Overview

Inaugural championship tournament

Defending the title

Pillman's reign as champion continued until December 1991, when he began to feud with masked Japanese wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger, who defeated Pillman for the championship at a house show held in Atlanta, Georgia on December 25, 1991.^[4] Pillman reclaimed the title in a rematch at the SuperBrawl II pay-per-view event on February 29 the following year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, becoming the only wrestler to hold the championship more than once.^[4]

Pillman successfully defended the championship against Tom Zenk at the May 17 WrestleWar event in Jacksonville, Florida,^[5] before being defeated by Scotty Flamingo in Mobile, Alabama, during the June 20 Beach Blast pay-per-view. Flamingo's brief reign was ended by Brad Armstrong during a house show; the match was filmed out-of-sequence with several other televised championship matches, which meant Flamingo would tape a defense against Scott Sandlin despite having already lost the championship, while Armstrong recorded a match against Tracy Smothers that would air as a title defense despite being shot before his win was officially acknowledged.^[4][5] Armstrong's reign saw the return of Liger as a challenger; they fought on several occasions, either with Armstrong winning or the match ending in a draw. Armstrong's last successful defense of the Light Heavyweight Championship was against Flamingo on August 14 in Fort Myers, Florida.^[5]

Vacancy and legacy

As the September 1992 Clash of the Champions XX approached, Armstrong suffered a knee injury in a match with The Great Muta during a tour with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and was unable to participate in a planned title match against Pillman at the event. Armstrong was formally stripped of the belt at Clash of the Champions, depicted as the result of him not defending it for thirty days, and another tournament to appoint a new champion was announced. However, Bill Watts had taken over the role of head booker for WCW and began to implement several changes in the work being produced. Among Watts' edicts was a new rule that would depict any maneuver performed from the top rope of the ring as illegal and resulting in disqualification; this effectively ended the viability of the light heavyweight style, which relied extensively on such moves, even though the matches involved in the championship picture had been considered "outstanding" by the fans. As a result, the planned tournament was never held and the light heavyweight division was ignored for the remainder of Watts' tenure.^[6][7]

In 1996, WCW once again held a tournament to crown a champion for the weight class, this time under the title WCW Cruiserweight Championship. The first champion under this new lineage was Shinjiro Otani, who defeated Chris Benoit in the tournament final. After the acquisition of WCW's assets by rival company WWE, both title lineages were considered to be related, and WWE refers to the holders of the Light Heavyweight Championship as former Cruiserweight Champions.^[8]