Today In Pro Wrestling History: June 5th

There’s a least a few things that happened today, worthy of being called historic or memorable. Not what I would call a deep day in any regard, but at least not a complete gymnastics routine. Let’s see what we got to work with!

• AJPW Budokan Hall Show (1992)

This card is significant for many reasons. The undercard had one of the last Andre the Giant where he was teaming with Johnny Ace and Johnny Smith. Toshiaki Kawada had his breakout era. After a strong showing in the Champion Carnival, since Stan Hansen won the carnival and was the Triple Crown champion, he could call out his own opponents. Kawada impressed him and the crowd, so Hansen gave him another shot. While Hansen retained, Kawada proved himself as a legitimate main eventer, and a serious main event contender next to Misawa. The most memorable match however, involved Misawa. It was for the Heavyweight Tag titles, Akira Taue & Jumbo Tsuruta versus Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi. While Taue pinned Kobashi for the title defense, this was the last great match of Tsuruta’s career and nearly a retirement match for the wrestler he was when he was considered the Ace of AJPW. It was a few weeks after this match that Jumbo was diagnosed with Hepatitis B, so he went into semi-retirement only doing low impact, comedy, undercard matches for the rest of his career.

• WCW Monday Nitro: WCW Hardcore title: Terry Funk (c) vs Eric Bischoff (2000)

Considering this is WCW in 2000, we should expect that if it makes the list it’s for inane reasons. This covers the basis or inane but also a trivia question. Since thanks to interference from The Mamalukes (Vito & Johnny the Bull), Bischoff actually defeated Terry Funk. This marks Bischoff’s only pro wrestling championship victory of his career.

• JAPW When Worlds Collide (2004)

Sometimes I like to throw in indie SuperCards, because they’re fun and hold an interesting point in history to see what the landscape looked like and who stayed relevant. The generational hoss fight ended up being a proverbial passing of the torch when Samoa Joe & JAPW Heavyweight Champion Dan Maff took on Vader & Mike Awesome. While the veterans came out on top, there was blood, broken furniture and all kinds of destruction to prove Joe & Maff could hang with even the toughest of the Attitude Era. The main event however was something straight out of the X-Division. Jay Lethal, under his Hydro gimmick, was the Light Heavyweight Champion, and defended against Amazing Red and Sonjay Dutt. Hydro retained, but seeing the aforementioned names, Matt Cross, Trent Acid and Papadon, shows the level of talent on the card.

• WWE Hell In A Cell: Hell in a Cell: Seth Rollins vs Cody Rhodes (2022)

Now most people, even if you’re not a fan of WWE, remember the reveal of Cody with his giant purple torn pectoral. So that counts as memorable alone, but then we also couple that with my usual saying of “If it won PWI Match of the Year, that’s hard to argue”. Well look we’ve checked off two boxes. Stars, snowflakes, whatever rating system aside, this was a grueling and gutsy showing of how bad Cody needed to close this chapter. The “Dusty’s kids” story haunting from NXT days, being subjected to watching others exceed his status, and Seth being insufferable and basking in the disdain, helped to get everyone invested. Seth with the mock polka dots, Cody using the bull rope as an homage to dusty, plus let’s remember this went on for like 24 minutes and Seth even drove the Sledgehammer into the pectoral. One extra note is that Triple H ended the Hell in a Cell event series after this, reserving the match format for what it was intended for, blow off matches. So the event series went out, with a classic main event.

• Dragon Gate Rainbow Gate: Hair vs Hair: YAMATO vs Kota Minoura (2024)

This match encapsulated Kota’s desperation and slow decline to the darkside. Kota teamed with Ben-K during the Rey de Parejas tournament, and didn’t win a single match up. Even drawing with the pathetic team of Punch Tominaga and Shuri Joe. Kota threw out a hail mary challenge to YAMATO, the most decorated Open the Dream Gate champion in company history. Initially YAMATO ignored it because it reeked of desperation, but constant pressure forced him to crack. It was a solid match, but YAMATO handled the challenge and embarrassed Kota with the head shaving. This began YAMATO’s own personal disdain campaign against the “Reiwa New Generation”. Ben-K came out with his newly won Open the Dream Gate championship and took exception. So Ben-K challenged YAMATO at Kobe World to fight for the pride of the new generation.

Quite a few matches with the “proving ground” style of story telling and implications. Then there’s Bischoff being smarmy with his random title win. But much like most of WCW after 1999, we can just ignore that, give it a juice box and hand it the unplugged controller like the little brother.

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