Today In Pro Wrestling History: July 26th

Now usually I like to do five, it’s an understood “list style” number, but sometimes extra things catch my attention and I just want to include them. There’s a little something from different spots in the last forty years, so let’s see what events happened happened today!

• NWA Greensboro Show: NWA World Championship Steel Cage Match: Ric Flair (c) vs Dusty Rhodes (1986)

This match was during Flair’s longest reign of 793 days with 437 successful title defenses (territory days, am I right? Sheesh). The Steel Cage obviously was done to prevent outside interference, and Dusty was still the white hot underdog that he always has been. There was more psychology in this than a usual steel cage match, the crowd added to every move and every sell, and this still holds up as a tremendous match. The finish saw Dusty reverse the Figure Four into a Small Package to pick up his third and final NWA World title reign. Flair’s epic run had come crashing down, but the crowd loved it.

• MLW Rise of the Renegades (2003)

This was a Supercard during the first iteration of MLW. While there were no title changes, the moving pieces and some matches were surprising and sparked early interest in the brand. Steve Williams & The Sandman had separate singles matches against CW Anderson & Simon Diamond, respectively, to earn a future shot at the Global Crown Tag titles, but since they split the singles, there was a decisive tag match during the show, won by Dr Death & Sandman. Mikey Whipwreck defeated Sabu. CM Punk & Michael Shane w/Francine defeated Raven & Norman Smiley w/GI Ho. We can already see the early ECW usage, but that’s not where it ends! In 2003, we get a Bounty Match between Terry Funk and Abdullah the Butcher. Steve Corino has at $10,000 Bounty on Terry Funk’s career, and Abdullah comes in to collect. Corino tries to distract Funk early, but the Funker fights it off, there’s blood, broken bottles and for 8 minutes it’s fairly violent. But Funk survives, with this being their final singles match in their storied rivalry. Corino’s night wasn’t done, because he had to defend the title against Mike Awesome. This main event was an overbooked cluster, but it furthered the story between Funk and the Extreme Horsemen. Funk tried to help out Awesome by handling the extra members, but when he threw a chair into the ring, he missed the mark and the errant chair struck Mike Awesome. Corino seized the opportunity and retained via pinfall thanks to Funk’s mistake. This show was filmed for the MLW Underground TV show they had on the Sunshine Network, so people may have seen this in episodic pieces.

• WWE Night of Champions (2009)

A few things of note for this show. This was the last Night of Champions to have the ECW Championship since it was ended in early 2010. Due to Edge’s injury, Chris Jericho needed a new partner to defend the Tag Team titles. We saw the birth of Jeri-Show and they retained the Unified Tags against Legacy. It wasn’t all bad for Legacy since Randy Orton retained the WWE title against Cena and Triple H. However, the World Championship match had some spice. This was the clash of Drug Addict versus Straight Edge. Jeff Hardy was at the height of his popularity and CM Punk was starting to come into his own. Between CM Punk’s critical disdain for Jeff’s lifestyle, he also screwed Jeff with cashing in on him right after the ladder match with Edge. So they were trading wins and barbs. This was Jeff’s biggest moment of the feud, where he kicked out of the Go to Sleep and won the belt back after a Swanton Bomb.

• NXT: Inaugural NXT Championship: Jinder Mahal vs Seth Rollins (2012)

Well in retrospect, the 8 man tournament leading up to this match was rather underwhelming. Seth defeated a nobody named Jiro and Kamacho (aka Tanga Loa), with Jinder defeating Bo Dallas and Richie Steamboat. Really weird to think that Jinder had the harder path and Seth basically sleepwalked through his opponents. Given the fact that this was establish a brand and the title…it was very basic, but inoffensive. Jinder overpowered and dominated most of the match with Seth playing underdog and eventually overcoming the onslaught to win with a Turnbuckle Bomb. This is on here because it was the inaugural NXT champion moment. So it’s historic, technically.

• PROGRESS Chapter 20: Thunderbastard – Beyond Thunderbastard (2015)

How could I not put this on the list? Look at that name, it’s a beautiful campy reference. A Thunderbastard is very much a normal Battle Royale match. Where there are intervals of entrants, but victory is decided by pinfall, submission or disqualification, not tossing over a rope. This was the second ever Thunderbastard match, where the first one was won by Will Ospreay, who was in the main event of this show. So we see the victor of the Thunderbastard match, tends to turn it into success. At this show, Marty Scurll won the Thunderbastard match, which would continue to prove the trend since Marty had a hell of a push until he got canceled. As for the aforementioned Will Ospreay, the “Aerial Assassin” was tasked with cutting the head off the snake and ending Jimmy Havoc’s 609 day reign. Havoc and his faction Regression were running rampant in Progress for a year and a half. The match is heavily considered a modern classic, where the big psychology point was Ospreay’s reluctance to hit his 630 Splash because of the risk in missing against someone like Havoc, as well as, Havoc sabotaging the ring to loosen the ropes and make it harder to hit the move. But after surviving Acid Rainmakers and a Burning Hammer onto chairs, Ospreay conquered his fears and the spectre looming over Progress at the time, defeating Havoc and ending the second longest historical reign in Progress.

• ROH Death Before Dishonor (2024)

Being the first ever ROH show in Texas, they went the obvious route with one match, giving us Dustin Rhodes with Marshall & Ross von Erich versus Dark Order, but unlike when TNA used them for Texas 10 years prior, Marshall & Ross learned how to wrestle. While there were two title changes, no one will remember them except the people who won the match. The real selling point here was a classic ROH rivalry reignited. Mark Briscoe was the ROH World Champion, and on Collision, Roderick Strong blindsided him. Roddy basically told Mark that he wasn’t worthy of being champion, Roddy was known as “Mr. ROH” in the old days, so the perspective was Mark having something to prove since he was never a top guy when ROH was hot. In a nearly 20 minute match, there were solid call back, great action, but Mark continued his reign after a Jay Driller and Froggy Bow. Even if the original impression was that Mark’s reign was more ceremonial because of Jay’s passing and how important the Briscoes were to ROH, he was really starting to come into his own as a legit singles competitor.

So a couple Supercards just felt fun to add, Progress was also a big springboard for a lot of wrestlers who are currently important, or infamous over the last couple years. Dusty getting his last run as NWA World Champ, Jeff in one of his bigger rivalries from a singles perspective and Mark Briscoes great run to help establish the new era of ROH. Like I said leading in, a good spread of things for many different kinds of fans. But who really had an Abdullah the Butcher vs Terry Funk mention for a show in the 2000s? Crazy times.