10 Wrestlers Who Didn't Fit The Belt

Shinjiro Otani is a multiple offender when it comes to winning championship belts that he was technically too heavy to compete for. Many of these transgressions happened simultaneously when he won the famous J-Crown Championship in 1997, which was made up of several individual championships, all but one of which his 236lb body should have excluded him from winning.

The J-Crown was created by New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1996 as a way to unify eight different junior heavyweight and cruiserweight championships from various different promotions. Coincidentally, Otani was actually the final J-Crown champion, which only had seven belts by the time he won it in August 1997. Towards the end of 1997, the WWE (then WWF) demanded their Light Heavyweight Championship be returned to them, and Otani obliged on 5th November 1997 whilst also vacating all the other belts apart from the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.

Otani was also involved in the initial tournament to create the J-Crown, going into it as the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Champion. The upper weight limit for this belt was exactly his billed weight at the time, 236lbs. However, the other Championship belts within the J-Crown had much lower weight limits. For example, the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship's weight limit is usually taken to be 220lbs. The WWF Light Heavyweight Championship's limit was 215lbs and the NWA World Welterweight Championship shouldn't have gone to anyone weighing more than 172lbs.

Still, although he was a few pounds heavier than he should have been, Shinjiro Otani at least acted like a Cruiserweight even if he didn't technically weigh the same as one, which is perhaps why you won't hear too many complaints about his title runs.