Very decent stuff. At this point I have a pretty strong idea of what I like in my pro wrestling and I'd say ultimately it comes back to some good old ANIMOSITY. Everything else being equal, give me some folk who don't like each other making it known that they don't like each other and I'll probably get something out of it. This had lots of tetchiness, so even though it was mostly back and forth without really settling into anything standout from a story perspective, the ill will kept things interesting the whole way. Liger and Kashin almost come to blows at the start because they're so overcome with DISGUST for the opposition and both want to start. Ohtani gets sent to the floor early and Liger whips him into the barricade, then kicks a cameraman up the arse for almost getting in the way. I liked the moments where the masked gentlemen would take a page from the young punks' book and throw some real derisory shit at them, the punks responding later with the same, with gusto and the smugness that comes with youth prolly. Liger going for the rolling kick only to roll into a double powerbomb/death valley driver combo looked awesome and seamless and not telegraphed at all. They probably ran some variation of this match up a dozen times a tour and it would've worked pretty well on every occasion. Hate really is all you need.
Jushin Liger v Kensuke Sasaki (New Japan, 4/7/00)
I wanted to check out something from what is probably Liger's least acclaimed run (outside of when he was like 30 years into his career, I guess) - black suit Liger. I got into Japanese wrestling primarily through Liger as my gateway, but at the time I did he wasn't long coming off the run where people were calling him things like Hollywood Liger, lamenting his transformation into a no-selling machine who was running roughshod over the rest of the junior heavyweight division. I don't know if that run was used specifically to build to this title match, but he mostly got steamrolled here and I'm not sure the crowd ever expected anything different. Sasaki was a fine enough brick wall and pulled no punches against his old tag partner from their 1992 WCW excursion. As far as Liger stepping to heavyweight champions go this was nowhere near the Hashimoto match from '94, but I'm glad I watched it just to revisit what was considered a down period of his career.
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