5 Ups And 1 Down From WWE Cruiserweight Classic (Aug 10)

3. Tajiri’s Still Got It

tajiri gran metalik
WWE.com

Even at 45, with a wrestling career that is older than some of the competitors in the Cruiserweight Classic, Tajiri showed Wednesday that he still can go, hanging with the much younger (by nearly 20 years) Gran Metalik and keeping him off-balance for parts of the match.

Tajiri had a memorable run in WWE in the early 2000s, winning the Cruiserweight Championship multiple times and even a couple tag titles as well. He’s still clearly beloved by fans and is a proven commodity. He also still can perform as a very high level, as he opened the match trading armdrags, rollups, pinfalls and submission holds with Gran Metalik for the opening moments.

In the end, Tajiri came up short, but he clearly showed that he has something left in the tank to bring to WWE if they end up bringing him to WWE in the coming weeks. (It’s been reported that he has signed a contract with the company, but it was a lot of unconfirmed reports from a month ago.)

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.