10 Genius Wrestling Bookers And The Best Decision They Ever Made
4. Antonio Inoki (NJPW)
Best Decision: Pushing the Junior Heavyweights
AJPW and NJPW have been competing for dominance in Japan for over 40 years. The tide has shifted from one promotion to the other on many occasions, but for many years, NJPW dominated AJPW in terms of popularity and international appeal. This happened because Antonio Inoki started pushing the junior heavyweight division.
Led by such legends as Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, The Dynamite Kid, and the original Tiger Mask, Inoki’s NJPW became an international sensation. Wrestlers from all over the world travelled to Japan to wrestle in Inoki’s promotion and to demonstrate that smaller, more agile wrestlers can be big draws just as much as the heavyweights.
Inoki’s pro-cruiserweight approach paid off many times over. The match between Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask in 1983 was the first match to ever receive a 5-Star rating from the Wrestling Observer, and those early wrestlers set the bar for future generations to become high-flying stars in their own right.
Names like Ultimo Dragon, The Great Sasuke and Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger would never have become such huge stars if it weren’t for Inoki’s decision to push the first wave of innovators.
Today, the legacy of Inoki’s decision is still present: NJPW’s has a highly-popular junior heavyweight division, and those matches tend to be show-stealing affairs. Thanks to Inoki’s booking decision, and his subsequent talent exchange with American promotions, fans in North America have enjoyed over 30 years of unbelievable cruiserweight action.