10 Things You Didn’t Know About Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger
Everything you need to know about the recently-retired icon.
Wrestle Kingdom 14 may have been a phenomenal two-day event for wrestling fans, yet the event was tinged with a sense of sadness for so many of those same fans. After a career spanning 36 years, the utterly iconic Jushin 'Thunder' Liger wrestled his final two matches at WK14, with the revolutionary grappler then having a retirement ceremony send-off at New Japan Pro Wrestling's annual New Year's Dash show on January 6th.
Terms such as icon, legend, revolutionary, and gamechanger are bandied about far too often in the landscape of the wrestling business and pop culture, period, yet Liger is worthy of those labels and so much more.
These days, the junior heavyweight style is commonplace across the industry, with performers who would once be labelled as too small now allowed to showcase their talents on the biggest stages in the business. And for that, a large thanks has to be given to Jushin Liger.
With time having now been called on a career that simply cannot be matched, here are ten things you didn't know about one of the true all-time greats of the professional wrestling world.
10. The Origin Of The Jushin Liger Gimmick
Jushin Liger wasn't always Jushin Liger.
The whole Liger shtick is a gimmick, of course, and it's one of the beloved gimmicks and characters in the history of professional wrestling. For the man behind the mask, Keiichi Yamada was already five years into his wrestling career before he was handed the life-changing gimmick of Jushin Liger.
Debuting in 1984, the grappler spent those first five years competing in NJPW, All Star Wrestling, and Stampede Wrestling under the names of Keiichi Yamada and 'Flying' Fuji Yamada.
When New Japan decided that they wanted to replicate the success of Tiger Mask - a wrestling persona adadpted from an anime character - Yamada was offered the role of Jushin Liger by NJPW. And the rest, as they say, is history.
From Go Nagai, the Jushin Liger animated offering would run from from March 1989 through until January 1990 - totalling in at 43 episodes - and Liger the wrestler would receive a new look and abilities to mirror his animated counterpart as time progressed.