Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 5th

Had to dig a little for the historical relevance of some of these shows, but I don’t feel like they’re too much of a stretch. Not the shiniest of days, but still pretty solid and a nice mixture of promotions!

• WCW Clash of Champions XVI: Vacant WCW World Tag Team Titles: The Enforcers (Arn Anderson & Larry Zbysko) vs Rick Steiner & Bill Kazmaier (1991)

Many people in the Gen X and Millennial age group know Kazmaier more for his Power Lifting time, either competing or hosting/commentating for the World’s Strongest Man competitions. Kazmaier was the first man to win 3 World’s Strongest competitions in a row. So Arn and Larry did the smart heel thing by attacking him before the match. Using his own weights as weapons. Rick was trying to regain the tag titles he was forced to vacate because Scotty was injured, but the pre-match attack was too much to overcome. Even though Steiner and Kazmaier had more power and Steiner had the amateur pedigree, the early shortcut and the crafty veteran awareness was too much to overcome. Arn and Larry would hold the belts for 75 days after this match.

• AJPW Budokan Hall Show: AJPW Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (c) vs Johnny Ace & Steve Williams (1996)

This match, played into the Real World Tag League later in the year. But as the match itself stands, this was a brutal match. Akiyama was Misawa’s new protege since Kobashi ascended to a main event player. Johnny and Steve knew that, so they took the fight to Misawa early, battering him with Elbows, Lariats and even taking him out of most of the match due to a Doomsday Device. Akiyama showed his resiliency though, fighting 2 on 1 for a good portion. Akiyama survived a flurry of moves including kicking out after an Ace Crusher. Even when Misawa was able to get back into the match, it wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught, Dr Death hit a High Angle Backdrop Driver on Akiyama and Johnny grabbed the pinfall for his first real high profile tag title. He held smaller belts like the PWF or the All Asia Tags, but this was the first main company tag belt for a decent length of time.

• WWE Monday Night Raw (2005)

While the show seems a little innocuous, we did get the debut of Lance Cade and Tervor Murdoch. The defeated the tag team champions of Rosey (S.uper H.ero I.n T.raining) and The Hurricane in a non-title match. So this set the stage for their Unforgiven rematch, and would give us a pretty nice shift in the tag team landscape since Cade and Murdoch were a force for a while. We also saw Ric Flair actually make the save for Ashley Massaro as Carlito was trying to humiliate her. Flair hit a few Low Blows and set his eyes on the Intercontinental Championship. So another Unforgiven match established on the episode.

• MLP Sacred Ground (2025)

This was a big moment for MLP because the event was initially going to be untelevised and only held for the live audience. But due to enough demand and the general good favor that Scott D’Amore had from his TNA time, he saw there was a market, so he had the event taped and later released on YouTube on September 11th. But as for what makes the event itself memorable, its one of two matches. Firstly we have Gisele Shaw facing Priscilla Kelly in a Winner-Takes-All match, MLP vs Destiny Women’s Championship match. The match did a good job showcasing Gisele’s striking and brutal edge. While Priscilla was up for the challenge, Gisele won the match and is currently still double champion for MLP and Destiny. As for the main event, we have two instant classic machines, TJP and Josh Alexander going at it for the Canadian Championship that Alexander held. After nearly 26 minutes Josh countered TJP’s Kneebar into his signature Ankle Lock, forcing TJP to tap out.

• WWE Friday Night Smackdown (2025)

Even though this was John Cena‘s last Smackdown appearance, this is something nearly as big that happened. Sami Zayn was flipping the script as an homage, when Cena had an open challenge 10 years earlier, Sami answered it, so now with Sami as champion, Cena answered it. We got a pretty good match that ended with Brock Lesnar wrecking shop and setting up for his Wrestlepalooza match with Cena. So while the match didn’t get a clean finish, it scratched enough of a nostalgia itch. In another Wrestlepalooza match set up, we got the second moment that rivals Cena’s final Smackdown. AJ Lee returned after nearly 3800 days retired and away from wrestling, to come out and confront Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins with her husband CM Punk. So while Cena was saying goodbye, AJ Lee said hello for the first time, in a very long time.

See, while not always the most groundbreaking, we got returns, farewells, unified titles, debuts and forgotten wrestlers who are known much more in other sport avenues. So I don’t feel too bad about this day. It was a little rough, but I like what I found.