Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 6th

Definitely a cornucopia of companies today, but most of the events actually have some relevance. So it’s time to see what was found!

• AJPW Summer Action Series II: Vacant Triple Crown Championship: Toshiaki Kawada vs Shinjiro Otani (2003)

The Triple Crown was vacated after Shinya Hashimoto sustained a shoulder injury. There was a mini tournament and it came down to the freelance ace of Zero-1, Shinjiro Otani, to face the final remaining Heavenly King in AJPW, Toshiaki Kawada. Kawada defeated Mike Awesome earlier in the tournament, so he attacked Kawada during the introductions. Otani played the aggressive invading heel, and Kawada was the last bastion of Baba at this point. So he fought from underneath, and after 21 minutes, Kawada ended up winning following a series of strikes, Brainbuster, Folding Power Bomb and one final Gamengiri. This began one the most lauded Triple Crown title reign, 529 Days, 10 defenses. A defense record that has yet to be surpassed (only tied once by Kento Miyahara during his ’18-’20 reign) and the only reign that lasted longer than this Kawada reign was Misawa’s 705 day reign from ’92-’94).

• TNA iMPACT!: X-Division Championship: Doug Williams (c) vs Jay Lethal  (2010)

While the win feels pretty innocuous being that it’s only Lethal’s fourth reign out of six, it signifies more for Lethal’s career at the time. Lethal was exceling at his promos and gimmick moments, like the “Woo Off” with Ric Flair, but his matches were forgettable at the time. So with Doug Williams being established as one of the most “anti” X-Division style wrestlers, but just a damn good wrestler, he was a fairly dominant champion. At this point it was over 100 days that Williams was champion and Lethal was seen as merely a speed bump since his in-ring accolades stalled. In a great moment for TNA, Lethal’s underdog spirit and high flying were enough to take out William’s technical prowess. One Lethal Injection later, Lethal won the X-Division title and we have the scene of the orange and white confetti dropping from the rafters.

• Lucha Underground: First Episode Taping (2014)

Even though the show didn’t premiere until right before Halloween, the first taping officially happened today. Robert Rodriguez had the El Rey Network, and a vision for a Telenovela with wrestling. The cinematic style helped to pioneer and inspire the Hardy’s Broken Universe and of course, everything that happened during the pandemic. This also did a great job at mixing in Aztec mythology, Lucha pageantry and some more western sprinkles to keep non-Lucha fans engaged. Between the crazy characters, actual murder…this was an experience that helped to launch some names or at least faces into the vernacular of Western fans.

• ROH All-Star Extravaganza VI (2014)

For 2014, this was a real All-Star event. Adam Cole faced AJ Styles in a first time every match that went 23 minutes and saw AJ win with an Avalanche Blood Sunday. reDragon retained their Tag Team Titles against the Young Bucks in a great a 2 out of 3 Falls match. ACH nearly took the Television title off of Jay Lethal if it weren’t for Truth Martini’s antics. As for the main event, this was pretty legit. Michael Elgin had to defend his ROH Championship against Jay Briscoe. Jay put Elgin away with the Jay Driller, and the historic aspect was the fact that Jay became only the second person in ROH history to hold the belt for a second time (the first being Austin Aries).

• MLW War Games (2018)

Even if the card itself isn’t anything that is overly memorable, the history comes from the name. In 2003 MLW ran the first WarGames event under their banner after the trademark was Dormant since WWE wasn’t using it after acquiring WCW. So they used that existing event as proof to purchase the trademark in 2007. So when WWE used the WarGames moniker for NXT in 2017, they did so, without owning the trademark. So this became only the second MLW event to use the War Games name, but they agreed to sell it to WWE in 2019. War Games, then became War Chamber for MLW, whilst WWE acquired the full rights to continue using the name and owning the trademark. Hooray, politics!

Politics, legendary title runs, getting back to winning ways and the birth of wrestling done cinematically, all come to a head today. I like when not every event is just someone winning and belt and there’s some hidden minutia amongst the cards. Not always, trust me, it’s easier if it’s just title changes that matter. But some days, the digging doesn’t feel like a chore.