Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 26th

Today is all over the place, in a good way. Some classic nostalgia with two icons clashing in the early 90s, MLW rewriting history and ending with some fairly recent TNA history. Let’s get to it!

• NJPW G1 Climax Special: Hulk Hogan vs Keiji Mutoh (1993)

The undercard had a bunch of fun mentions, Satoshi Kojima, Yuji Nagata were in a Young Lion opening tag. Eddie Guerrero wrestled under the Black Tiger gimmick, defeating Jushin Thunder Liger. Hellraisers (Road Warrior Hawk and Power Warrior) were in action as well as, the Jurassic Express (Hercules Hernandez & Scott Norton). But we all know the marquee would be between two of the biggest names in pro wrestling, especially at the time. This isn’t the more famous bout between Great Muta and Hulk from May, this is post WWF. This match is more of the “Japan Hogan” style of match that people try to mention when defending his mat acumen. The match took place less than a week after Muta lost his year long title reign, dropping the Great Muta alter ego and looking to bounce back. Hogan was also fairly fresh off of leaving WWF, so both men wanted to make a point. Mutoh took early advantage, but Hulk surged out of the Moonsault, called on the energy of the crowd and won the match with his Axe Bomber Japanese finisher. A roughly 10 minute match, but it was a much more active match than people expected from Hogan at the time.

• WWF Unforgiven (1999)

Vince Russo really does like making waves around this time of year, because this was Russo’s last PPV as head writer. The six pack challenge between Triple H, Big Show, The Rock, British Bulldog, Kane and Mankind were fighting for the vacated WWF Championship. Triple H had to win his 3 out of 5 matches leading up to this show, and his victory was actually well capped off given the story…but that’s not the most infamous moment. The Kennel from Hell match is often regarded as the worst gimmick match in the history of wrestling. What was supposed to be rabid dogs between the Steel Cage bars, turned into docile, pissing, tummy time dogs, which ruined any chance that Big Boss Man and Al Snow had at a decent match. Just…yikes.

• MLW Reload: MLW Heavyweight Championship: Satoshi Kojima vs Jerry Lynn (2002)

Even though most of us know that Shane Douglas won the MLW World Championship at MLW Genesis…he tried to have lightning strike twice. He went for the same edgy discarding gimmick that launched ECW, 8 years past and a different crowd received it, and the sentiment didn’t work. MLW went through a long period of not even acknowledging his win, and considered this as the restart of their World title lineage. Jerry Lynn and Kojima were chosen by random lottery as the first two for the title and Sabu had to Taiyo Kea for #1 Contendership. This showed the early period where MLW was working with AJPW (Kojima was with All Japan at this point). Ironically, even though Kojima was positioned at this time as a future star, he only had tag team success with TenCozy in NJPW and with Taiyo Kea in AJPW. So when he defeated Jerry Lynn, it was not only his first “World” title outside of Japan, it was his first singles title of his career, coming about two and a half years before his IWGP and Triple Crown title wins.

• AJPW Royal Road Tournament Finals: Jun Akiyama vs Akebono (2015)

For those unfamiliar, Akebono was a legit Sumo wrestling legend and also the very first non-Japanese born to reach the Yokozuna rank (highest Sumo rank, not just a wrestling gimmick name). As we know from the first couple additions of the Royal Road tournament, this was started during a period in AJPW when Keiji Mutoh left with about a third of the roster. So they were rebuilding, Akebono brought prestige, fame outside of wrestling and legitimate skills. He won the very first Royal Road tournament in 2013, as well Champion Carnival earlier in 2015. That was all said to frame how huge this match was in the landscape of All Japan. Jun Akiyama was the closest protege of the Four Pillars of Heaven and returned to AJPW in 2013 after the Burning Exodus from NOAH during their tumultuous Yakuza scandal. So we had a remnant of the Baba era against someone who was a pretty big deal in the current rebuild of AJPW. While the critical eye may not think this reached the heights it could’ve, it was a pivotal moment for trying to stabilize AJPW during a rough time when they were still looking for solid ground. Akiyama’s victory also helped to add legitimacy to the fairly young tournament, since it was an established veteran lending credence to what the tournament means.

• TNA Victory Road (2025)

Now this would’ve been a fairly innocuous event with bad weekly television to lead to it, but we did get swerved a bit. This was the event where ASH by Elegance was supposed to defend the Knockouts title against Masha Slamovich. But after Masha’s proven allegations of being an abuser and ASH revealing she had some medical reason that would keep her out of the ring, TNA had to scramble. This gave us the makeshift Lei Ying Lee vs Kelani Jordan match for the vacant Knockouts match. Now, while the match was okay, Kelani was a bad a choice. Lei had fan support and TNA fans were sick of NXT wrestlers taking TNA titles when only the Hardys managed to take an NXT title (and the Hardys don’t really count as TNA talent). So Kelani’s win went over like fish in the company breakroom microwave. However, we did manage to get real TNA history when Frankie Kazarian managed to upset International Champion Steve Maclin, and capture the title. Winning the title, technically made Frankie a Triple Crown winner (Tags, X-Division and International), but also gave him the momentum necessary to validate his World title win later in the year, put the stamp on Kazarian being a TNA legend.

So now you see why I made sure to mention that Kojima was on the undercard of the Mutoh and Hogan show…because that tied in two events nearly a decade apart. And even the Mutoh mention on the state that AJPW was in during 2015 is a tie as well. See, I always like when there’s connective tissue on the same day.