From World Pro Wrestling 9/13/97 THE FOUR HEAVEN IN NAGOYA DOME
This was a very good, albeit somewhat bizarre match. Really, just about every match in Otani's run with the J Crown was pretty weird. Early on, Otani played heel and they put the Liger & Samurai vs. Kanemoto & Otani rivalry over big. Later on, the titles became the most important thing to Otani, who had never captured the IWGP Junior Title before, and he switched to his old role as the young babyface. You can be one or the other or even a tweener, but just can't go from one to the other in the same freaking match without turning. Otani didn't turn here, nor was there any logical reason for him to. It was just plain goofy.
"Samurai did very well here, but he isn't near the level Liger is at when it comes to carrying and Otani, who tried to call/carry this, didn't do the job all that well. I think the match had a little problem with pacing, but that was mainly due to it somewhat lacking direction for certain portions. Otani is truly the most exciting junior to watch when he's on. His move set is so perfectly diverse that he could make any match exciting. Otani is the better of the two here, and the match itself was very good, although not on the level of either workers best," wrote Hadi.
Otani
did his usual heel stuff early and Samurai worked stiffer than normal, so it
was working as far as putting the hatred over went. Otani popped up from two
reverse neckbreakers in a row before selling the third, which was beyond stupid.
Samurai gave Otani a taste of his own medicine with the face
scrapes, but Otani shook his finger "no" and came back with some
of his own. Samurai avoided the swandive missile kick and came back with la
magistral, ala Liger. Samurai's tope suidida hit Otani so high he couldn't catch
Samurai, and Samurai hit his head on the security rail. After powerbombing Samurai
on the floor, Otani made the sign of the belt around his waist, but got no pop.
Otani tried to Dragon suplex Samurai off the apron, but settled for a
(released) German suplex on the apron that didn't work well. This wasn't
getting a hell of a lot of heat, but then Otani fired up and switched to the
young babyface role and got a hot near fall that he cried about not getting the three count on.
The switch didn't make any sense given the early portion, and was just as puzzling
given that Samurai was coming back after one near fall and throwing
bombs. Who were we supposed to root for while Samurai was using this big
spots?
Otani came back and got a near fall with his swandive shiki no kneel kick. Samurai slapped Otani off the top twice, but Otani kept coming back for more and was able to execute the nadare shiki no Frankensteiner. Otani pulled out his swandive shiki no DDT, which was the move he won the legendary WCW Cruiserweight title with, but he waved his hand no about going for the pin and did his Dragon suplex finisher to become the 5th J Crown champion. Otani went nuts, falling over the top rope to the floor in joy and he got a big babyface pop for finally capturing the titles.
The wrestling was very good and Otani's facials were excellent, but the dual personality was goofy even though it worked this time. My guess is the reason it worked was that Otani said something to the effect that he would never challenge for the titles again if he lost this match, which wasn't something the fans would want regardless of whether he was a face or a heel. It was probably a bad thing that it worked here because Otani started changing from heel to face during every single title defense. 18:15 (11:25 aired). ***3/4
Special thanks to Michael Smith, Miko Kubota, Sam Panico, & Hadi