Today In Pro Wrestling History: June 24th

A couple events with angles that declare war, and a decent smattering of companies. No first time appearances from any company, but everything should involve at least one name the general fanbase is aware of!

• WCW Monday Nitro (1996)

This episode is primarily known as the when Hall and Nash truly declared war. Intimidating and shoving Bischoff (still in his announcer role), smashing up the locker rooms and backstage area with baseball bats, even going as far to have the police intervene and escort them out. It was all in a demand to find out who WCW was choosing as their three wrestlers for Bash at the Beach. It continued to blur the lines at the time between what was scripted and what was real. As for the wrestling side, Harlem Heat defeated the Steiner Brothers, as well as, Sting & Lex Luger in a Triangle Tag match for the WCW Tag Team titles. Booker and Stevie picked up their fifth tag title reign during all of this invasion chaos.

• ROH Best in the World (2012)

Homicide had a surprise return, defeating Eddie Edwards. Kevin Steen retained his World title against Davey Richards in an “Anything Goes” match, to solidify his heel turn and knock Davey out of the main event scene for now. It was a bad night for the American Wolves. We did get a surprising title change though, when the All Night Express (Rhett Titus & Kenny King) defeated World’s Greatest Tag Team for ROH Tag belts. Titus and Kenny were homegrown talent getting over, and it was well received to see ROH investing in ROH talent instead of transient veterans.

• TNA Impact (2015)

The episode had a few notable matches with Kurt Angle beating Matt Hardy via Ankle Lock. The Dirty Heels (Austin Aries & Bobby Roode) defeated the Wolves in a Full Metal Mayhem match, to bring the record to 2-2 in their Best of 5 storyline. However, we got a random return of Jeff & Karen Jarrett on this episode. Jeff was sporting his GFW shirt, and declared that King of the Mountain would return to Slammiversary that night. This planted the seeds for the GFW invasion, rebrand…whatever we ended up getting. Hindsight makes this one of the epic LOLTNA moments, but at the time, TNA had weakening relations with Destination America (the channel they were on), so they probably thought a rebrand could help their attractiveness to a prospective new channel. GFW is definitely a better name than Impact Wrestling, but I digress…

• DDT/Sendai Girls All Out X Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling (2019)

Everything about this event was historic in a manner of speaking. While DDT is known to be silly, Sendai Girls is one of the hardest hitting modern Joshi promotions. The Sendai team of DASH Chisako, Meiko Satomura & Chihiro Hashimoto defeated the All Out team of Konosuke Takeshita, Akito & Yuki Ino in March for the Ko-D 6 Man Titles. This event was built around a rematch with all of the participants having a singles match earlier in the show. Shunma Katsumata replaced Akito in this rematch though. The highlight match of the singles was Meiko Satomura vs Konosuke Takeshita. It was a hard hitting affair, nothing comedy here. Meiko proved she was still a Joshi Ace, going toe to toe with an ascending male Champion. Their singles match ended in a 20 minute draw. The rematch however, went in favor of the DDT team. After nearly 20 more minutes, the main event 6 man came down to Konosuke and Meiko. He had her isolated and managed to snap off his German Suplex Hold to win the match and regain the titles. The event in general was a draw. Two singles matches went the way of Sendai Girls, only one went the way of DDT, but they won the 6 man and Meiko and Konosuke wrestled to a draw. So the two shared mutual respect for each other and proved that elite Joshi wrestlers can hold their own against the men without the need for comedy.

• WWE Monday Night Raw (2024)

This episode has a pretty memorable moment with the recently debuted Wyatt Sicks, making their first ringside foray, with Nikki Cross appearing after Chad Gable won a Money in the Bank qualifier, to send him running terrified out of the ring. Nikki then delivers a tape to Michael Cole, and we watch the chilling interview between Uncle Howdy and Bo Dallas. This whole moment was a bit surreal, but also was masterful at cutting off the IWC naysayers and making the Wyatt Sicks seem more of a psychological horror movie come to life. As far as in-ring moments though, the Awesome Truth lost their tag team titles to Finn Balor and JD McDonagh with some fairly consistent help from Liv Morgan.

Every event featured something memorable regarding tag teams, not to mention bigger moments of the eventual nWo explosion, GFW angle and Wyatt Sicks…when we still had hope these angles would be cool and not flame out.

How tight were the nostalgia goggles? Am I ignoring companies that you’re passionate about? Make your thoughts known and Always Use Your Head!