Today In Pro Wrestling History: August 17th

A lot of events that most Western fans should be aware of or have memories of. We finally reached a point where there are a couple SummerSlam inclusions. Time to see the events of the day!

• ECW Hardcore Heaven (1997)

This was ECW’s second official PPV and the presentation was definitely that of low budget and inexperienced. Jerry Lawler was on this PPV in a match against Tommy Dreamer. This was the original “Extremely Crappy Wrestling” invasion angle. Dreamer was an ECW company man, so him defending the company’s honor made sense. Dreamer defeated Lawler, even through Rick Rude, Sabu and Rob Van Dam’s traitorous attacks. The main event was a callback to the early days of ECW when Shane Douglas, Terry Funk and Sabu had a time limit draw Three Way Dance in 1994. So with Sabu defeating Funk at Born to be Wired the week prior, all of Douglas’ promos and attacks got him included as well. So it was a callback for hardcore fans, and a solid match on its merit. Shane Douglas won the match, solidifying himself as the second most successful singles wrestler after The Sandman in the company at the time.

• WWE SummerSlam (2008)

This SummerSlam had the unique intergender double title match where Beth Phoenix and Santino Marella won the Women’s & Intercontinental Championship respectively from Mickie James and Kofi Kingston. We also had a promo segment between Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels that ended with Jericho legitimately punching Shawn’s wife Becca to set up their historic feud. When we get back to the wrestling, Undertaker vs Edge in a Hell in a Cell match was the match of the night. Big spots from both, Undertaker winning and then “sending Edge to Hell” were all memorable moments that did a fantastic job at sending the crowd home happy, even if some things weren’t received super well.

• ROH Manhattan Mayhem V: ROH Tag Team Titles: The American Wolves (c) vs reDragon (2013)

Fish and O’Reilly had a chip on their shoulders because it’s only been 3 weeks since they lost the titles. Forever Hooligans got a surprising win over reDragon, and then a week after that, the Wolves defeated reDragon for the titles. So we got a nice clash of two of the bigger Sinclair Era tag teams colliding before the Wolves left for TNA. It was a 26 minute war, it ended with a ref bump and reDragon showing how desperate they were by Bobby Fish introducing a chair, Kyle O’Reilly hitting a Brainbuster on the chair to Davey Richards, and the second referee came out in time to count the pinfall but bot see the weapon usage. reDragon managed to get their titles back and etch their names right behind the Briscoes in the elite levels of the ROH tag division.

• WWE SummerSlam: WWE World Heavyweight Championship: John Cena (c) vs Brock Lesnar (2014)

This was the payoff from being the 1 in 21-1. In what was truly just an extended Squash match, Cena was Suplexed 16 times and F5’d him multiple times. While the Randy Orton and Roman Reigns match was solid from the same show, the most memorable moment is just Lesnar tossing Cena around like a throwing dummy. Lesnar was laughing and taking the whole match lightly as he mixed in some Ground and Pound with the suplexes and just general relaxed pace of him enjoying the domination. While Cena limped away under his own power, Lesnar solidified the moniker of Beast Incarnate, which turned him into the true final boss of WWE for the next decade.

• Dragon Gate Dangerous Gate: Open the Dream Gate Championship: Shun Skywalker (c) vs Madoka Kikuta (2025)

This was a betrayal angle where the bad guys win. For context, Shun Skywalker was the leader of Z-Brats, a pretty dominant heel faction. So when Shun defeated the Dragon Gate icon YAMATO for the Dream Gate title a month earlier…it looked like Z-Brats was back on top. But Kikuta had other plans. After the victory, Kikuta and most of the other Z-Brats attacked Shun. Only Homare Kato stayed loyal to Shun and helped him to the back after the public excommunication. As for this match, the heel tactics continued with the Z-Brats using the numbers game and Kikuta catching Shun with the Rolling Lariat to snatch the Dream Gate title away from someone who was seen as a new generation major player in Dragon Gate. After defeating Shun, Kikuta turned the knife and copied Shun’s old tactic. Z-Brats was born out of the ashes of R.E.D. to distance themselves from Eita’s memory, so Kikuta declared Z-Brats dead and renamed the faction to Gajadokuro (Snake Skulls).

With Shun showing up in New Japan and joining the worst stable in history sine Voodoo Murders, I thought it would be topical to add in some of his past work. I’ve touched on a bit of Dragon Gate during these, so people should be more aware than usual, but timing is everything. Let’s also just be thankful we had two SummerSams with memorable moments to keep the train moving instead of me having to dig into 80s or obscure Japanese or Independent shows.