Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 18th

I’m a little surprised at how much pre-cool times WCW caught my attention for today. The names should be very familiar to most of the IWC, and we even snuck in some Joshi at the end, but with a…timeless name.

• WCW Fall Brawl: WarGames: Nasty Rhodes (Dusty, Dustin & Nasty Boys) vs Stud Stable (Bunkhouse Buck, Terry Funk, Arn Anderson & Col. Robert Parker (1994)

The match was a deeply personal, blood-soaked family affair that brought the legendary Dusty Rhodes out of semi-retirement to fight alongside his son, Dustin Rhodes. For months, Colonel Robert Parker’s Stud Stable had been making Dustin’s life a living hell, leading Dustin to beg his iconic father to lace up his boots one more time to help him settle the score. Backed by the wild but surprisingly popular Nasty Boys, Nasty Rhodes stepped into the famous double cage to face off against the team ruining Dustin’s life, including their manager Col. Robert Parker, who was forced to wrestle in a suit. The match was less about technical wrestling and more about raw, chaotic emotion, featuring heavy brawling, bleeding, and the unique dynamic of Dusty fighting to protect his son’s future. We got the cathartic babyface victory in the end, in a match that is remembered for the story and not the spots.

• WCW Nitro: WCW World Tag Team Titles: Harlem Heat (c) vs The American Males (Scotty Riggs & Marcus Alexander Bagwell) (1995)

On only the third episode of Nitro, WCW was still trying to make waves and keep people flipping channels. The American Males were the prototypical muscular white boy team that did well in the 90s and given the fact that WCW was more of a “southern wrasslin” audience. So they leaned into the peak of the popularity with the young team and had the Males take on Harlem Heat for the titles that Harlem Heat literally just won at Fall Brawl. The American Males won the titles for their one and only run with the belts, which only lasted 9 days. But WCW was laying the ground work for what would become an Attitude Era staple of short reigns, unexpected title changes and just shock and awe booking.

• WWE Unforgiven: Intercontinental Championship: Carlito (c) vs Ric Flair (2005)

We saw this get set up earlier in the month when Ric made the save for Ashley Massaro. This is a historic moment not just because Ric won the match to give him his first reign as Intercontinental Champion. It also made him the first person to ever pull off the WCW & WWE Triple Crown. Big Gold, United States and Tag belts in WCW, and the WWF/E World title, IC and Tag belts. The Triple Crown and Grand Slam stuff has been reset since WWE keeps changing names of titles or adding 49 different belts to the shows, but at the point he did it, it was a much more prestigious accolade.

• TNA iMPACT!: TNA World Heavyweight Championship: Bobby Lashley (c) vs Bobby Roode (2014)

This was during the tumultuous era of TNA where many people started to tune out after the Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan experiment had very high highs, but no consistency, and sent the company into budget cuts and what many people consider the “Dark Period” since if a few months they would be off Spike and go into a period a flitting through much smaller channels just trying to survive. One of the last hope spots they had for long standing TNA fans was Bobby Roode in an underdog babyface position. The Beatdown Clan was keeping TNA under thumb and Lashley had a solid 3 month reign going as “The Destroyer”. But once Kurt Angle returned as an Executive, he tried to even the playing field. Roode earned a rematch after an initial loss, Kurt made himself special guest referee to try and mitigate the BDC interreference, and Roode did something only the bigger names in TNA accomplish. He was the 7th person to have multi reigns as World Champion. Also, Roode is still 5th in overall days as Champion between both reigns.

• STARDOM 5 Star Grand Prix: Finals: Yoko Bito vs Toni Storm (2017)

Toni needs no introduction, but Yoko probably does because her career was fantastic yet fleeting. Yoko was in the original class of Stardom in 2010 and an early “Ace candidate”. She made it to Top 4 of the tournament to crown the inaugural red belt champion, she was one half of the very first Goddesses Championship winning team. However, she retired abruptly in 2012 because of injuries. In 2016, she returned and showed everyone she was still just as good, even winning the 5 Star Grand Prix in 2016 and also reclaiming the Goddesses titles with our favorite pirate princess Kairi Hojo. Toni however was on a run, she won the Cinderella Tournament earlier in the year and was showing herself as the ace gaijin. So Yoko wanted to be the first ever 2 time winner (and back to back) to solidify herself being back, but Toni proved to be on another level that year. Toni became the first wrestler in Stardom to win the Cinderella and the 5 Star in the same year, as well as, the first gaijin to win the 5 Star Grand Prix. Toni went on to a pretty long 258 day reign as champion once she dethroned Mayu Iwatani with the 5 Star “cash-in”, and sadly for Yoko, she announced her second retirement in December 2017 because of the cumulative nagging injuries that put her on the shelf 5 years prior.

Classic WCW storytelling, Attitude era hot potato, WWE accolades when they still mattered and weren’t trivialized like the Super Saiyan discount sale of the Dragon Ball world. TNA went onto life support, but impressively survived and Toni beginning her highly decorated career with what is most likely her most successful year, and helped to really put her on the map.