(Almost) 5-Star Match Reviews: The Great Muta vs. Jushin (and Kishin) Liger

I was originally going to post this a few days ago but got sidetracked with other stuff. I wanted to bring attention to this particular match because it’s something that I think is worth studying. Few clips of this match exist; the only one I was able to find had no subtitles and no commentary, not even in Japanese. As such, if you were to start watching it randomly you’d probably find yourself confused. After all, why would Jushin Liger, NJPW’s most respected and iconic junior heavyweight, be wrestling The Great Muta, a wrestler in a completely different weight class?

It seemed completely random and out of nowhere for NJPW to book this; after all, it was the penultimate match on a random night during NJPW’s tag tournament so it’s not like there was much emphasis put on this feud. And yet with so little build this match ended up being far more entertaining than it had any right to be.

The Story

NJPW has long maintained a strict weight class division, to the point that junior heavyweights only interact with heavier wrestlers in multi-man stable warfare matches. So for Liger to wrestle one of the company’s top heavyweights was a big deal. Except Liger had a problem on his hands: he wasn’t wrestling Keiji Muto of the Three Musketeers, but his demonic alter-ego Muta.

To make a long story short, Muta is a demon spawned in Hell that inhabits Muto’s body and comes out to play once in a while. Muta is mostly an antithesis to Muto in terms of style: whereas Muto wrestles with a flashy and acrobatic style and sticks to the rules more often than not, Muta is a savage who has no reservations over cheating, using weapons, and cutting his opponents up. After all, he’s the one behind the namesake Muta scale which measures match bloodiness.

So Liger was a fish out of water here. Even though he was known for being arguably the best in-ring worker in the company with a technical pedigree rivaling that of Eddy Guerrero or Wild Pegasus/Chris Benoit, he wasn’t accustomed to wrestling heavier opponents. Worse, he had little experience, if any, wrestling a savage who used weapons so liberally and played such overt psychological games. So even if Liger could get close, what could he do? Muta was kind of like The Undertaker in NJPW, a supernatural creature that was hard to kill and made everyone – even Inoki himself – move gingerly. Knowing this difficult situation, what could Liger do to somehow win this seemingly unwinnable match?

The Match

This took place on October 20, 1996.

Liger comes out to a massive pop wearing an all-white version of his regular attire. Then Muta comes out with a demon mask covering his face and a Chinese dragon coiled around his head. Once in the ring, Muta removes his mask to reveal gold and black face paint.

The bell rings and Muta spits green mist for another huge pop. The fans chant for Liger as the wrestlers stare each other down. Muta slithers out of the ring and scares some fans by jerking the barricade. He returns to the ring and Liger dodges a huge spinkick to the head. Liger escapes a rear waistlock with an armlock but Muta gets a ropebreak. Liger takes Muta down and starts working over his left leg. Liger does some more mat wrestling but Muta’s stronger so he easily fights back to his feet and out of a headlock. Muta sends Liger into the ropes but Liger shoulder tackles him down. Then Liger ducks under Muta and dropkicks him to the floor. Frustrated, Muta rips off some ringside padding and terrifies some fans. Imagine yourself sitting near ringside and the Undertaker stares you down wanting your chair.

Back in the ring, Muta teases a Greco-Roman knuckle lock but he kicks Liger’s stomach and rakes his eyes instead. Muta follows with his trademark snapmare/flashing elbow drop combo that sends Liger to the floor this time. Muta rushes Liger immediately as he returns to the ring. But then Liger reverses a corner whip and lands a rolling kick into the corner. Muta bails to ringside again and scares more fans.

In the ring, Liger snampares Muta and lands a face stretch and then a chinlock. Muta fights out so Liger lands a back suplex. But since Liger’s a cruiserweight it does little damage so Muta bounces up and lands a big overhand chop to Liger’s head. The crowd cheers wildly for Liger as Muta dumps him to the floor and piledrives him through a ringside table. And as soon as Liger starts moving, Muta chokes him with some tape or cables or something. Muta hisses to the crowd and then returns to ringside to inflict more carnage. He grabs the table that he just drove Liger through and tries setting it up against a ringpost but it falls over, so he throws it at Liger’s head and shoulder. Then Liger grabs some long metal object (I think it’s a ladder) and rams it into Liger’s ribs.

Back in the ring, Liger punches Muta’s stomach but he’s so weak at this point that it does literally nothing and Muta brushes him off. Liger tries a few more and now they appear to be working. Then Liger lands a piledriver on Muta. But again Muta bounces right up completely unfazed. Muta stomps on Liger’s damaged ribs and then dumps him onto the elevated entrance ramp attached to the ring. He suplexes Liger onto it and then does a repeat of his 1993 match with Hulk Hogan: he goes all the way up the ramp and lands a huge rubbing clothesline. Muta’s in no hurry as he tosses Liger into the ring and lands a back suplex for a two-count.

Muta sends Liger into a corner for his handspring elbow but Liger sidesteps and lands another rolling kick. Liger follows with a diving shotgun dropkick and then a plancha to the floor. As Liger recovers in the ring, Muta crawls under it and pulls out a broom. Liger chases after him but Muta hits him with the broom handle and then chokes him with it.

In the ring, Muta starts ripping Liger’s mask. He appears to rip it off completely as both the ref and the crowd admonish him. Muta grabs another chair as the ref checks on Liger. Muta goes to swing the chair but something stops him dead in his tracks. It’s Liger. His face is shown but it’s covered in white and black face paint! Liger spits green mist in Muta’s face! IT’S KISHIN LIGER!

Kishin howls like a beast and with renewed energy jumps to ringside and grabs a ring spike. He jumps back in and hits Muta right in the head with it. Muta bails to ringside but Kishin chases after him and cracks him in the head with a chair. He sends Muta careening into the barricade and then hits his head with the spike again. Then Kishin rips off some ringside mats and piledrives Muta onto the exposed floor. Kishin follows with a top-rope diving chairshot to Muta’s head and then grabs a table. He sets it up in a corner in the ring and whips Muta into it. Then he goes to STAB Muta with the ring spike. But Muta dodges in the nick of time. Kishin pierces the wooden table with the spike and then turns around to try and stab Muta again. But Muta hits first with red mist. Even stronger and more potent Asian mist blind Kishin. Muta hits Kishin’s head with the spike and sends him into the table still in the corner. Muta follows with his handspring elbow/facecrusher combo and then goes to the top rope. Snap diving moonsault. One, two, three! Muta beats both Jushin and Kishin Liger.

Winner after 17:35: The Great Muta

You can watch this match here.

Review

I love this match. Though it’s far from the most well-worked or flashiest contest it has so much else going for it that makes it so compelling. The lack of ringside commentary allows the viewer to figure things out on their own. There’s a tense atmosphere from the opening bell with Muta playing his gimmick perfectly. He stalks Liger, stalls ringside, and plays games with him, not because he needs to, but because he wants to. Liger’s completely outmatched from the opening bell and has few avenues to success. The moves he does land have little impact on Muta. Muta gets such a comfortable lead that he starts going after Liger’s mask, knowing there isn’t anything Liger can do. This situation forces Liger’s hand like nothing else up to that point. Even though “Jushin Thunder Liger” literally means “Beast God of Thunder Liger”, the man had yet to be put into a position in the ring where he had to live up to the Beast part in that name. And what better way to do this than by fighting fire with fire?

No one had ever seen Liger unmask before; the closest Liger had come to showing his real face were through some quick shots of him having his mask torn open (but not off) and some grainy footage of Keiichi Yamada wrestling in Stampede Wrestling during the 1980s. So when Liger ripped his mask off completely and revealed his KISS-inspired look it was a genuine shock. And it wasn’t just shock for its own sake; it was shock for the sake of story as Liger had to summon his own inner demon just to wound Muta. He used Muta’s own mist, he used similar weapons-inspired ultra-violence, and he embraced a far more aggressive philosophy compared to anything and everything Jushin Liger had ever used. It’s no wonder that this new alter-ego needed its own separate name; Liger, like so many other media characters in Japan, had to develop a dark side personality so antithetical to the original that it had to be considered a completely separate entity.

Although Liger lost in his alter-ego’s debut match, he put on one of the best storytelling performances of his career. Instead of trying hopelessly to out-wrestle Muta, he decided to leave his comfort zone and focus on playing a new character. Muta sold this surprise like a consummate professional: for a few moments, Kishin Liger made Muta feel fear. Kishin gave Muta a taste of his own medicine and in some ways went to greater extremes than Muta ever did. Some people in the audience were scared of Muta, but based on their screaming Kishin Liger was downright terrifying.

Matches like this show that one doesn’t need to have complicated grappling and an overabundance of spammed maneuvers to tell a story effectively. While those things can be enjoyable if done correctly and if sold correctly, it’s just as important to convey emotion in the ring as it is to execute actions. In this match, Liger and Muta – two men known for being “workers” with excellent technical skill – abandoned technique and complexity in favor of emotion and simplicity. The result was clear: the audience was much more invested in this emotion-driven story than they would’ve been if it were just another robotic move exchange. As TAJIRI noted in his book,

“Wrestling moves are the tools to introduce your character to the audience. If you wrestle merely trying to show your wrestling skills, the match will not leave any impressions on the people. What we have to show is not only our techniques but the character of the wrestler and his/her emotion behind it.” – Tajiri, What Pro-Wrestlers Are Showing The Audience

So while it wasn’t the most technically or aesthetically impressive matches of its time, it stands out as a match because the story these guys wanted to tell was executed so well and with such clarity. They got themselves, each other, and the story over with the audience without the need for carefully constructed hype promos, pre-match videos, or contextualized commentary. What was basically a palette cleanser before the main-event heavyweight tag bout ended up actually stealing the show because it was such a standout performance from both men.

Final Rating: ****1/2

When I first saw this match I went **** but after revisiting it again I couldn’t help but bump it up and give it a must-watch recommendation. This is one of those matches that wrestlers should study and analyze. It might not be the most action-packed match but the storytelling, tension, and psychology were off the charts here. It was one of those narrative and drama heavy matches that were more about imagination and expression than about techniques and sportsmanship. And from time to time such a wild deviation from the norm is important, especially when a company provides a specific product and they need to test the waters with other, wilder ideas.

Thanks for reading.