This Day in Wrestling History – October 8th

Liz takes a look back at this day in wrestling history, including MVP’s WWE debut, Lilian Garcia releasing a single, and a New Japan PPV!

Born on This Date:

• 1974 – Matt Knowles (H.C. Loc)
• 1979 – Paul Kenneth Birchall
• 1980 – Michael Mizanin (The Miz)

On This Day in Wrestling History:

• 1986 – Barry Windham defeats Outlaw Ron Bass for the vacant Florida State Heavyweight Title. This began Windham’s  sixth reign with the belt in Tampa. The title had been vacated after a previous match in which Ron Bass used chloroform to beat Windham.
• 1989 – Mima Shimoda defeats Asayo Obata for the vacant All Japan Junior Title in Tokyo, Japan.
• 1990 – Jerry Lawler won a 21-man tournament to begin his seventh  USWA Unified World Heavyweight Title. The title had been vacated when The Snowman no-shows a title defense on August 27, 1990 and left the company. Lawler would go on to hold the title 27 times.
• 1991 – The York Foundation (Terrance Taylor, Richard Morton, & Thomas Rich)) defeated Dustin Rhodes, Tom Zenk, & Big Josh (Matt Borne) for the WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Title. The belts would be deactivated by WCW a month later.
• 1999 – ECW aired a controversial segment where Tammy Lynn Sytch (Sunny) was interviewed by an off-camera Paul Heyman.   Sytch talked about how women in the business  were using drugs in order to stay in shape, and discussed the death of Louie Spicolli due to soma use.  Before proclaiming “she was back”, Sytch also discussed her problems with alcohol.
• 2000 – Vince Russo and Steve Corino both announce that they are going to retire from the wrestling business. Russo claimed he would retired when his Time-Warner contract ran out, however within the year he joined TNA and is still currently involved in the business. Corino went on a farewell tour in 2007 and currently works for WWE as a trainer and producer for NXT.
• 2001 – Lillian Garcia released her single, Shout, on Universal Records.
• 2002 – WWE issued a statement that they had prevailed in court over Nicole Bass’ sexual harassment lawsuit.
• 2010 – MVP made his much hyped debut at No Mercy.
• 2012 – For the first time ever a New Japan PPV was available for purchase outside of Japan. King of Pro-Wrestling took place on a national Health and Sports holiday.

• • Chaos (Takashi Iizuka, Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano) defeated Muscle Orchestra (Manabu Nakanishi and Strong Man) and Yuji Nagata
  • Forever Hooligans (Alex Koslov and Rocky Romero) (c) defeated Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and Kushida) to retain the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.
  • Low Ki defeated Kota Ibushi to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.
  • Killer Elite Squad (Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Lance Archer) (with Taka Michinoku) defeated Tencozy (Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima) to win the IWGP Tag Team Championship.
  • Yujiro Takahashi defeated Tetsuya Naito.
  • Laughter7 (Katsuyori Shibata and Kazushi Sakuraba) defeated Always Hypers (Togi Makabe and Wataru Inoue).
  • Kazuchika Okada defeated Karl Anderson to retain his IWGP Heavyweight Championship challenge certificate, clinching his right to challenge for the title at Wrestle Kingdom 7.
  • Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Hirooki Goto to retain the IWGP Intercontinental Championship.
  • Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated Minoru Suzuki to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.
• 2012 – Vince McMahon sent than Senior Vice President of Creative, Brian Gewirtz home from RAW. It was described as a shocking move and reportedly Vince informed all of creative that their jobs were not safe.
• 2012 – WWE Hall of Famer Tammy Sytch was arrested for the fourth time and charged with violating a protective order, disorderly conduct and criminal mischief after police were called to the home of her boyfriend during a domestic dispute at his home.
• 2015 – WWE returned to Saudi Arabia were they held three shows at King Abdullah Sports City Sports Hall.
• 2017 – The ninth Hell in a Cell PPV aired. It’s main event featured Kevin Owens facing Shane McMahon in a falls count anywhere match. (Two years later we just finished dealing with these two again).

Died on This Date:

• None