31 years ago today in Baltimore, Maryland, Tito Santana defeated Greg Valentine in a steel cage match to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship. This is the first time a WWF championship changed hands in a steel cage match.
31 years ago today, the NWA held the first ever Great American Bash from Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. Over 25,000 fans were in attendance.
Featured bouts included NWA world heavyweight champion Ric Flair defeating Nikita Koloff (David Crockett, Jim Crockett's son, was the special referee) and Dusty Rhodes defeating Tully Blanchard in a steel cage win the NWA world television championship and Blanchard's valet, Baby Doll, for 30 days.
23 years ago today, WWF held a TV taping at the Wilkes University Marts Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In the featured bout, Bret Hart defeated Yokozuna via disqualification when Mr. Fuji hit Hart with the Japanese flag. Lex Luger made the save-post match. The TV taping was featured the debuts of Ludvig Borga, the Quebecers, and Well Dunn, and the final TV appearances for Tito Santana (until 1997) and Sensational Sherri (until 2005).
19 years ago, WWF presented In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede (WWE Network link) from the Saddledome in Calagary, Alberta, Canada. 12,151 were in attendance, while 230,000 homes watched the event on PPV.
The show won Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Best Major Show award that year. Side note: this would be the last two-hour In Your House, and the last such PPV to have In Your House as the lead title of their B-level PPVs. This would change with September's Ground Zero: In Your House, the first three-hour In Your House show.
In the "Free for All" preshow match, The Godwinns defeated The Blackjacks (Windham & Bradshaw).
Mankind and Hunter Hearst Helmsley fought in a double countout.
The Great Sasuke defeated TAKA Michinoku. This was the WWF debut for both men.
The Undertaker defeated Vader to retain the WWF Championship.
The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart, Davey Boy Smith, and Brian Pillman) defeated Team USA (Steve Austin, Ken Shamrock, Goldust, and The Legion Of Doom).
Goldberg vs. Scott Hall by Stinger1981
Hollywood Hogan vs. Goldberg by wcwAttitude
18 years ago, WCW draws its largest crowd ever when 41,412 fans packed the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia for Monday Nitro (WWE Network link).
Goldberg, residing in Atlanta, won two matches that evening. First, he defeated Scott Hall to retain the WCW United States Championship. In that main event later that evening, Goldberg defeated Hollywood Hulk Hogan to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The United States Championship was vacated following the show.
11 years ago today, Ric Flair's autobiography To Be The Man is released. The book topped out at #5 on the New York Times' Best Seller list for hardback, non-fiction books.
The Dudley Boys vs Billy Kidman & Paul London 7... by JonnyForkRism
12 years ago today, at a Smackdown taping at the Winnipeg Arena in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Billy Kidman and Paul London defeated The Dudley Boyz to win the WWE Tag Team Championship.
In the show's featured bout, John Cena defeated Booker T via disqualification when Luther Reigns attacked Cena from behind. Moments earlier, Cena attacked Reigns and Smackdown GM Luther Reigns; Angle would strip Cena of the United States Championship.
8 years ago today, Mickie Knuckles, recently making her TNA debut as Moose, suffers a broken leg during an IWA Mid-South event in Joliet, Illinois. She would wind up needing multiple surgeries on her leg, ultimately costing Mickie her TNA deal. In April 2015, Mickie retired from wrestling.
4 years ago today, Ring of Honor announces via a statement that they had fired Kenny King.
King the previous night appeared on TNA Impact in a Destination X qualifying match just days after his contract expired with ROH and seemingly had a handshake agreement for a short-term extension. According to ROH, after King informed them that he would appear on the July 5 Impact, he was told to not appear live on the show as it violated the terms of the agreement. King did not honor the agreement, saying the deal seemed fair at the time, but others told him it was not. At the time of King's release, he was one half of the ROH world tag team champions with Rhett Titus as The All-Night Express.
Today would have been the 102nd birthday of Vincent James Mcmahon, Sr.
Born in Harlem, New York, promoting has always been in his blood. His father, Roderick James "Jess" McMahon, was a successful boxing, wrestling, and concert promoter alongside Tex Rickard, who promoted events for Madison Square Garden. Vincent was often seen with his father as he learned the family business.
McMahon was among the first wrestling promoters to see the potential of the sport on television, feeling it could adequately be covered with only a couple television cameras, a ring, and if needed, a television studio. Vincent led the Captiol Wrestling Corporation (later named the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, and later still the World Wrestling Federation), a pro wrestling group that ran out of the northeastern United States, primarily Baltimore, Washington, DC, New York, and New Jersey.
Running out of an old barn in Washington, DC, McMahon began airing matches on the DuMont Network in 1955; it was one of the last live sports programs for the dying network, but their flagship station in New York, WABD (today known as WNYW, owned by Fox), picked up the program, and aired matches on Saturday nights until 1971.
Vince, Sr. was rarely on camera, as he believed promoters should never interfere with the in-ring action. However, he can be seen during the infamous Alley Fight between Sgt. Slaughter and Pat Patterson in the early 1980s. He could also be seen in the 1974 movie The Wrestler.
He also felt wrestlers shouldn't branch out into other forms of media, thus his disapproval of Hulk Hogan's appearance in Rocky III in 1981 leading to Hogan leaving the WWF for the AWA. Vince's son, Vince Jr., felt differently, and hired Hogan back two years later. Vince Jr. bought the WWF and its parent company, Titan Sports, Inc. from his father in 1982. Despite his father's reservations, McMahon took company national and eventually worldwide.
Vince Sr. would never get to see the fruits of his son's success; on May 24, 1984, four months to the day Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik for the WWF Championship in Madison Square Garden, essentially launching the 1980s wrestling boom, he would die of pancreatic cancer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was 69.
McMahon Sr. would be posthumously inducted into the Madison Square Garden (1984), WWF (1996), Wrestling Observer Newsletter (1996), and Professional Wrestling (2004) Halls of Fame.