10 Greatest High-Flyers Of The Pre-Attitude Era

4. Tiger Mask I

The man behind the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, is as influential to the cruiserweights of the wrestling industry as anyone has ever been. You can see the seeds that Sayama planted blossom in the likes of Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, and Psicosis.

He was the most creative guys in the building on any given night, and part of Tiger Mask's appeal - aside from his remarkable balance, lightning speed, and cat-like agility - was the way he used every part of the ring. Whereas most performers saw the ropes and turnbuckles as confines, Sayama saw endless possibilities. And he used those unique possibilities to make the crowd gasp on a nightly basis.

To further cement the influence he had on Rey Mysterio, it was actually Sayama who invented Rey's signature move, the 619. The move had originally been used as a fake dive to the outside of the ring, but Sayama added the face kicking element which made the move infinitely cooler.

To say he was a wrestler ahead of his time would be an insane understatement. If you plucked the original Tiger Mask out of 1982 and dropped him off in the WWE twenty years later, he would have fit in just fine.