Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 2nd

These months aren’t allowed to start off hot anymore. That always gets my hopes up and then in a matter of a day or two I’m back to scouring the indies or the mid sized Japanese companies for something to bloviate about. So we have a couple real things and a few things that are helping me limber up my mental gymnastics!

• WCW Clash of Champions XX: Andre the Giant‘s final televised appearance (1992)

While there was wrestling on the event of course, the idea of the event was to celebrate the 20th year of wrestling on TBS (dating back to Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling). So in a rare non-WWF appearance, Andre was given the red carpet walk out, side by side with Gordon Solie for a brief interview with Tony Schiavone. While he was visibly struggling and needed a cane to steady himself, it was still a memory for wrestling fans at the time. It would go down as his final U.S. televised appearance before his passing in January 1993.

• WWE Raw (2002)

This was the episode of Raw that started the concept of “two world champions”. After Brock Lesnar decided he would only defend the WWE Championship on Smackdown, Raw GM Eric Bischoff had an idea. They reactivated the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, “Big Gold”, as the World Heavyweight Championship and handed it to Triple H off the basis that he won the #1 Contender match previously against Undertaker, so he treated it more like a coronation match. As a nod to the belt’s history and being Triple H’s idol, Ric Flair was the first to challenge for Big Gold. Triple H retained the title, and we’ve never looked back from two “main” titles save for the brief stories of them being unified, but it always leads to a new name or new lineage.

• WRESTLE-1 Pro-Wrestling Love In Yokohama (2018)

Wrestle-1, is the company that Mutoh created after his walk out from AJPW in 2013 with 11 wrestlers. This was a well remembered event for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was during the Stronghearts tour of going literally everywhere. While they came up short for the tag titles, they were a huge freelance draw at the time. Ryuki Honda made his debut at this event after Keiji Mutoh’s “Golden Rookie Project”. We also saw a Hana Kimura versus her real life best friend Veny (using the ASUKA moniker at this time). Since Hana was from Yokohama she came out adorned in veiled with Red, White and Pink flowers, slowly coming down the ramp like a wedding or graduation march. Hana won a stiff striking match where Hana got to prove how far she’s come over the years. She was becoming far more than just a pretty face, and having her best friend in the match of course helped for both of them to just let loose and put on a great match. The final thing was Shotaro Ashino reclaiming the Wrestle-1 Heavyweight Championship and proving himself to be the Ace. This was huge momentum for Shotaro, he looked great and was constantly showing off his ability in big match situation.

• JTO Yume (2021)

For New Japan fans of 2018, they will remember TAKA Michinoku saying this as Zack Sabre’s hype man, “Just Tap Out”. Well the phrase got such recognition, TAKA created a promotion with that name in 2019. For additional context, Stardom wrestler Maika was the first JTO roster member to be claimed by a larger promotion in the previous year. But as for what makes this event special? TAKA was the inaugural King of JTO champion, in his 328th day as champion, defending against Ryuya Takekura. TAKA was pushed for the first time since creation of the company, and fell to the young wrestler. This was the first title change of the JTO Championship, and also began Ryuya’s Ace ability of JTO since he is currently a 4 time King of JTO champion at the time of writing this.

• WWE Payback (2023)

This was WWE’s last McMahon Family owned PPV before the TKO purchase. It also was surprisingly lucrative, given the fact that Payback is a lower tier show. Beck Lynch vs Trish Stratus in a Steel Cage was a highly praised match from more than just the WWE diehards. The Judgement Day were in full effect when Rhea retained her Women’s World title and Finn & Damian Priest defeated Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn for the Undisputed Tag Team championship. This was also the moment where John Cena was the special guest referee for LA Knight versus Miz, which looked interesting but led nowhere when Cena gave LA Knight the rub afterwards.

Bittersweet moments of Andre’s last U.S. televised appearance, but the return of Big Gold, moments in time for puroresu that were magical and hopeful and the beginning of a new era in WWE. So a lot of different vibes across all the events, but that’s always part of the fun to see what evokes memories for different people.