[1997-01-04-NJPW-Wrestling World in Tokyo Dome] Super Liger vs Koji Kanemoto

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Chris Jericho debuts and retires the wildly successful Super Liger gimmick. We get the entrance, and I have to say the way Jericho fills out the costume is halfway between Liger and Psicosis. He doesn't seem particularly comfortable in the suit and if anything, seeing this makes me respect Liger even more -- he has had a legendary career wearing a really weird outfit. There were big plans for Jericho in this gimmick, but the idea was scrapped when the match was subpar. Jericho worked a few New Japan matches in the future, but never really had a big run.

[WingedEagle]

Always look forward to seeing you work your way through the yearbooks. Definitely gives me something to look forward to when I eventually catch up. Curious to see your thoughts on a number of matches this year as we're now getting to the point where I've seen much of the high end stuff at some point or another whereas earlier in the decade I was basically limited to US tv.

[Loss]

Always look forward to seeing you work your way through the yearbooks. Definitely gives me something to look forward to when I eventually catch up. Curious to see your thoughts on a number of matches this year as we're now getting to the point where I've seen much of the high end stuff at some point or another whereas earlier in the decade I was basically limited to US tv.

Thanks, I wanted to watch as much as possible today since I have company for the next few days and won't be able to watch anything at all. We're not only entering a period that I remember well, but we're also entering a period that doesn't feel like it was that long ago, even though it really was.

[Childs]

Damn, Loss. You make a man feel inadequate in his wrestling watching.

[WingedEagle]

Couldn't agree more, this is the period where I literally remember watching things week to week and remember this more than I do what may have happened in 2008 or '09, for example. I'd be further along in '92 but this whole wife thing really is a drag on nights & weekends. Apparently she gets a vote on how we spend our time every now and then.

[goodhelmet]

Don't feel bad... if I didn't make a little coin making these things, I wouldn't be allowed to watch as much wrestling as I wanted either.

[soup23]

Jericho looks awkward as hell in this thing. Crowd is predictably dead for the dome match and Jericho gets the win with a tiger suplex. Not exactly an extraordinary debut.

[Kevin Ridge]

I think my disc 1 is defective or something with the menu song that was playing. Never heard of the Super Liger era for Jericho. Okay so it was only one night. Thought he was going to hit Liger's top rope DDT but chickened out and just did a suplex intead. Whole thing did not feel right.

[Robert S]

I think my disc 1 is defective or something with the menu song that was playing.

That song got me a good laugh. Let's see if this is the only song in this set I will recognize (96 began with Macarena and after that I knew almost no songs at all).

[goodhelmet]

I think my disc 1 is defective or something with the menu song that was playing. Never heard of the Super Liger era for Jericho. Okay so it was only one night. Thought he was going to hit Liger's top rope DDT but chickened out and just did a suplex intead. Whole thing didn't feel right.

 

What happened to make you think it was defective? I may have fucked up in the mastering of the disc.

[goodhelmet]

I think my disc 1 is defective or something with the menu song that was playing.

That song got me a good laugh. Let's see if this is the only song in this set I will recognize (96 began with Macarena and after that I knew almost no songs at all).

 

Shit, I just looked at the song list for 1996. Besides some of the alternative rock songs, most of those songs are pretty common radio songs. I think you may be in trouble for 1997.

[Robert S]

Could you post the song list somewhere in the 96 forum? Then I can check if I am just really horrible in recognizing songs or if 96 US radio is that much different to 96 Austrian radio.

[Grimmas]

I had never seen Jericho as Super Liger. It was as bad as touted. Just a very awkward situation. Koji didn't look too great either, passed on the bit we saw and I generally love Koji.

[PeteF3]

 

I think my disc 1 is defective or something with the menu song that was playing.

That song got me a good laugh. Let's see if this is the only song in this set I will recognize (96 began with Macarena and after that I knew almost no songs at all).

 

 

My first reaction to the music: "Is this the eels? ... (vocals kick in) Oh, wait, yeah..."

 

Inauspicious start to 1997 from both a music and a match standpoint. Other than the red eye lenses and blond hair, they really made no attempt at differentiating Jericho's outfit. You'd think they could go all Black Tiger and make an evil black suit for him, at least. In any case, he can't really work under these conditions and we get a pretty poor finish.

[KB8]

Considering Liger himself has had a whole bunch of cool outfit variations over the years, does this Super version of it even rank inside the top 10? I remember (I think) Jericho saying in his book that this was mostly a disaster and that there was one spot where he just about landed on his head and broke his neck. The part we JIP'd to had both of them up on the top rope so I was half expecting something horrific to happen. Nothing horrific happened but it wasn't all that good, either. I guess it's not too surprising they mothball'd the Super Liger thing in short order.