10 Things You Didn’t Know About Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger
4. He Invented The Shooting Star Press
There are few more exhilarating sights for wrestling fans than seeing a perfectly executed Shooting Star Press.
While names such as Billy Kidman, Marc Mero, Paul London, and Evan Bourne have all helped popularise this high-risk manoeuvre on a global platform, the move itself was a creation of Jushin 'Thunder' Liger.
To be accurate, the Shooting Star Press was first used before Keiichi Yamada even took on the Liger name in 1989. In fact, the first recorded use of the jaw-dropping finishing move was in a 1987 match against Masakatsu Funaki.
The origin of the Shooting Star Press is actually tied to the Fist of the North Star manga. Glancing through an issue of the comic, Yamada saw an explosive and unique offense that he thought he might be able to somehow adapt for his in-ring career. And thus, what became known as the Shooting Star Press was born.
In all fairness, the Shooting Star Press may not quite have as much of a shock factor these days as it once did - what, with such acrobatic moves now commonplace - but that manoeuvre, like so many of Keiichi Yamada's, was a true gamechanger that made the Japanese grappler stand out from the pack.