Today In Pro Wrestling History: August 16th

While it’s a quieter day on the western front, there is still a huge historical moment for WWE fans, and some memorable stories with fun events for nearly everyone else! Time to check it out!

• WWE Monday Night Raw: Evolution Thumbs Down (2004)

With yesterday highlighting Randy Orton’s history making moment of becoming the youngest World Heavyweight Champion, we all knew this moment was coming. The pure ego and jealousy of Triple H in full swing. Triple H gives the Thumbs Down mid celebration, while Orton is on Batista’s shoulders, and the beatdown began. The arrogant “Legend Killer” was left laying, and immediately turned from heel to righteous babyface after the beating.

• TNA Hard Justice (2009)

The show isn’t remembered super fondly since it was in the shadow of Victory Road 2009 (IYKYK), but there was definitely some interesting moments as TNA tried to forget about that black mark. The Steel Asylum match was brought back for an X Division Number 1 Contender Match. Christopher Daniels won the match and for the workrate crowd, this was the first and best match on the card. The Steel Asylum also gave us the TNA Debut of The Pope D’Angelo Dinero. Aside from that, Kevin Nash defeated Mick Foley for the TNA Legends title and Samoa Joe defeated Homicide to win the X Division title.

• NJPW G1 Climax: Shinsuke Nakamura vs Hiroshi Tanahashi (2015)

This is on here because of the epic legit story that played out through the tournament. Shinsuke lost his first round match against Karl Anderson, and in his second round victory over Yuji Nagata, his left elbow was legitimately injured which caused New Japan to step in and force him to medically forfeit his third match against Michael Elgin. Shinsuke returned already on the bubble, since it’s very rare in the modern era of G1 Climaxes for someone with more than 2 losses to make the Finals. Shinsuke went channeled his 2009 run, and went on a great winning streak, even defeating Kazuchika Okada in the B Block finals, which was revenge since Okada defeated Nakamura in 2014’s G1 Finals. Nakamura was on the underdog run of a the decade, and had to face his career rival, Tanahashi in the Grand Finals. Tanahashi was relentless and refused to let Nakamura have his shining miracle run. Tanahashi went back into his old heel mentality and targeted the injured elbow first, so when Nakamura started to protect the elbow more, Tanahashi devastated Nakamura’s knees to take away the Bomaye Knee Strike. Even though Tanahashi ruined the great run of a fan favorite, the crowd appreciated how hard both were fighting and the show of respect after the match. Assuming Shinsuke never returns to New Japan to for another miracle run, Nakamura’s overall G1 Climax Finals record is the same as Keiji Mutoh’s, 1-3.

• Dragon Gate Dangerous Gate: Open the Dream Gate Title: Masato Yoshino (c) vs Shingo Takagi (2015)

This match was two of Dragon Gate’s premier talents, and stablemates on a crash course. Monster Express was popular faction, but Shingo was running his mouth about his teammates and slowly turning heel in the lead up. While this match is overshadowed by the semi-main since it was a Losing Unit Must Disband Survival match, which saw MAD BLANKEY be forced to disband. However, this match, tied into the previous match in a beautiful way. After 30 minutes of a fantastic match between the power of Shingo and the Speed of Yoshino, a Pumping Bomber and Last Falconry saw Shingo tear the title away from Yoshino. And when it comes to tying together, shortly after, Shingo solidified his heel turn by giving most of the MAD BLANKEY heels a new home, under the banner of VERSERK. Easily one the legendary heel groups in all of Dragon Gate.

• AAA Triplemania XXXIII (2025)

This was the first Triplemania under WWE management. It broke physical attendance records for AAA, it had over 4 million views on YouTube in the first 24 hours, and even though most people were concerned that WWE would ruin AAA, this was a well received show with a few great matches. El Hijo de Dr Wagner Jr defeated El Mesias to claim the Latin American Championship, Pagano & Psycho Clown defeated Los Garza in a Street Fight for the Tag Team Titles. The main event was a fantastic Fatal Four Way for legacy fans of AAA and newer WWE fans. It saw El Hijo del Vikingo retain the Mega Championship over Dominik Mysterio, El Grande Americano and Dragon Lee.

Randy Orton continues to steal the spotlight when it comes to big moments, but Shinsuke’s entire underdog tournament was very evocative at the time. TNA was recovering from the most infamous moment in their history, AAA proved it was still AAA even under the WWE banner and Dragon Gate made major waves and set up what could be considered their peak period.