Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 25th

Another solid mixture of promotions and countries getting some shine. Even a rare appearance from the 90s NWA dark period. Let’s see what’s going on today!

• NWA 51st Anniversary Show (1999)

A surprisingly fun Anniversary, given the fact that NWA was in a terrible position prior to their TNA pairing. We had a few nostalgia matches with Abdullah the Butcher winning a short hardcore match against Don Brodie, and Stan Lane faced Ronnie Garvin, a solid match which Garvin won. The biggest moment was the NWA World Championship Elimination Triple Threat. Naoya Ogawa, Olympic silver medalist in Judo, 7 time medalist (4 of them gold) in the World Judo Championships, and probably very well known for his time in Pride and HUSTLE, was the NWA World Champion at the time; defended against Gary Steele and Brian Anthony. In a fairly surprising finish, Ogawa forced Anthony to submit, but right after earning the elimination Steele rolled him up and stole a flash victory. So Gary Steele became the very first British World Champion in the 51 year history of the NWA.

• WCW Nitro: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Steel Cage Match: Booker T (c) vs Vince Russo (2000)

Let’s try to remember why this match happened before we all collectively groan. Russo was involved in a tag match, since he was a power tripping authority figure. While trying to save a knocked out Russo, Booker positioned Russo into the pinfall and Russo won the match, so he won a title shot. This match was held with “Escape” rules. So Vince comes out in New York Giants football gear and pads since he knew he wasn’t a wrestler. Booker T played with his food a little too long, because a “suspended” Goldberg came out of the crowd, got in the cage and Speared Russo right through the cage. Given the fact it was Escape rules, Russo technically won the title while cartoonishly knocked silly, and many consider this the death point of WCW, but real fans know that WCW fell off the rails in 1999. The LOL WCW2000 memes are just when they got desperate.

• PROGRESS Chapter 36: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Room… Again (2016)

Now this is a show the resonates well with current major players of wrestling. Rampage Brown defeated Joe Coffey in the tournament finals to crown the inaugural Atlas Champion. Zack Sabre Jr defeats Tommaso Ciampa in a clever 27 minute 2 out of 3 falls match. Clever because the first fall was actually a Double Pin. So only 2 real pinfalls were executed but counted as 3 points, and it goes without saying it was a fantastic match. British Strong Style (Pete Dunne & Trent Seven) defeated The London Riots for the tag titles. In the main event, “The Villain” Marty Scurll defended his Progress World Title against Mark Haskins and Tommy End (aka Aleister Black). In another great match, Mark Haskins pulled off a huge shock. Dubbed the “nearly-man” by fans, he was a beloved Underdog that often came up just shy. So this resonated well with fans, and since this was the largest crowd for them at the time (2,400 fans in the O2 Academy Brixton), it made for an insane moment.

• WWE Clash of Champions (2016)

Another show with a few things going for it. This was the first PPV showcasing a defense of the new version of the Cruiserweight Championship. TJ Perkins managed to stave off Brian Kendrick, but after the match, Kendrick headbutted Perkins to solidify his heel turn. We had the final installment of the best of 7 matches between Cesaro and Sheamus. Tied 3-3, this would be the decider. A great match, that resulted in a No Contest when both men went crashing through the barricade. However, this would lead to GM Mick Foley putting them together as a tag team, The Bar. In a mediocre match, but notable for the participants, Charlotte defended the Raw Women’s title successfully against Sasha Banks and Bayley. The last title change came from the United States Championship match between the champion Rusev and challenger Roman Reigns. Now this entire angle was booked terribly, it was in the era of “make Roman look strong”, and just made Rusev look like a jabroni. Roman crashes Rusev and Lana’s wedding and then makes Rusev look like a dweeb in all of their encounters. The only reason Rusev still had the title was because the SummerSlam match was thrown out as No Contest because Rusev was “too injured too continue”. So this is a historical bookmark for one of the many reasons that quite a few fans pushed against Roman Reigns until the era of the Tribal Chief.

• NOAH Grand Ship In Nagoya – Pro-Wrestling Love Forever 2 “Outbreak” (2022)

As you can infer from the name and year it was during the Keiji Mutoh retirement tour. Mutoh and Kazuyuki Fujita teamed up against Masakatsu Funaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima, with the heavyweight legends defeating the lighter striking duo from KONGOH. In another veterans versus mixed generation tag moment, Takashi Sugiura found a partner outside of Sugiura-Gun, in Satoshi Kojima, to challenge his stablemates Timothy Thatcher and Hideki Suzuki, for the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Championships. The veteran duo of Sugiura and Kojima won the titles, as this was a few months after Kojima’s history making GHC Heavyweight reign, so he was riding high in NOAH. Then the main event saw the winner of the N-1 Tournament Kaito Kiyomiya, challenge his career long big brother style rival Kenoh for the GHC Heavyweight Championship. Kaito was finally able to reclaim the title after working his way back to prominence over the course of 32 months.

Vince Russo being topical in the news right now and also having an infamous moment in WCW felt correct to line up. Some pre-Corgan NWA, some of the Mutoh era NOAH and a pivotal Progress show with a lot of great talent. Nice to have a cornucopia of interesting events.