Today In Pro Wrestling History: July 7th

Another day, another article! While I’m positive one moment will trump everything else the day has to offer, given it’s significance in so many different ways – what’s the fun in only having one event? So yes, we only care about the one thing that happened in 1996…but let’s elucidate on a few gems.

• NWA Great American Bash: NWA World Heavyweight Championship: Ric Flair (c) vs Sting (1990)

The show goes down with a first and last! It was the last Bash under the NWA banner before the WCW change, and the first came from the World title match. Sting shocked Ric Flair with a small package to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the first time. A reign that lasted for 188 days and saw the Black Scorpion angle play out.

• WCW Bash at the Beach: The New World Order of wrestling brother! (1996)

We could be silly and mention the match or the card itself, but no one cares about that, that’s not the memory that people remember. Hulk Hogan appeared towards the end, Bobby Heenan being the only one to think Hogan could turn, since he’s hated Hogan for years. But to everyone else’s surprise…Hogan really did turn and become the “third man”. The moment shattered the hearts of children, shocked the wrestling world and will always go down as the true start of the Monday Night Wars/Attitude Era. The ultimate Babyface becomes the perfect villain.

• NOAH Great Voyage: GHC Heavyweight Tag Titles: Takashi Iizuka & Toru Yano (c) vs TMDK (Mikey Nichols & Shane Haste) (2013)

This was the rubber match between the two teams. TMDK defeated Iizuka & Yano in the Tag League, but lost the following match in May. So this was to decide who was the greater of the two teams. With The Mighty Don’t Kneels victory, they started their first GHC Tag reign that lasted 202 days as well as being named the first fully gaijin tag team to win the Tokyo Sports “Tag Team of the Year” award, in 15 years since Stan Hansen & Vader in 1998, and also the last as of this article in 2026.

• NJPW G1 Special Cow Palace: IWGP United States Championship: Jay White (c) vs Juice Robinson (2018)

This was a solidifying Babyface underdog moment for Juice. He broke his hand about a month before this match, so it added weight to his story. Jay White was king of the chicken shit heel tactics, powdering, antagonizing and backing off. Many remember this as the match that almost turned into a shoot when Jay suplexed Juice into the guardrail right in front of the AXS TV commentators of Jim Ross and Josh Barnett. The force and proximity of things knocked Ross out of the chair and Barnett nearly beat the piss out of Jay White. The match ended with Juice going over, becoming the first American champion of the United States Championship and the first singles championship of his career.

• NXT Heatwave (2024)

This entire show is heralded as one of the best booked shows of the new Black & Gold brand era. Being the first international event since 2019, and the first event of it’s name to stream on Peacock, WWE was making good on rebranding old show names from WCW and ECW. This event had Oba Femi break Wes Lee’s heart by defeating him in a Last Chance match for the North American title, which ultimately lead to Wes’ downward spiral and exit from WWE all together. FrAxiom continued to impress people as tag team champions, and the main event was clever. Ethan Page literally fell into the victory after Trick Williams laid out Je’von Evans and Shawn Spears grabbed Trick. Page’s wheeling and dealing, lead to one of the quickest title ascents in NXT history after only 40 days on the roster.

As I said in the intro, the nWo formation is the headline and that won’t be overshadowed by nearly anything else for the near future. Were the other events cool and memorable to those who experienced them? Of course…but still…not as cool as the nWo.