Today In Pro Wrestling History: October 13th

Another day, another…list of events. Okay that’s not catchy, but I’ve had a long day, here’s the stuff.

• WWF Raw is War (1997)

This episode had a few moments. Legion of Doom put their career on the line against the Godwins, but since they won, Uncle Cletus got fired. Jim Cornette had his Pipe Bomb about Phil Muschnick and WCW. But the major history, was the birth of D-generation X. Bret Hart was in the ring with The Hart Foundation and referred to the group as a bunch of “degenerates”. So they officially revealed the name, and performed the first “suck it”.

• NJPW Destruction (2008)

Cross-promotional harmony was big on this show and we got a major milestone. Yuji Nagata defeated Masato Tanaka for the Zero-1 Heavyweight Championship, ending Tanaka’s year long reign, which Keiji Mutoh, defended the IWGP Heavyweight title against Shinsuke Nakamura. Even though Mutoh was an original Musketeer, this was during his time as President of AJPW, so he was an outsider and defeated the Super Rookie to continue his reign. The milestone though, is a nice one. No Limit (Tetsuya Naito & Yujiro Takahashi) faced RISE (Minoru & Prince Devitt) for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight titles. With No Limit’s victory, this officially signified their ascent from Young Lions, since it was their first ever title wins.

• OTT 4th Anniversary (2018)

This was a pretty big supershow for OTT since it had some major NJPW crossover and a match that was in MOTY running. While LIJ (EVIL, SANADA & Tetsuya Naito) vs Flamita, Bandido and Shane Strickland was fun, Tomohiro Ishii vs Kushida was a great Catchweight fight and Timothy Thatcher vs Minoru Suzuki brought “the graps”, there was one match that stood about. WALTER vs Will Ospreay for the OTT World Title. If it made the history list, we all know that means it was either a banger or a buster…and WALTER and Ospreay did not miss. Great story telling, hard hitting, fantastic match with critical praise.

• DDT Get Alive: KO-D Tag Team Titles: 37KAMINA (Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata) (c) vs DISASTER BOX (HARASHIMA & Naomi Yoshimura) (2021)

This was an interesting match given the reasons it had weight on two events in the show. The Dramatic Survivors Tournament had a fan vote, and DISASTER BOX was overwhelming expected to lose and be forced to disband. Defying expectations, DISASTER BOX moved far enough forward in the survival tournament to be safe. That set up this moment, where the defiant DISASTER BOX, had an uphill battle since Takeshita was Double Champion at this time and the Ace of DDT. So even though they created a rallying cry around the fan vote of, ” Never say DISASTER BOX is dead!”- this wasn’t gonna be easy. It was a brutal match, with a few near misses, but the underdog faction of DISASTER BOX got their big win to cap off their story with a happy ending.

A fair bit of tag team history, a classic stable gets a name and a Dream Match we may never get a chance to see again. While not super shiny, I think it all stands up as historic or memorable.