Today In Pro Wrestling History: June 23rd

Lots of WWE today. Including two really iconic moments in wrestling history…odd how they ended up on the same date seven years apart. The feature image gives away one, check out the events if you don’t know the other!

• WCW Clash of Champions XXVII: WCW World Heavyweight & WCW International Championship Unification: Ric Flair (c) vs Sting (c) (1994)

This was of course done to streamline the new WCW titles and eliminate the final vestige of their old NWA connections. Given the precedent being set, Flair obviously won the match since he was the established guy. Amusingly, “Big Gold” was the International Belt’s design. So through the unification, Big Gold became the standard for the main eventers in WCW and a beloved belt design.

• WWF King of the Ring: Birth of Austin 3:16 (1996)

In an iconic moment most of us are aware of, the 1996 King of the Ring PPV ushered in the Attitude Era. And to think, if it weren’t for the Curtain Call, this would’ve been Triple H’s win. After going through Marc Mero in the semis and Jake the Snake Roberts in the finals, Stone Cold marched up the isle to where Michael Hayes was waiting to interview the winner. He tore into Jake’s born against Christian gimmick with the “Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16… well, Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!” – the rest, is wrestling history.

• WWE Raw: Kane Unmasks (2003)

Kane challenged Triple H for the World Heavyweight title, when General Manager Eric Bischoff decided to make it Mask versus Title. Bischoff has a history of liking to take masks off people, so I wonder if this was a little nod to the Juventud and Rey days in WCW. But regardless, Evolution got involved and cost Kane the match. Due to the loss, Kane took off his mask and the moment was iconic for being memed on in the early 2000s. Kane’s whole back story was that he was scarred and deformed, and instead we get a bad haircut, some soot on his face, and a rather derpy look. It definitely killed the aura of Kane, but when he snapped on Rob Van Dam, he slotted into being a heel fairly seamlessly. Whereas Stone Cold is Iconic for being cool, this is Iconic for the memes.

• WrestleCircus Big Top Revival (2019)

This is historic because it was the unintended final show for WrestleCircus. After roughly a year hiatus between 2018 and 2019, WrestleCircus returned in the previous month, with intentions to pick back up as a rising indie promotion. This show had a lot of big breakout names who are now pillars of different promotions. The Rascalz (Trey & Wentz) retained the Big Top tag titles over Private Party and the Riegel Twins. Sami Callihan defeated Gentleman Jervis for the Sideshow Championship, while Scorpio Sky fended off Tessa Blanchard’s attempts at grabbing the Ringmaster title. Daga, Orange Cassidy, Peter Avalon, Teddy Hart and JT Dunn were also on the undercard. A stacked show, that became the end of an era. WrestleCircus was easily one of the best indies during that big Twitch streaming indies push of 2018-2020.

• WWE Stomping Grounds (2019)

While the event is generally disliked by most of the IWC due to repetitive booking, deja vu off the Saudi event and just generally bad booking of this era of WWE, the show itself had pretty good action. It’s always the shows with no expectations that tend to surprise. Drew Gulak won a triple threat against Tony Nese and Akira Tozawa. The other notable title change and great match was Samoa Joe versus Ricochet for the United States Championship. Ricochet was the indie darling that had yet to find his footing, and most people didn’t think he really had the shot against a proven killer like Joe. It was a really good match, with a surprisingly finishing sequence that saw Ricochet get out of the Coquina Clutch, and set Joe up for the 630 Senton, to secure his first main roster WWE title!

• WWE Friday Night Smackdown: NXT & WWE Women’s Tag Title Unification: Isla Dawn & Alba Fyre (c) vs Shayna Baszler & Ronda Rousey (c) (2023)

While this isn’t to the same level as the previous entries, it’s still important since at this point the women’s tag division wasn’t fantastic and diluted with more than one title running around. While the match itself was nothing to write home about, the finish was cool and memorable in its own right. With Ronda and Shayna slapping on simultaneous submissions (Armbar and Kirifuda Clutch respectively) on their opponents to cement their dominance being legit MMA fighters with real pedigree.

We bookend the list with unification matches, and yeah, kinda amusing how Austin 3:16 and Kane unmasking was the same date. But still, I don’t think it was a bad list of events, just very heavily WWE influenced. But some days are like that, some have a lot of Japan, some a lot of WWE and some are just a smorgasbord of random things I find.