you get giddy at the prospect and then it happens and you nod your head because this is why you watch the professional wrestling. The shoulderbreaker Hash hits on Liger was less shoulderbreaker and more tombstone, dropping Liger on the top of his head like he was trying to nail him to the mat by the horns on his mask. They had a martial arts stand-off mid-match with Liger taking up a sort of crane stance, ducking out the way of a couple Hashimoto roundhouse kicks that would've decapitated him. I haven't seen their February '94 match in probably 16 years and I'm hyped to check that out again. Sano hitting a bullet tope on Chono was a thing of beauty and there aren't many people who will torpedo a guy with a tope better than Sano. But then Chono just kind of decides he's going on offense again and they transition into a brief Sano in peril segment. Brief but awesome, as Chono holds Sano down and Liger crushes him with a double stomp to the guts off the top rope. I don't think Chono expected Liger to do that because he shoots him a look afterwards like "fuck sake steady on there, mate." I'd have been happy with either Liger/Sano or Liger/Hashimoto pairing taking us home and the Liger/Hashimoto we got kept pace with earlier. Hashimoto's running brainbuster thing was even wilder than the shoulderbreaker/tombstone monstrosity, then he throws his whole weight behind a wheel kick and that is a whole lot of weight being thrown, particularly from a man so prone to violent outbursts. I loved this.
Jushin Liger & Takehiro Murahama v Naomichi Marufuji & KENTA (NOAH, 7/16/03)
I didn't think this was quite as good overall as Liger's run against the NOAH boys the previous year, though it was still a really good Liger performance. There was probably a bit too much Marufuji for me. The story seemed to be about him scoring the big win for his team and establishing himself as someone on semi-level footing with the horned one. He's by a significant margin the least interesting person in the match. I haven't watched any Marufuji in forever but his offence was still as flimsy as I remembered, though he did hit one spectacular dive. That springboard moonsault over the barricade always did look amazing. The general WIMPINESS of his offence stands out even more when you compare it to his partner's. I'm not even a KENTA fan but he'll absolutely kick the living shit out of someone and both he and Murahama did that often and to each other. It's also hard to take Marufuji seriously when you've got Liger on the other side ready to throttle someone before the bell even rings. I guess Marufuji was never really one to thrive on HATRED and such though so it's probably an unfair criticism. Maybe. But Liger had his hackles up during the intros and you knew someone was getting cracked in the temple with the palm of his hand. The first exchange with him and Marufuji has Marufuji leapfrogging and finessing his way around Liger, so Liger just stops running the ropes and takes his jaw off with a shotei. It makes so much sense you can only wonder why everyone doesn't do it. I liked the structure and layout overall, with each team having one guy play face-in-peril before it builds to the finish. The video file was like 35 minutes long so when they started trading nearfalls around the 20-minutes mark a part of me was looking for an excuse to dip out, but they never went overboard and I thought it hit that feeling of epic. Marufuji winning with the Shooting Star Press while Liger was out of commission on the floor was a cool finish, tbf. It looked like it really meant something to Marufuji too.
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