Today In Pro Wrestling History: September 8th

Okay…this was not a good day for events that really stick out in the history books. It took a little bit of scouring and stretching the concept of what matters. Let’s see how well I did!

• CWA Memphis Show: AWA International & Southern Heavyweight Championships Texas Death Match: Jerry Lawler (c) vs Bam Bam Bigelow (c) (1986)

This match is highly regarded as Jerry Lawler’s in-ring masterpiece. Bam Bam was fairly new and inexperienced at the time, so Lawler had to carry this match to make sure both Bam Bam looked like a monster and he looked like an underdog babyface. From the psychology of Bam Bam missing Lawler and striking the post, so Lawler went after slip up, to Lawler selling like Bam Bam was a killer, and the eventual comeback to send the fans home happy, Lawler won the match, but also proved his ring acumen with how well this match was paced and executed.

• Jersey Championship Wrestling Clash of Champions (2001)

This show had Chris Candido with Tammy Lynn Sytch challenging for the JCW Television title. The main event also saw a reunion that brought in a large number to the independent. The Road Warriors faced off against Moondogs 2000 (Molsonn & Wenzel) in a South River Street Fight. This event also helped to establish the foundation of Jersey Championship Wrestling and when it eventually became GCW in 2015.

• TNA Weekly PPV – Date With Fate (2004)

This is aptly named since it was the final Weekly PPV that TNA did. After this show, they would focus solely on their Impact! weekly show on Fox SportsNet, and move to a more traditional 3 Hour PPV schedule starting with Victory Road in November. The final main event for the weekly series was their biggest to date, with Jeff Jarrett defending his NWA World Title against Jeff Hardy. Jeff Jarrett retained, as was pretty much tradition back in old TNA days, but there was a title change! The Naturals (Chase Stevens & Andy Douglas) lost the NWA World Tag Team Titles to Chris Harris and Elix Skipper. An unlikely pairing that was forced together due to a storyline where AMW & XXX wanted to be the ones to dethrone the Naturals, management instead made them go for mismatched partners to always keep a sense of tension.

• WWE Monday Night Raw (2008)

Kane tormented Rey Mysterio and Cody Rhodes & Ted Dibiase Jr debuted their newest ally, Manu. Another shift was William Regal stealing Jaime Noble’s girlfriend Layla. We also saw the World Championship Celebration segment on this episode, which helped to really hammer home his “suit-wearing hypocrite” gimmick. Batista was looking to get his pound of flesh since he felt robbed by Jericho, but their main event quickly devolved into a No Contest, which then turned into a 2 on 1 Handicap match with JBL teaming with Jericho to beat down Batista.

• WWE Monday Night Raw (2025)

As an extension from the recent Smackdown entry, this was AJ Lee’s first appearance on raw in over 10 years. She was adding more fuel to the fire of Becky & Seth vs Punk & AJ. We also saw Jey Uso Spear LA Knight, which left the crowd stunned and Jimmy flabbergasted at the fact Jey was starting to sound a lot like Roman with his attitude. So the newly reunited Usos, where already showing signs of cracking. There was also added heat for the Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer match that would take place at Wrestlepalooza.

As I acknowledged, not the best day for wrestling moments. A lot of things that helped to establish history a little later, instead of being overly memorable today. Kinda crazy to think that over 50 years of wrestling across a few continents (that I try to touch on at least), there’s still days that just get skipped on a calendar.