Today In Pro Wrestling History: July 3rd

Not the deepest of days, a little Invasion era WWF storylines, pivotal events and a tournament finals. While nothing may set your synapses on fire, they’re still memorable for their own reasons! Find out!

• WWF SmackDown: WCW Cruiserweight Championship: Shane Helms (c) vs Billy Kidman (2001)

The history here is very simple, with Billy Kidman’s victory, this became the very first WCW title to change hands on WWF television. The fun fallout from this, was it also lead Shane Helms down this path of being forlorn over losing the title in his WWF debut, we got the birth of the fan favorite gimmick The Hurricane.

• Dragon Gate Pro-Wrestling Festival In Kobe (2005)

While on the 1st, the article highlighted the third Kobe World event, that really solidified this as Dragon Gate’s Wrestle Kingdom, this was the very first one. Since this is the first one, it’s not exactly the most insane, but it set a lot of groundwork. Masaaki Mochizuki was the Dream Gate Champion at the time and faced TAKA Michinoku. It was a solid 25 minute encounter that saw Mochizuki retain. In terms of title matches, the Open the Triangle Gate match had the real history. Blood Generation was essentially the new generation stable, Masato Yoshino, CIMA, Shingo Takagi and Naruki Doi were a part of this stable, just to name a few. The trio of CIMA, Naruki Doi and Don Fuji defeated the incumbent champions of Ryo Saito, Dragon Kid and Genki Horiguchi. The match was tremendous, but in general, Blood Generations success and CIMA’s success here, set the stage for the next 15 years of wrestlers who would carry Dragon Gate.

• WWE Raw: WWE Championship: Rob Van Dam (c) vs John Cena vs Edge (2006)

Many hardcore fans know this as Rob Van Dam’s riding dirty punishment. Given the fact there aren’t many main titles that change hands on television, when Edge clocked Cena with the title, after he hit the AA on RVD, to pick up the victory. It was shocking to say the least. During the infancy of internet smark forum life, there was still space to be surprised fairly regularly. RVD lost his ECW Championship shortly after this and then was suspended for getting caught holding. One of those “What Ifs” that wrestling fans often point to, because RVD was hot at the time, he could’ve been huge if the drug bust never happened.

• RevPro Live In London 63 (2022)

RevPro has a tendency to be a nice linchpin between moments. They had a solid relationship with New Japan for a years, and this marked a very crucial moment for wrestling at the time. AEW just finished their second Forbidden Show about a week prior, but Will was still on his warpath. He was calling out Kenny Omega any chance he could get. This show was no exception, Ospreay used his match again Mad Kurt…a heavily comedic character in a heavy comedy match, to send a message. Hitting a One Winged Angel, and then forcing Kurt up before the three count. It was a way to get over his visceral disdain and also try and diminish the One Winged Angel by having a comedy wrestler not succumb to it. We got the Omega vs Ospreay match at Forbidden Door 2023.

• DDT King Of DDT: Vacant KO-D Openweight Championship: Kazusada Higuchi vs Naomi Yoshimura (2022)

Remember, I put DDT over when it’s not just Comedy Bang Bang BS, and this definitely wasn’t. This tournament ended up being for the vacant KO-D title instead of just number one contendership because Tetsuya Endo suffered a concussion in his match with Katsuhiko Nakajima. So he was forced to relinquish the title, which set up the finals as a championship bout. Naomi defeated Yuki Ueno earlier in the show to advance to the Finals. Kazusada however had the harder and longer match, defeating Jun Akiyama in the semis, to move forward. The finals was an intense, stiff, King’s Road inspired battle. Naomi tried to take advantage of Kazusada being the one worse for wear, but Kazusada fought back in a great match. Kazusada won the match, won the tournament and the KO-D Openweight Championship. Higuchi set the bar for the “power style” in DDT.

Like I said, nothing earth shattering, but all are little moments that have merit and/or built to a bigger picture or narrative in pro wrestling. Sometimes Butterfly Effect moments are historic because it leads people to always wonder “what if”.

It’s time for summer, hit the klaxon and head to the beach for action! But if you’re riding out the AC paradise, have fun and Always Use Your Head!