Today In Pro Wrestling History: July 24th

Not exactly the easiest day to piece through, so it was an interesting dig. Now me having to dig a little should indicate that there may be stuff that some people have no knowledge of. But let’s see what kind of history we got today!

• WWF SmackDown: WCW Heavyweight Championship: Booker T (c) vs Kurt Angle (2001)

This was a benchmark moment for the Invasion storyline. We got the very first WCW Heavyweight title change on WWF television. Now we all remember the title itself got hot potatoed a little bit. But another big aspect of this, beyond WWF proving their guys are “better”, it did give Booker a nice push to be relevant in the main event scene, which wasn’t really something WWF allowed many WCW guys to be.

• JCW Gathering Of The Juggalos: JCW Vs. TNA (2005)

One of those fun “Forbidden Door” style shows. TNA was still fairly new and hot, JCW was still the underground backyard counterculture program. We saw Jeff Jarrett defeat Sabu, 2 Tuff Tony & Corporal Robinson defeated Team Canada (A1 and Petey Williams) and Rhino defeated Abyss. The bigger matches also really played well with the crowd. Mad Man Pondo defeated Terry Funk for the JCW Heavyweight Championship, which was Pondo’s first JCW title run. Our main event with the Gathering was the Insane Clown Posse versus America’s Most Wanted. AMW had to carry the match, but it was definitely more of a spectacle match, since ICP are the owners of JCW, so it went over fantastically for the crowd.

• ROH Death Before Dishonor (2015)

Now, nothing crazy happened in this show from a title change or drastic event. But this still had some very memorable moments for ROH fans. The Briscoes defeated Roppongi Vice in a solid match early in the show, plus we saw The Addiction defend their Tag Titles in a Four Corners Survival Match against reDragon, War Machine & The Kingdom. The big memorable moment however, was the main event. This was early on in Jay Lethal’s first World Heavyweight title reign. We got a fantastic match between Lethal and Roderick Strong, that went the full 60 minutes. So a 60 minute Broadway helped to keep the belt on Lethal, while also helping Roddy get a new contract in ROH since he was on a “per appearance” booking at the time. Just one of those great ROH shows from the independent scene hype era of modern wrestling.

• Dragon Gate Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival: Open the Dream Gate Championship: Shingo Takagi (c) vs YAMATO (2016)

These two guys are the flagbearers of Dragon Gate. Shingo was from the first official Dragon Gate class and YAMATO was only a few years later. Shingo was in the middle of his fourth Dream Gate title reign and YAMATO was aiming to earn his fourth. This was a fantastic match, two of the most storied wrestlers in the company, allies, enemies and just a great career of rivalries with these two. The match itself was also nice because it didn’t have a ton of near falls. Nearly 34 minutes and not having to tolerate falsie spamming stupidity, just great psychology and important moves. YAMATO managed to overcome Shingo’s power, but this was really the battle of the top two guys in the company.

• STARDOM Nighter In Korakuen (2025)

This was one of the events that really helped to solidify Saya Kamitani’s domination of the year and HATE’s general rise in STARDOM. HATE won their trios match in the middle of the card, as well as, the tag team titles match went HATE’s way. In yesterday’s article we notated that the Hanan and Saya Iida lost the New Blood tag titles, and now we have another article where they lose belts. Hanan and Saya Iida lost the Goddesses of Stardom belts to HATE’s Ruaka & Natsuko Tora. So hopefully we can get occasional moments where Saya or Hanan actually win their matches. Last item to mention from this show was AZM actually getting a solid match for her NJPW Strong Women’s Championship. After defeating Mercedes Mone, AZM defended her title against Bozilla on this show. AZM was the underdog champion and played it very well. The match is underrated, but it was easily the best match on the show and a huge moment to solidify AZM as someone who can carry a larger belt.

See now I think this is a solid list. Not the strongest, and some event that didn’t transcend ratings systems or set the world of fire. But there was certainly a good amount of memorable moments or moments that can be looked back on as linchpins or just pivotal moments for the company that specific year. Not every day is gonna be amazing, but I’m not mad at today.