We have another article where the more recent addition is still nearly 15 years old. So we can definitely say it’s history, but some of these days are really rough when it comes more modern events. If you’re older than 25, these could be fun events to reminisce about.

• Ric Flair NWA Jim Crockett Promotions Debut (1974)

While Flair officially debuted in AWA  a year a half prior, this was his debut in what is his most well known company. He faced ring veteran, New Zealand born, Abe Jacobs. Flair won his debut match and teamed up with Rip Hawk shortly after to start a heel team for his early NWA days.

• AWA St. Paul Show: World Heavyweight Championship: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Rick Martel (1984)

This was an attempt from AWA to focus on younger talent in the wake of WWF expanding not only in territories but also with their televised reach. Rick Martel defeated the AJPW legend for his first and only World title run, which also happens to be the longest individual reign in AWA history at 595 days. Even with Curt Hennig, Verne and Greg Gagne coming out to celebrate Martel’s victory, AWA had some rough years ahead.

• ECW Enter The Sandman (1995)

A show dedicated to the rising popularity of surfer turned beer drinking, kendo stick swinging badass…this had a few memorable moments. Dean Malenko and Eddy Guerrero went to a 30 Minute Time Limit Draw, in a technical masterpiece. This match helped to prove that ECW was more than just barbed wire and “garbage” wrestling. However, the main character of the show, Sandman, was the World Champion at the time and pulled off a double title defense. He had a rough hardcore match with Cactus Jack, which he ended up winning thanks to Shane Douglas interfering. But that was to make sure he got his shot at Sandman right after. Woman turned on Douglas to help Sandman win the title, so this was Shane’s rematch. Trying to pick the bones, he failed at his plan. As he was leaving, he put on a Monday Night Raw shirt and left to become Dean Douglas in WWF.

• Toryumon Mexico Dragonmania (2006)

Since we’ve already had a couple of them, might as well list the inaugural Dragonmania. The event is memorable for quite a few things. Hajime Ohara won the vacant NWA World Welterweight Championship, Kazuchika Okada in his early years won his undercard match against Amigo Suzuki, a Four Way Tag Team Elimination featuring Milano Collection AT and was the debut of the new version of the Young Dragons Cup. Formerly a tournament like the Young Lions Cup (Okada won this in 2005), changed to a multiman elimination match. Kota Ibushi won this year’s Young Dragons Cup match.

• TNA Sacrifice (2007)

This was a huge event for TNA, it was their official departure from NWA. The morning of, the NWA stripped Christian Cage and Team 3D of their respective TNA titles. So their matches turned into an inaugural crowning of the official TNA champions. Kurt Angle and Team 3D won the honors of being the first official TNA champions. Chris Harris and James Storm had a great Texas Deathmatch to help us forget about that botched dumpster fire Blindfold Cage match. Not to be forgotten, Tiger Mask IV also made his TNA debut in the X Division 4-Way with Jerry Lynn, AJ Styles and Low Ki.

• TNA Sacrifice (2012)

While this wasn’t as pivotal as the ’07 Sacrifice, there was a lot of good moments here since we’re still in the peak TNA era. Bad Influence established themselves as the top heel tag team, Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels with his Appletini, Mr Anderson got a well earned win over Jeff Hardy and Bobby Roode had one hell of a title defense against RVD in a ladder match. But the two most lauded matches were AJ Styles vs Kurt Angle, for obvious reasons, I don’t even need to explain this further. The other match being Austin Aries vs Bully Ray, Bully Ray was having a great singles run and being pushed legit. Aries had an uphill battle, but a small assist from Abyss’ brother, Joseph Park, distracted Bully enough for Aries to hit his finish and win from the underdog position. This was the win that Aries needed to vacate his X Division championship (in the midst of his historic longest 298 day reign), and establish Option C. Where the reigning X Division champion can cash in the title for a shot at the world.

Even though there wasn’t any WWE on the list, each event involves people who are very relevant in the current landscape of pro wrestling, or recently enough retired to still be topical. I go where the memorable moments and historic events are, the companies are irrelevant to me. Pro wrestling is nearly a 200 year old entertainment medium, all over the world. Only focusing on the last 50 years of one specific company is narrow minded and merely a drop in the bucket of the overall scope of our fandom.

Did I miss anything? How far did I stretch the events today? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments. And if you don’t do anything else today, remember, Always Use Your Head!

I try to dig for interesting things that are more then just regurgitated card run downs or title defenses. Not every day is successful, and some days I take more creative liberties than others in stretching the concept of historic or memorable, but hey, wrestling is supposed to be variety. Today is another one of those days where there’s a few that aren’t your stock standard bullet points.

• WWF Kuwait Cup: Ahmed Johnson vs Hunter Hearst Helmsley (1996)

This was a big moment for Ahmed. He defeated Hunter in the finals and this propelled him towards the Intercontinental title shots with Goldust in June. While we can look back at what came of this with 20/20 hindsight but, Ahmed is still the winner of the inaugural Kuwait Cup. So that alone warrants at least a small mention.

• WWF Raw is War: Rob Van Dam w/Jerry Lawler vs Jeff Hardy (1997)

During the first ECW invasion, Lawler’s guest for the night was Rob Van Dam, technically debuting on WWF television even though he was still contracted with ECW. RVD joined in on the “Extremely Crappy Wrestling” bit, establishing himself as the arrogant heel to a new WWF audience. Lawler gave RVD the “Mr. Monday Night” gimmick and Jeff Hardy was still an enhancement guy at the time, so was purely used to make RVD look good and like Lawler got the prized pig to defect to WWF.

• ROH Respect Is Earned: Bryan Danielson & Takeshi Morishima vs Nigel McGuinnes & KENTA (2007)

ROH’s first ever traditional PPV! They sold out the Manhattan Center before a card was event announced, so their momentum was palpable. This was during their working relationship with NOAH. While there were fun moments in the undercard, the big sport was this was Danielson’s return after 6 months on the shelf. The match was technically impressive, chronicled great rivalries between all four men, and is easily one of the highlight reel moments in Morishima’s career, which was cut short from health issues.

• Toryumon Mexico Dragonmania VII (2012)

You may be thinking why I didn’t highlight the main event triple threat between Ultimo Dragon, Ultimo Guerrero and Hajime Ohara for the NWA Junior Heavyweight Championship. While the match had two legends and a rising technical beast in Ohara, there’s another point to note in this event. Given Asuka may have wrestled her last match at 2026 Backlash, this was her Mexican debut. Kana wrestled Syuri (heavily decorated in her own right). A solid match for being around the middle of the card, but I wanted to highlight Asuka’s reach in light of potential recent events.

• ROH Border Wars (2012)

A lot of undercard highlights, Fit Finlay made his ROH debut at this match to great praise. Lance Storm made a rare exception in his semi-retirement journey since 2010 to kick the crap out of Mike Bennett. Also the year long feud between The Briscoes and World’s Greatest Tag Team came to a head with WGTT regaining the tag titles for their second and final reign. But I think the show is mostly remembered for being in Toronto at the height of Kill Steen Kill. While being the company renegade, “This fat bastard, the bringer of disaster”, Steen defeated Davey Richards to finally win the World title amidst a crazy crowd reaction. Just a generally fantastic event.

• OTT ScrapperMania IV (2018)

The event that became the landmark moment of Ireland versus the World. OTT was one of my favorite Indy promotions for a few years prior to COVID, and this event was beautiful. Our favorite murder grandpa Minoru Suzuki had a stiff match with Keith Lee, a hoss fight between Tomohiro Ishii and Jeff Cobb also was notable. But the first of the major moments was Will Ospreay vs Matt Riddle, which got extra buzz just barely missing the 5 star Meltzer distinction. Then the main event of Jordan Devlin defended the title against Zack Sabre Jr in a technical and emotionally charged match once it became obvious he dislocated his thumb. The Irish Import Killer managed to send the crowd home happy, and much like Border Wars, this entire event was just…brilliant.

While the WWF events were more just career highlights, everything else is really just great matches with memorable moments and returns/debuts. This is definitely more of a workrate fan’s kind of article.

Did I miss anything? How far did I stretch the events today? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments. And if you don’t do anything else today, remember, Always Use Your Head!