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DIR Return to: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week
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#Post#: 16071--------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the week; The mother of all title tour
naments
By: SheriffLonestar Date: August 10, 2013, 3:17 am
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If you know anything about New Japan Pro Wrestling by now, oh
regular readers of this column, you know that they love a
tournament. They have tag tournaments, singles tournaments,
Junior heavyweight tournaments. Every kind of tournament you can
imagine, because their strict adherence to wrestling as a sport
demands that there is competition in their storytelling. No
convoluted rules, it has to be straight up down single
elimination or round robin. That makes it easy to understand,
and gives a you clear idea of how well someone is doing in the
company. The round robins are best because it gives people a
chance to be elevated without costing the stars to much.
Remember Mike Bloom of the Beverly Brothers fame? He has a pin
fall win on Keiji Mutoh. Yes he really does, because NJPW don't
see anyone losing as a problem its the overall aura of a guy
that is the main thing. NJPW is littered with surprise wins.
Dave Finlay really hit it huge on the international scene with a
pin fall victory over Jushin Thunder Liger in one of the early
incarnations of the Super Junior Cup.
But what if there was a tournament where everyone was a star?
Where every match could main event a card? Wouldn't that be
something special? Well it happened in 1996. The Super J Crown
Tournament. It was an added bonus to that years G1 Climax
tournament but in reality it turned out to be one of the
crowning achievements of Jushin Liger's booking career. The
concept was simple; take every Junior Heavyweight champion
available to you and have a one night tournament to decide who
really was the best Junior Heavyweight in the world. The eight
titles involved where; The British Commonwealth Junior
Heavyweight Championship held by Jushin Liger, The IWGP Junior
Heavyweight Championship held by The Great Sasuke, NWA World
Junior Heavyweight Championship held by Masayoshi Motegi, the
NWA World Welterweight Championship held by Negro Casas, UWA
World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship held by Shinjiro
Otani,
WAR International Junior Heavyweight Championship held by Último
Dragón, WWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship held by
Gran Hamada and the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship held by
El Samurai. All of the companies that controlled these belts;
Michinoku Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro Wrestling, Wrestle Dream
Factory, Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, Universal Wrestling
Association, Wrestle Association R, World Wrestling Association
where in on the tournament with the exception of the WWF/E who
had pretty much forgotten about their Light Heavyweight
Championship until they requested its return for a tournament.
It should also be noted that the NWA Light Heavyweight
championship lost its NWA affiliation some time before. However
the workers involved gave weight and credence to this
tournament. It really was a purple patch for Junior Heavyweight
wrestling at the time. Jushin Liger was the perennial IWGP
champ who was booking the division (always a fair booker he
never hogged the lime light but understood his place as the main
draw of the division). His selfless booking enabled him to be a
trusted man and when he went to the various offices around Japan
to put this together they all signed on knowing that whoever won
the tournament would bring prestige to their company as their
champion. It was quite simply to good to pass up and would
return wrestling to the days of a touring undisputed champion.
Would it work again? Not really, the wrestling world is to
stratified now to develop such a tournament. Everyone, even in
the smaller companies, does their own thing. Occasionally you
get one off events like Chikara's King of Trios that brings
together the wrestling world, but nothing of this scale will
ever happen again because quite frankly its UN-managble. The J
Crown itself lasted as a defended title for less than 11 months,
it just became to much of a burden to organise all of those
offices, though at one time the J crown Champion was also the
WCW Crusierweight Champion (no spoilers) meaning for a brief
moment we really did know who was the most valued Junior
Heavyweight in the world. For now, enjoy the show.
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjhXTpL9NeI
#Post#: 16089--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the week; The mother of all title
tournaments
By: tnafanforum Date: August 10, 2013, 1:28 pm
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Loving it . Also it is me of the best out their .. You have just
got to get in to it and then you will enjoy it..
#Post#: 16126--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the week; The mother of all title
tournaments
By: SheriffLonestar Date: August 11, 2013, 2:51 am
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It is very high quality stuff, obviously I filter out the bad
stuff for this column though lol. Also they do have 40 years
worth of matches to get through so its hard not to find gems
like this :).
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