10 Wrestling "Botches" That Were Totally Intentional
4. A Botch, Or...?
Was the botch in the legendary Jushin Liger Vs. Great Sasuke match a worked botch, or the single greatest moment of improvisation in the history of professional wrestling?
Given the quality of the workers involved, both scenarios are plausible: either Liger and Sasuke were intelligent enough to immediately sense and avert disaster, or they were even more intelligent than that, and, years before it was popularised, worked a match around sympathy, cruelty and wits. A unique spin on a core wrestling story, in other words.
Liger's incredible performance suggests that, yes, he was even better than his glittering legacy suggests. The family-friendly, spectacularly innovative superhero played situational heel in this Super J Cup match. He grounded Sasuke, viciously targeted his arm, and generally used body language to awesome effect in controlling the audience.
Then, when Sasuke aimed a springboard attack, he fell directly on his face. Watch his feet. It looks almost deliberate. He doesn't trip; he positions his toes on the top rope as if to facilitate the error. He doesn't so much execute a move badly but rather executes a timing error on purpose.
Liger claps sarcastically immediately - he doesn't look remotely flustered - and before they could even improvise a secret conversation, Sasuke drops Liger right on his head with a hurricanrana and pins him.