Today In Pro Wrestling History: July 12th

Well, well, well…no there’s no Joel Gertner on this list, but this is one of the easier to digest articles thus far. Most of this is American televised shows with only one event from New Japan! Let’s see how the American companies today’s list!

• WCW Great American Bash (1992)

So there’s a little old school carny history to this event. The show was dominated mostly by the tournament to crown the NWA World Tag Team Champions. Now this was important, because this would be the first title since 1982 to be officially recognized by the NWA Board as the NWA World Tag title. Due to the territory days, WWF splitting and JCP technically holding controlling ownership of the title, the NWA did not officially have an NWA controlled NWA World Tag title. The Miracle Violence Connection defeated Nikita Koloff & Ricky Steamboat in the semi finals before defeating Barry Windham & Dustin Rhodes in the finals. So the MVC are technically the inaugural champions of the still current incarnation of the NWA World Tag Team titles. The show also saw Vader defeat Sting for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. While’s Vader’s reign only lasted 21 days, it was his first major title outside of Japan.

• WCW Bash at the Beach: Hollywood Hulk Hogan & Dennis Rodman vs Diamond Dallas Page & Karl Malone (1998)

The height of the NWO, the Chicago Bulls dynasty and about a month after the NBA Finals, so in a clever bit of cross promotion, the NBA did some of the promotional work for this PPV. Bash at the Beach turned out to be the second highest buy rate PPV in company history only behind 1997 Starrcade. No one will ever put this over for being a good wrestling match, but the Attitude Era was more about sensationalism and male soap opera. This was entertainment. The NWO were bad guys, NBA fans hated the Bulls because they dominated the decade, so it was very easy to get the reactions necessary. With help from The Disciple, Hogan and Rodman won, which was correct. Especially with what the masses are more aware of nowadays regarding Karl Malone.

• NJPW Dominion: IWGP Intercontinental & Heavyweight Championship: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs EVIL (2020)

What would prove to be the critical western downfall of NJPW, this match was the beginning of the end. EVIL left LIJ to join Bullet Club, which was a tremor that had significant reverberations because it would also lead to the creation of House of Torture. While the Japanese crowd was much more accepting of House of Torture, the west rejected it. They were everything wrong with heel factions, and ruined match quality in a promotion that told stories in the ring. EVIL’s victory here made him the second man to hold the Intercontinental & Heavyweight simultaneously, but with the pandemic in full swing, this was terrible. This era of the dual championship also lead to the eventual unification for the awful “IWGP World Heavyweight Championship”, which no one liked, and is why they reverted after only five years.

• AEW All In: Texas (2025)

This was a huge event for AEW and its fans. It set a North American gate record as the largest non-WWE gate in history, as well as, the first even Amazon Prime livestream. The Young Bucks lost to Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay, effectively stripping them of their EVP titles. The Hurt Syndicate retained the tag titles over JetSpeed & The Patriarchy. Kazuchika Okada defeated Kenny Omega to unify the International and Continental Championships. The two biggest moments however were Dustin Rhodes defeating Sammy Guevara, Daniel Garcia and Kyle Fletcher for the vacant TNT Championship, finally giving Dustin a title reign in AEW. Then the main event was Hangman Page overcoming Moxley in a Texas Death Match for the AEW World Championship.

• WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event: World Heavyweight Championship: Gunther (c) vs Goldberg (2025)

Goldberg was looking for one more run, the Toby Keith song of “I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m good once as I ever was”. Gunther was looking to end his career, so this was interesting since Goldberg has never been known to go more than 8 minutes, and Gunther was a machine. What we got, was a pretty good match honestly. Gunther worked over Goldberg, so while everyone got the nostalgia pop spot of seeing the Spear and Jackhammer…the limb work, stopped Goldberg from really being able to take advantage of it. So Gunther eventually put Goldberg to sleep, and it’s heavily believed that this was Goldberg’s retirement match. While Goldberg may not be happy with it, I don’t really think anyone would be chomping at the bit for another Goldberg match. At least Goldberg went out with a solid match slightly over 14 minutes, so he broke the stigma to degree of not knowing how to wrestle.

Love him or hate him, Goldberg was pivotal during the Monday Night Wars, and will go down as a legend. Not everyone needs to be able to flip or mat wrestle to leave an impression on fans. Remembers, it’s sports entertainment, if you excel at one of the two words, people will cheer for you. It is kinda fun that the article started with WCW and ended with Goldberg’s retirement match.