#7 – Rey Mysterio vs. The Ultimate Dragon
WCW World War 3
November 24, 1996
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It wasn’t just the later years of WCW that were absolutely ridiculous. The entire World War 3 event had to be the brain child of the WCW creative team, a bottle of Goldschlager and an eighth of Mary Jane. “Hey man…what if we do the Royal Rumble too…but instead of 30 guys, it’s 60 guys! And, what if instead of one ring, they’re all like…in two rings, man?” So how do you kick off a PPV with that kind of main event? The J-Crown Championship.
The J-Crown was Jushin Liger’s fantastic idea of unifying 8 different light-heavyweight championships. The Great Sasuke ended up winning it for the first time, in a tournament that took place simultaneously with the G1 Climax in 1996. The Ultimate Dragon (aka Ultimo Dragon) won the title from him two months later, and took it to WCW to defend it against guys like Rey Mysterio, including right here in the World War 3 opening contest. I don’t know if the funniest part of the J-Crown was that the champion wore all the titles at the same time, or that for about 5 months, WWF didn’t even realize it was happening, and that their Light Heavyweight Championship was a part of it. They weren’t happy when they found out.
Anyways…that’s all to set up this really good match between Rey Mysterio and Ultimate Dragon, which you should defintely check out on the WWE Network.
