Today In Pro Wrestling History: May 12th

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!