jdw

Everyone who is a wrestler, is on the road, working matches, working through injuries and has a body like that has always said it was from hard work at the gym and a good diet. For 30 years. We can do some side by sides of Bryan from his ROH days to his early WWE days to that "I'm happy to show off my body next to Cena's" clip. It's the same type of changes we've seen for years. And in turn, the same lack of changes that saw Hero get in the dog house.

Not questioning that he worked mains in all of those runs. Was more asking: are we giving him credit for main eventing through the Entire period of those runs? Harley was a main eventer pretty every night he held the title and challenged for the title. There were exceptions, but it would be well under 10% of the time where he clearly wasn't Main Event or part of a Co-Main Event. It use to be easier to find posters / clippings on the Mid-Atlantic gateway, but I don't know if they got a cease & desist or ran into server space or someone got "creative" and buried it. It's a bitch now to find stuff. Anyway, here are two from 1981: GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA April 18, 1981 That was in his TV Title run, and after his US Title run with Flair. CINCINNATI, OHIO October 16, 1981 That one was as he was finishing up before heading back to the WWF. Makes sense that he's down there. I'm never one to say that the Top of the Poster or "Goes On Last" is always the Main Event or the Only Main Event. We've seen enough over the years to know of co-Mains or a semi-final that's as much of a draw. I'm more interested in: while we know that Greg was "pushed" and "made" throughout his JCP runs, is it correct to see a 24 month period and credit Greg for being a main eventer for those entire 24 months? Hogan from 1984-88 was a main eventer in the WWF. Once we move beyond Hogan in that period, it gets tough. :/

I understand: JCP ran their two crews, and tended to have two strong programs on each i.e. drawing matches in the top two matches. They also kept Greg well endowed with titles in the 1976-81 stretches where he was in town: 12/26/76 - 05/08/77 WTT with Flair 06/11/77 - 04/02/78 Mid Atlantic Champ Title run 10/30/77 - 04/xx/78 WTT with Flair 06/07/78 - 12/26/78 WTT with Von Raschke Then he went to the WWF. Not long after he was back, he was back in business: 03/29/80 - 05/10/80 WTT with Stevens (this felt more like getting Stevens over, since Greg switched to the US Title) 07/26/80 - 11/24/80 US Title run (between Flair reigns) Then had various TV title reigns in 1981 before heading back to the WWF. And of course was in the US Title after he returned in 1982. The question more was in the sense of whether he was consistently pushed Super Strong (as Flair pretty much was from a certain point on), or if he ebb'd and flowed a bit. Blackjack clearly got a huge push in 1976 through mid-77s. Hard to say that Greg was above him. I don't know how much we know about the Flair & Valentine team to know if it was total equals, or if Ric was just a bit more of the draw in it.

Dunno but he is allergic/intolerant to a lot of stuff. Bryan got those muscles on his neck and shoulder through hard work and a great diet. Exactly. I know people with a similar physique who play rugby who are completely chemical free, they simply eat well (and very regimented) don't drink, and work out 5 times a week. Daniel Bryan doesn't scream steroids at all.

I'm trying to remember if this was the match where I wrote up being annoyed over Kobashi doing his "crying spot" after Jun kicked out of a finisher. That he was at the stage in his career, and at the stage of the AJPW pecking order, where he should drop the spot when wrestling someone lower than him like Jun. Get pissed... get stoic... get anything other than weepy, and then put the kid away. John

This was from Dan's 23-disc set of 1997 AJPW material that was available via the satellite version of NTV and Fighting TV Samurai: DVD #6 AJ on NTV 5/16/97 (t. 3/30) 1. Naoki Sano/Masa Fuchi vs. Johnny Smith/The Tornado 2. Hansen vs. Ace 3. Kobashi vs. Akiyama 5/23/97 (t. 4/2) 1. Hayabusa/Tornado vs. Mossman/SHiga 2. Taue vs. Allbright 3. Misawa vs. Kawada The 4/2 date is wrong, which I think ties into my comment on the first page that "Lynch Boot 851" had stiff messed up with everything being from 3/30.

Darn... I see where some of the confusion is from, Loss: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0 Ditch and I talked about the Kawada-Misawa on the first part, and I'd tossed out the Lynch # for the Sammy version. Over the next few pages, we bounced around other matches on the NTV vs Sammy vs Other Sources question... and Ditch and I focused on other matches. You tossed out a long AJPW list on page 4 which included it, and Ditch & I again focused on other matches, mostly ones that were tough to figure out. We even got Dan in to clarify the various sources. We just never talked about the Misawa-Kawada again. Argh... I just didn't think to go through that list match by match. My fault. I don't recall how much aired on TV. Maybe the full version for the errata sets... though it does take up 30 minutes.

Yep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECWA_Super_8_Tournament I'm pretty sure a number of the DVDVR readers went to it, in the days before there was a DVDVR board. Pretty amazing that they still are running them. 17 straight years. 17 of anything in pro wrestling is pretty amazing.

That. Nagoya is a HUGE city. Ponder trying to find someone in a US suburb of 50K people with say 100+ food joints. That's my city, with is a fly on the ass of the Los Angeles metro. I get that he's one of the few gaijin in the city at that point. But think about running around to 100+ food joints in a small burb even if you have a picture of me, with my beard + age range + being non-asian narrowing things within my city that might help me stand out just a little bit. It would still take hours, during which time I'd be done with my food and back home. They had to have been some clue on where to find him. My guess is that the missing part of the story is that Dave was at the hotel restaurant or eating dinner at a place close to the hotel that Terry and/or the other gaijin wrestlers recommended.

Here's a question: does anyone think Valentine was a bigger heel than Harley Race in this period? Is there really an argument to support that? It's tricky with Race, and Bock, because how much of it is the Title. No real easy answer on how to split wrestler-from-title in that case. By extension if one ignored the Belt factor, "on paper" it would be Race. His NWA Champ dynasty (02/06/77 - 06/21/81) covered 72.8% of the period, and he remained a leading opponent for the title the balance of 1981, where in a fair number of them he would be the heel. NWA Champ covered the largest chunk of the country, was the most regular heel champ touring Japan. Bock was on top "longer" since he was champ for most of 1976-81 sans Verne's year with it, and then a top heel even in that stretch. The AWA was a large territory, and Bock did travel outside of it a bit. Hard to say he covered the ground that the NWA Champ did in that stretch. One could say that we should carve out the Champs into one bucket, ponder to what degree Bock was a "Promotional Champ" vs "Touring Champ", and then throw everyone else into a different bucket to compare. It's really hard to compare even someone like Valentine to those guys. Graham was done in the 1976-81 period once he left the WWF in late 1978. Pretty much fell off the earth. A great peak, but a vacuum after. 3 of the 6 years... hard to overcome. Valentine is an interesting one. Gets a boost from the 1979 series with Backlund, and then the 1981 return series with Bob... though it's a tricky one to try to pocket all into 1981: 10/19/81 Madison Square Garden 11/21/81 Baltimore Civic Cener 11/23/81 Madison Square Garden 12/12/81 Philadelphia Spectrum 01/09/82 Boston Garden 01/16/82 Philadelphia Spectrum 01/17/82 Maple Leaf Garden, Toronto 01/22/82 Pittsburgh Civic Center 01/23/82 Capital Centre (DC) 02/13/82 Providence Civic Center 03/07/82 New Haven Coliseum 04/13/82 Nassau Coliseum That's are the 10K+ arenas that we have results so far for. There isn't a listing for it running in the Hartford Civic Center. I'm not sure if the Springfield Civic Center was 10K before it's renovations... think that I've seen the crowds top out at 9K. Anyway... It's one of those feuds that across the territory split across years. JCP is interesting because he clearly was a star there, it's more of a question on the heel side where did he actually rank? When Ric was a heel, was he behind Ric? When Ric went face, was the top heel the guy who was opposite Ric... or was it Greg? No something that I know.

Actually my idea in this thread was: WWF Sting > WWF Warrior Since Warrior wasn't a megastar in the WWF, but in the end something of a disappointing guy one top and a giant asshole who Vince fired, the threshold for WWF Sting > WWF Warrior is quite a bit lower. In turn, the WON HOF is a much higher standard for me. That's not terribly difficult to understand. Zaha doesn't need to be a Hall Of Famer at United to be better than Bebe. He doesn't have to be Ronaldo-Hogan HOF Lever. Why? Because Bebe bombed. He just needs to be say Good Nani level, rather than say Goofy Nani level... in which case he will be a successful player at United. Only you are making it complicated.

No. Where poor means that a number of people came into various threads to point out where you were wrong. Repeatedly. Thread after thread. Even within threads when you tried to morph your positions into new ones. You're incorrect in thinking I'm who pointed out you were cuckoo in your analysis of business in that period.

JCP signing Ted was a viable option. They certainly had a shot at signing him if they offered a big deal before Vince got in. JCP pushing Ted like I mentioned was a viable option. Would Dusty have pushed for it? No. But *all* JCP vs UWF fantasty booking fails then in those regards because Dusty never was going to push the UWF. He also would crush it under his heel. So we go one of two routes: A. No UWF fantasty booking because of the Dusty Issue B. Open it up to what was viable if Dusty hadn't completely gotten stupid in 1987 after a rather terrific 1987 I'm perfectly fine having folks shut down all UWF Fantasy Booking with "Dusty's UWF Law" being the equiv of Godwin's Law. But if we're not going with it... then Ted is open for discussion. Seems like from the various timelines that he hadn't. I also go back to the earlier point: when he raided UWF for Duggan, he could easily have gotten Ted at that time if he gave a crap. His attempts to get Duggan went on for months. I don't recall any Ted rumors in that, on top of Ted getting the major push after Duggan left. Add in that Vince raided Wattsville the year before, and took someone like Slater rather than Ted. :/ I don't think he put much thought into Ted until the Watts-JCP deal was done, and there was a chance to stab the deal. Not terribly clear that he would if the offer felt good to him, and the offer that I'm talking about is the biggest he could get outside of the WWF. It was bigger than what Watts had been offering him to stick around three years into Vince going National. I don't recall in the WON that there were annual items of Ted exploring going to the WWF. Shit just kind of happened after JCP bought Watts out. We're three years into Expansion. Ted had three years to go there. Vince had three years to get him. It didn't happen until it did. It's a bit like Rick Rude. He'd been around for a while. He was on top in Dallas. Vince appeared not to give enough of a shit to get him, though he did swipe Dingo out of the same pool. But Rude as the WTT Champ in JCP... that appears to have gotten enough of the attention of Vince & Co. to go steal him. Seriously... I don't think Ted raised to the "We should get him" level until after the super-duper-secret deal was completed. Hence my statement: you close him before you complete the deal. Here's why I was doing tiers. Let's say you're going to need to pay Doc and Gang downside minimums of $250K to keep them from going to Vince. I'm pulling a number out of my ass, but the rest of these are as well. In turn you're going to have to pay Ted a $350K downside, and let's say the Birds collectively $400K. In turn, Taylor might be $100K, while Sting and Steiner are $50K a pop. Sting and Steiner are probably less on their initial contracts, but again... I'm pulling numbers out of my ass here. Retaining Sting & Steiner has nothing to do with keeping Doc. They're 1/5th of the money. I'm signing them to replace shit like Shaska, or eventally solid guys like Brad Armstrong that I can't make any money off of, or guys like Valiant who are at the end of the line. Retaining Doc means I need to get him up into a spot when I can make some money off him at that $250K. Here's the thing: Doc never in his life, before or after that, showed the potential in the US to be a guy who could justify that pay. He just didn't draw on his own. I'd rather in a given year have five early 1987 vintage Stings and Steiners than one Doc. All I need is just one of those guys to break out and I'm fine. In turn, Doc never breaks out. :/ Which I think a lot of us pretty much knew at the time: he had stuff that a lot of us liked, but he just didn't have "It" on any level. So in parsing out the money I have to spend, who I can make money off of, and the slots that I have in JCP that actually pay out money, I can take two of the main even folks and then see if there are any guys who might help the midcard / undercard. My preference on the first are Ted and the Birds. I don't expect that you would disagree with me on that: if JCP could sign two of those acts in 1987, those were the two that if booked and pushed properly could have drawn JCP money. My preference on the second are (i) prospects and (ii) guys who could be solid. Sting and Steiner are prospects. On solid... Terry turned into a really solid heel. My hedge on him has always been in the thread: "If someone had the vision that he could go heel like he did". Which is maybe 50/50 since the motions for the heel turn were kind of starting when the sale was going on... so someone much have been thinking about it either right before or right at the time. This is a bit like building the Heat. It would be nice this off season for the Heat to add Howard since they don't have a Center. But they can only afford the Big 3 contracts and surround them with cheaper talent that matches them. Spurs are the same way in how they've juggled contracts over the years. JCP wasn't Vince: they could toss money around like he did, or promise everyone an eventual run with Hogan where they get their 15 minutes of making a lot of money before sliding deep down the cards. If you're running JCP smarter than they did, you flat out had to be smart with the contracts. Doc: I didn't ever see him making money for JCP. Gang: he didn't fit JCP at all, and wouldn't have made them money I thought that at the time. It's possible that in some box in a closet are my old fantasy booking that I actually wrote up in 1987 while in my last stretch of being a stoner drunk in college. Doc and Gang had dick to do with them. I had Flair-Ted main eventing Starcade. So... not something I'm pulling out of my ass 25 years later. What I thought at the time. :/

This. Vince never would have pushed them harder than he pushed the individual parts (Arn & Tully when they were in, and Ric when he showed up still the World Champ).

Hell... I'm not even sure Warrior drew all that great in the "build". In turn, Sting would have sold action figure in the WWF. Easily. I think we can make similar excuses for Sting's drawing issues: he worked for a dying promotion, not the WWF at their expansion peak. Of course it's kind of telling that the Expansion Peak started to hit the wall right at the moment when Warrior beat Hogan, and pretty much the only thing that drew strongly across the board in 1990-92 was... Hogan. This is all old ground that's been hashed around for 20 years. Then again, Ted had already jobbed around the horn against Hogan, then jobbed at Mania to Savage... and how again did Macho-Ted draw? The booking sucked there if the point was for Macho-Ted to be the post-Mania feud to carry the promotion. Yet it drew. Warrior-Rude was Warrior's key feud after winning the title. Rude had a prior win over him, which is a bit more than Ted had over Macho. Yet... Sting bombed for a shitty company that was dying. But actually helped keep attendance from going off the cliff in the first half of the yeah. Warrior bombed for the strongest company in US history up to that point, on the heels of the company you know... doing fucking strongly right before he got the belt. Yeah, there's no reason to think. You don't say. No shit. That doesn't mean that we all have to be stupid when pondering hypotheticals. You instincts when it comes to analysing the 80s and early 90s US wrestling business (i.e. the Business end of it) have been... nicely put... well... poor. There are more than a half dozen threads that reflect your poor understanding out it. So...

So what does Sting's "TV" have to do with a comp with Warrior. Did you even read the post, or did you just get a woody over something where I critically looked at an aspect of Sting's career and just run to pop it in here? And before you run off and find more things I've written pointing out Sting's short comings as a HOF Candidate, it's probably worthwhile to ponder: A. While I don't vote for Sting as a HOFer, I do think he's a legit candidate to consider and talk about B. Warrior isn't a legit HOF candidate. He's a fucking joke in that context, despite having the greatest promotion in US history up to that point behind him at the time So... yeah, have at it in dragging my stuff over here. It will be fun to see if you grasp any of it better than this one.

Dunno but he is allergic/intolerant to a lot of stuff. Bryan got those muscles on his neck and shoulder through hard work and a great diet.

We all know Ric liked to work heel, much more so as he got older and set in his ways. That said: he didn't refuse to work heel. He worked as a Face when he was the head of the freaking Booking Committee. Some of his most memorable matches, runs and business were as a Face. So the fact that he liked being a Heel isn't relevant to your notion that Ric would somehow be cheesed off about dropping the title to Ted that he ended up dropping to Garvin anyway. Which is the point you seem to be side stepping here. :/ Yes. I could have sworn that I mentioned Savage had other ways of having a good look. Only in the sense of why Vince pushed Warrior. In turn, it's not like every top face in the company was as juiced out of their mind as Warrior was in that period. Didn't help Warrior draw. And frankly Sting was better on the mic. Which also didn't help Warrior draw. Which if we look at the top singles babyfaces of the Vince Era we would find that Warrior was the only one who had that. So it's not a key make/break thing. Warrior didn't really have "energy" except for running to the ring and running to the back. In contrast... which other top drawing singles babyfaces in Vince's time running the company needed that "energy" entrance of running in? He got over in a weeker promotion and sustained it for close to a decade. Warrior was pretty much done the moment he won the title from Hogan. This is relevant... how? There was one Hogan-Warrior match in the WWF. The rest of the time, Warrior had to draw on his own. And didn't. Savage drew more than Warrior. Bret and Shawn drew more than Nash. Size doesn't mean as much as people, including Vince, thought. It's also not like Sting is Rey Jr. He did well in a weaker promotion that was past it's prime when he got the push. Vince was a vastly better promoter, with a strong promotion. Warrior sucked on every level, with the exception of having Vince behind him. Sting didn't really suck for a "power babyface". He would have been better in the WWF than Warrior, and better able to sustain being a top face.

It would be interesting to look at the WON from that period to see if the Charlotte card was originally booked as Flair-Sting, or if it was a last minute swap out. If it was booked that way, it means the local stuff had to be out before / around Starcade. Then again, it appears that the did some TV taping there, and I don't know how they promoted those locally. "Come see the stars in a TV taping! Scheduled to appear are..." With no matches announced. Or if they actually announced matches like Sting-Flair.

I suspect that Liger saw a change. One could go out and get gaijin to spice things up in the 80s and early 90s. Honaga was someone a good deal older than Yamada, so it was largely throwing something at the wall... and he seemed to always like Honaga as something of an asssistant. Nogami was a peer. For all I know, he could have just been being nice to Nogami. He wasn't relevant afterwards: he never challenged for the title again, and never was in a Jr tourney after. Koji and Otani were different: clearly the next generation, and Liger worked on them as such. Tatsuhito Takaiwa and got a shot later in the year, as did Tokimitsu Ishizawa / Kendo Kashin. He clearly was working towards the next batch of folks who would carry it, and seemed open to grabbing people who were available: Minoru Tanaka in 1999 and Tiger Mask IV in 2002. Hard to say. Choshu got the overall company book around that time. Hard to tell how much he delegated and to where. Beats me if he had Hase helping or running it. I recall Honaga doing some of the early booking when Liger was out with the 1994-95 injury, but the push of Koji to the title wouldn't have happened without Liger making the call. Anyway, that tends to indicate that Honaga was also one of the guys helping Liger run it over the years to that point. So... who knows. The pattern with Sano and Pegasus was pretty similar to each other. "New guy". Liger turns him back in the first challenge. Guy wins second challenge. Liger wins the blow off of the initial series. [They didn't come back to Sano since he left, while Pegasus was in the hunt for half a decade] The pattern indicates the same general person was handling it. It's different from earlier Jr booking in NJPW where you initially had dynastic champs (Fujinami and Tiger Mask and Cobra), then had something more akin to "runs" (Takada, Koshinaka, Hase) rather than quicky turn arounds. I'd call the first Shinma Booking (dynasties). I don't know who the second was. Anyway, Liger-Casas in 12/26/90 was pretty much Yamada wanting him in. Right after that we get the tourney getting fixed as being annual and the Liger --> Honaga --> Liger --> Nogami --> Honaga --> Liger along with Liger's WCW Light Heavy run. That all seems to be very Yamada (as in trading wins and tossing bones), as does the Samurai stuff in 1992. As does pretty much everything after that for the rest of the decade. If I had to hazard a guess, it was all his by 1991 (which some level of overview by folks up the chain), and that in 1989-90 he was earning his wings. It's likely that Choshu and Hase and Saito knew that Liger would never "grow out of" the division given his height, so it wasn't a place to "park" him for a push like it was for Fujinami and Takada, and Hase & Koshinaka to a lesser degree. Probably only that very early period of 1989-90. I think I covered that. Gaijin. Developing a younger generation. Also that generation looking like they might not move up. Koji wasn't big. Otani was downright skinny. That may have been some dojo choices as well: they had a group of guys pop out of the dojo that looked like Jr Lifers in addition to the guys who would clearly be porked/juiced up into heavies. That wasn't the case as much earlier. It's possible that's something Liger was involved in on the dojo level in terms of selecting candidates. You also had a generation of kids who grew up watching Tiger and Cobra and now Liger, so that may have drown in guys like Koji and Otani and the other mentioned. Deeper pool to draw from. Anyway, when you start having a pool of natives who are going to stay in the pool, with a clear group of people who are older (like Liger and Sammy) and younger (Koji and Otani being the start of it), you kind of need to slow stuff down and not blow through things. In a sense your junior division becomes like your heavy division: you're going to have the same guys for quite some time. If you blow through something as quickly as you do Liger-Sammy, what are you going to be doing with these guys for the next 5 years... or 10 years. The first of the Three Musketeers to beat Choshu was Hash on April 24, 1989 at the Dome. The first major "honor" the Three Musketeers won was two years later: Chono won the G1. Chono won it again the next year, along with the NWA Title. Mutoh won the IWGP later in the same month in 1992. Hash finally won the IWGP title in 1993, four years after is first win over Choshu. When you know you're going to have Chono and Mutoh and Hash following behind Choshu and Fujinami, and that they're going to be around for a decade (if you're lucky as a promoter), you need to parse stuff out. All Japan was too slow on some stuff. I don't think as much on Kobashi, since some of his felt pushed too quickly. But certainly on Misawa-Kawada. In turn, New Japan threw out Big Wins left and right, but looked for other ways to show milestones: Hash had singles wins over Choshu in 1989, 1990 and 1991, but Choshu got those wins back. Hash chased the IWGP Title for four years, then was dominant when he got it. Still... he chased the G1 for 8 years (5 additional years after winning the IWGP) before finally getting it. We'd seen a lot of Choshu-Hash matches, but they found ways to storyline them to the end: Choshu chasing his first G1 (with Hash not taking the 1991 Choshu "role), and then taking one last stab at the IWGP. A more closed loop of a division forces that on you, or at least if you're smart forces you to think about it rather than just speed through booking.

They were the three biggest junior stars in Japan. Liger ran the division in New Japan. Dragon ran it in WAR. Sasuke ran it in MPro. No other junior divisions in Japan were terribly relevant, especially by 1996 since Busa moved up (and he never really was on the level of the other three as a jr). Liger was nice enough to throw Masayoshi Motegi a pair of challenges as a bone, and to get across the concept of the J Crown being defended across all sorts of promotions / wrestlers. Gaijin like Pegasus were off in their own bucket, increasingly less relevant as time went by, and WCW taking up their time.

The guys who had IWGP/J Crown title shots since the last time Otani challenged: The Great Sasuke (Δ) Black Tiger Shiryu Masayoshi Motegi El Samurai Ultimo Dragon Ultimo Dragon (Δ) Dean Malenko (WCW Nitro) Rey Misterio Jr. (WCW World War III PPV) Gran Naniwa Rey Misterio Jr. Masayoshi Motegi Dean Malenko (WCW Starcade) Jushin Liger (WCW Nitro) Jushin Liger (Δ) A title defense in New Japan, it's pretty much Koji and Shinji's turn. Sammy got a shot in there. Benoit wasn't really working New Japan much. Eddy was pretty much WCW as well. In fact, they would only have one further combined challenge for the title after Eddy's one at Sky Diving J in 1996. Kind of cool who he was brought back to put over. Shinji was 23 years old when he challenged the year before, and hadn't even hit his 4th anniversary as a wrestler. He's 24 when this match happens, and hadn't hit his 5th anniversary. He wins the title just past his 25th birthday, and had been working for just over 5 years. Keichii Yamada Debut: 03-03-1984 Title Challenges: 07/19/86 lost to Nobuhiko Takada 06/10/88 lost to Owen Hart 12/09/88 lost to Shiro Koshinaka 05/25/89 beat Hiroshi Hase Two years to his first challenge. Won the title on his 4th attempt, just after his 5th anniversary. Shinjiro Otani Debut: 06-25-1992 Title Challenges: 10/30/94 lost to Norio Honaga 04/16/95 lost to Koji Kanemoto 03/17/96 lost to Jushin Liger 02/09/97 lost to Jushin Liger 08/10/97 beat El Samurai Two years to his first challenge. Won the title on his 5th attempt, just after his 5th anniversary. Not bad lining up so well with the greatest junior that ever lived. More so when considering they cleared the field for Liger (Hase and Kosh both moved up to heavy), while Otani not only had the established King in the division but also a rival in Koji who was higher on the pecking order. Liger liked to play the bitch? Liger cleanly jobbed to people, then beat them cleanly in rematches. Then again, he might have been playing the bitch in beating Sano with his feet on the ropes, or regaining the title from Dragon when Sammy ran in to damage Dragon's knee, or beating Sammy for the title wither a reverse cradle and a handful of tights, or winning this match when Sammy and Black Tiger and Pegasus ran in for the DQ, or retained over Koji this month via the Liger Finish.

Fuchi-Kikuchi for the PWF Title started in 1990. Kikuchi didn't get the title until 1996 when it was too late. But even the "right time" for it was still 2/93. This didn't even get stretched out that long. Liger defended against Shinji in early 1996. He defended it in early 1997. Shinji got the title later in the year, and got to beat Liger to boot (ignoring those prior wins that both Koji and Shinji had over Liger... which Kikuchi didn't even get). Less than two years. This isn't even as long as it took Aja to get the title, which she started chasing in 1990 and got at the end of 1992. The point of the J Crown was to establish it as the uber jr title. The Three Kings (Liger, Sasuke and Dragon) established it by winning it, and then passing it around from August to January. It certainly was over by that point as a BFD among junior titles. Now some one to prove they could knock them off. This actually was a nice change of pace from the usual NJPW Jr. title changes with Liger: 08/10/89 Liger-Sano (2nd Sano challenge - 1 month) 03/19/90 Liger-Pegasus (2nd Pegasus challenge - 5 months) 04/30/91 Liger-Honaga (1st Honaga challenge) 08/09/91 Liger-Nogami (2nd Nogami challenge - 5 months) 06/26/92 Liger-Samurai (2nd Samurai challenge - 1 month) None of those guys challenged prior to challenging Liger for the first time. Sano was brought in for Liger, and he "made" him. Pegasus and Sammy were "created" for Liger, and he made them. Honaga and Nogami were nothing and Liger attempted to make them. That's five times in the first three years he had the belt. No real chase of note. Even with Sammy, he did the Tourney job first, then best him in the Final, then defended over him, then dropped the title to him. The whole thing played out in two months, and while Sammy and Liger had good matches after, there never was a lot of drama in them like that. After that, he moved away from using the title that was and instead just made new guys: 05/03/93 Tiger Mask III over Liger (1st match between the two) 09/26/93 Black Tiger over Liger (1st match between the two) 04/16/94 Sasuke over Liger (1st match between the two) The first two were repackages, the last an indy guy. Liger got his wins back in not a lot of time afterwards... often a few months. Koji and Shinji chasing their first title wins over Liger, at this point just entering it's second year and only two losses each (For Koji the 01/04/96 title change and 02/16/97 challenge, and for Shinji the 03/17/96 and 02/09/97 challenges)... that really isn't long nor a lot of times being turned back. On the Dragon-Ohtani title match, they gave Shinji's win in a title match a pretty big setting. Kind of cool on some level.

The age did read strange as an article mentioned him becoming a "station manager" at 18... which is really odd unless your dad owns it. 20/21 is also young to start in that gig next to Brown. Wonder if 43 was his "tv age". :/

Awesome!