**Match Review** (WCW World Cruiserweight Champion) Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Ultimo Dragon (w/Sonny Oono) (WCW Hog Wild 1996)

This is the PPV debut for Ultimo "Ultimate" Dragon. Naturally, Mike Tenay joins these three for commentary in this match. He does a great job of introducing Ultimo Dragon by saying that he wasn’t good enough for Inoki’s New Japan Dojo, went to Mexico for a while, and then New Japan came begging him to come back to his motherland. By the way, Rey is wearing his awesome Spiderman-style trunks and mask here. We see some nice back and forth mat work to start. The pace picks up with a spinning heel kick from Dragon, then they try and show each other up by landing on their feet off quebradas. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come to a stalemate. Dragon unleashes his infamous kick combo to take Mysterio off his feet. Handspring Elbow connects, followed by the running Ligerbomb. Rey makes the ropes after the figure-four and heads to the floor. Tenay mentions that Dragon recently defeated Jushin Liger in only two minutes, forty seconds in New Japan’s J Crown junior heavyweight tournament. Later on in the tournament, he also defeated the first WCW cruiserweight champ Shinjiro Ohtani. Back in, Dragon applies La Reinara, which is a spinning torture rack, ending with Dragon dropping to his knees. Dragon misses the Handspring Elbow and takes a springboard dropkick to the floor. Rey baseball slides Dragon off the stage down into the dirt as he springboard planchas from inside the ring out on top of Dragon! Incredible. Back inside, Rey catches Dragon with a flying headscissors. Rey tries another springboard, but Dragon blocks with a dropkick. Dragon fake dives, then dropkicks Rey down, and levels him with a pescado. Excellent stuff here. In the ring, Dragon flips out of a backdrop and delivers a bridging German suplex for 1-2-NO! Quebrada hits, but there’s no cover. Mutasault gets 1-2-NO! He goes for another running Ligerbomb, but Rey counters with a rana. Dragon blocks the hurracanrana from the top, but can’t block the Springboard Hurracanrana for 1-2-3. (Match length: 11:36)

**My thoughts: Good intro for the WCW to the Ultimate Dragon, but they didn’t quite kick it up to eleven like they did in later WCW matches. These two had an awesome three series on PPV – here at Hog Wild ’96, at World War III ’96, and at Spring Stampede ’97. You should check out all of those matches. This match gets my vote for the Cruiserweight Castle poll.

--Aaron