10 More WWE Superstars And Their Japanese Counterparts

5. Chris Jericho

Ric Flair The Great Muta
WWE.com

Jericho is an outstanding wrestler who had to deal with a lot of barriers placed in front of him. He was a masterful technician and incredibly charismatic wrestler with tons of ideas and creativity, yet he was lumped together with the other cruiserweights as one of the ‘vanilla midgets’ in WCW. In WWF, he rubbed people the wrong way, and had to get through many negative perceptions before he finally reached the top of the company.

That said, in the ring, Jericho is often considered one of the best ever, with a wide variety of impressive wrestling maneuvers and a lot of charisma. He’s also one of the best talkers in WWE history; after all, not everyone can go toe-to-toe with the Rock on the microphone.

Japanese Counterpart: Jun Akiyama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1DHgqcYeC8

Like Jericho, Jun Akiyama is an outstanding wrestler with a lot of positive attributes and few negatives, who had to overcome booking decisions and non-wrestling related difficulties to reach the top. Like Jericho, Akiyama was on fire during his early years; his debut match against eventual archrival Kenta Kobashi in 1992 has been cited as the best debut match in wrestling history. Also like Jericho, the fans had a lot of faith in him, but booking decisions delayed his main event ascent significantly.

When NOAH was formed in 2000, booker Misawa’s initial goal was for Kenta Kobashi to carry the belt initially and have Akiyama become top draw. However, those plans failed. Kobashi was put on the shelf with terrible knee injuries, and Akiyama wasn’t making impact as the company ace.

When they finally built this Kobashi-Akiyama rivalry in 2004, Akiyama challenged Kobashi for the World title, and that should’ve led to Akiyama’s world title push. Instead, Kobashi destroyed Akiyama with such finality that any future victory over his rival wouldn’t mean anything.

Akiyama could’ve been an enormous star had he received his main event push at the right time, just like Chris Jericho. Sadly, both of them, their early pushes were hampered by problems, and in Akiyama’s case, by the time he did win the top prize it was too late to make him a top guy in the company he worked for.

At least Jericho managed to have enormous success during his late 2000s run, which is more than what can be said about his Japanese counterpart Jun Akiyama.

Contributor

Alexander Podgorski is a writer for WhatCulture that has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was 8 years old. He loves all kinds of wrestling, from WWE and sports entertainment, to puroresu in Japan. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Political Studies and French, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. He speaks English, French, Polish, a bit of German, and knows some odd words and phrases in half a dozen other languages.