Today In Pro Wrestling History: June 30th

An assortment of shows and countries once again! Something older than 80% of the people on the internet, and a few things that happened fairly recently…with a spread in the middle. Pretty balanced and only slightly stretched to end June!

• Fred Kohler Comiskey Park Show: Match of the Century: NWA World Heavyweight Championship 2 out of 3 Falls: Pat O’Connor (c) vs Buddy Rogers (1961)

The original Nature Boy Buddy Rogers proved that a charismatic heel can sell tickets. This show not only saw the dawning of a new champion, but held attendance and revenue records until the WrestleMania era. The show drew 38,665 fans for a $148,000 gate. With Rogers defeating Pat O’Connor and snapping his 903 day reign as NWA champion. Rogers became the prototype for Sports Entertainment, which also makes sense that after drama surrounding how he dropped the belt, led to the formation of the now WWE, with Rogers as their initial champion.

• AAA Triplemania III-C: Lucha de Apuestas Mask vs Mask 2 out of 3 Falls Match: Super Calo vs Winners (1995)

So there’s a lot of interesting twists with this, since it was two beloved babyface tag team partners forced into a Mask vs Mask match. Over the course of the three Triplemania shows, they signed a contract for a Relevos Increíbles Suicidas, which boils down to Calo and Winners having to do an initial tag with heels and rivals Marabunta and Angel Mortal. The catch, was the tags would be mixed up, where the losers are forced into Mask vs Mask matches. When the dust settled, the two beloved babyfaces, tag team partners and friends were the last two standing, and had to fight. The match was a heartbreaking battle, because the team was so over with the younger generation of fans. Super Calo won a classic Lucha de Apuestas match, but in a surprisingly positive spin…when Winners got unmasked, Andrés Palomeque benefitted from being handsome. So the loss actually made him more popular. And if the name is familiar to anyone, later, he was repackaged as the heel Abismo Negro.

• WWE Monday Night Raw: Gail Kim Debut (2003)

While Gail is much more well known for her TNA work, we can never forget she was indeed in WWE a couple of times. Gail debuted in a Divas Battle Royal, dawning her old Matrix style outfit. Managing to make the final elimination over Victoria with a Headscissors, Gail won the original Women’s Championship on her television debut match. Even if her WWE moments don’t hold a candle to what she did in TNA, being able to say she won a title in her very first televised match is a feather in her cap, that isn’t in many others.

• WWE Raw: CM Punk Cash In (2008)

In one of the most hit and run opportunistic Cash Ins in history, CM Punk cashed in on Edge after Edge came out to gloat about how he retained at Night of Champions. Batista attacked Edge and left him laying, so Punk comes out with the brief case and cashes in, and one GTS later, Punk wins his very first WWE World Championship. Punk’s night wasn’t quite over since he got goaded into defending his newly won title later in the night by JBL In a very clever bit of booking, Punk fought off JBL’s security interreference and beat JBL in around 5 minutes. It was clever because it immediately stopped any discourse that he was just opportunistic and couldn’t actually defend the belt. CM Punk was cemented as a major player this night.

• AJPW Dynamite Series: AJPW World Tag Team Championships: Violence Giant (SUWAMA & Shuji Ishikawa) (c) vs The End (Odinson & Parrow) (2019)

This was a very fun time in more modern AJPW. The End were coming off an amazing run in the 2018 World’s Strongest Determination Tag League. Ending with 12 points, they barely missed out on finishing in the top 2. The crowd took them wonderfully, like a second coming of the Road Warriors. After briefly going back to the states, The End returned using their tournament momentum and fan support as a reason to challenge the dominate AJPW title holders. Violence Giant won the Tokyo Sports Tag Team of the Year award 3 years in a row from 2017-2019, just for anyone curious of how big this challenge was. While Violence Giant won, the match did a great job showcasing the dominance of the modern premiere Japanese tag team and a foreign team getting over massively in Japan.

• AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door (2024)

There were a couple things that resonated as bigger picture events. Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay had a heavily touted match to close the show and send fans home buzzing, Swerve with the hard fought defense against someone who’s considered as the current best by many people, really solidified his title reign. Tetsuya Naito winning the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship back was something that needed to happen, since the New Japan stepping stone rhetoric was too accurate at this time. The biggest match, when you look back at who was involved, was the women’s Champion vs Champion match. Stephanie Vaquer, the NJPW Strong Women’s Champion, faced off against Mercedes Mone, the TBS Champion. The match was one of the best AEW Women’s matches at that time, and still remains towards the top a few years later. This also was the catalyst for WWE pursuing Vaquer so ravenously, so that proves it was one of those historic butterfly effect moments.

You know, I learned about what Revelos Suicidas were today because of that match, and I really dig that concept. Mixing up feuding tag teams and then forcing the losers into a high stakes match is like WCW’s Lethal Lottery idea done with a brain. Gail Kim and CM Punk showing up as pivotal along with the moment that sent Stephanie Vaquer into the stratosphere…I think this was a solid way to end June.

There’s so many Summer themed shows, July can’t be a struggle…right? Someone tell me it’ll be fine. I’m not built for gymnastics…