Today In Pro Wrestling History: October 30th

A lot of the history skews to fairly recent. When most of the bigger moments are in the last decade, that’s fairly surprising and doesn’t happen very often. So let’s see what happened!

• WWF SmackDown (2001)

This was at the height of the Invasion storyline. Christian secured the European Title after defeating Bradshaw, giving him a nice boost after dropping the Intercontinental Championship 9 days earlier.  The big moment was the opening match where Test and Booker T managed to defeat Chris Jericho and The Rock for the WWF Tag Team titles after Jericho accidentally hit The Rock, adding to the uneasy tension between the egomaniacs. Kurt Angle and Stone Cold had tense interactions as well. This was all building for Survivor Series nicely.

• WWE Hell in a Cell: Raw Women’s Championship: Sasha Banks (c) vs Charlotte Flair (2016)

Not only was this the first Women’s Hell in a Cell match, it was also the first women’s match to officially close out a PPV. This match had the pre-match attack from Charlotte, a stretcher fake out, the hatred and Charlotte bending Sasha in half in the ropes, and a match only really hampered by a late table spot that looked a little messy but led to the Natural Selection for Charlotte to win the title and the historic first ever match.

• AEW Dynamite: Inaugural AEW Tag Team Title Tournament Finals: Lucha Bros (Penta & Fenix) vs SCU (Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky) (2019)

Early days of AEW, and we saw a tournament to crown the first ever tag champions. In a move that surprised many, but was definitely correct for business, The Young Bucks were eliminated early on by Private Party. Last thing anyone needed was a narrative of “the dudes in charge putting themselves over”. So we got two very popular teams. So Cal Uncensored (SCU) was a trio, that also had Christopher Daniels in it, going back to the ROH time before AEW existed. This played into the story for the finals because the Lucha Bros are the ones who injured Daniels, because he was the originally planned partner for Frankie. So SCU wanted their pound of flesh, and Lucha Bros were looking to continue their tag dominance in every company they’ve been in. Sky managed to counter the tandem Spike Package Piledriver finish, and sinch in a Small Package for the surprising underdog win! If Scorpio stayed healthy, he was well positioned to be a big breakout star in AEW.

• MLW Fightland: MLW Middleweight Championship: Shun Skywalker (c) vs Lince Dorado (2022)

This match nicely caps off the bit of Shun Skywalker education, that these history articles became. Shun disregarded the entire title reign as a mere pitstop since he was in full heel mode with Z-brats after defeating Myron Reed for the title. Suffocating and mercurial, Shun was playing his character the way that got him notoriety in Dragon Gate. Dorado played the sympathetic babyface well, finding his moment, Shun’s arrogance left him wide open of a Lethal Injection and then Lince hit a Shooting Star Press to pull off the desperate but effective move and win the title!

• JCW Devil’s Night (2024)

This was JCW’s official return to PPV in 15 years. Distributed through TrillerTV, it marked a return to PPV, it marked JCW’s 25th anniversary and also played into the only two month old Lunacy program at the time. There were three big title changes. Dani Mo became the inaugural Women’s Championship in a 7 woman battle royal. The Backseat Boyz (Tommy & JP Grayson) won the tag titles off of Bang And Matthews. The main event saw everyone favorite Chocolate Juggalo, defeat the incumbent champion Matt Cross and Mecha Wolf. Capping off his revenge tour since Cross took the title off of him about two months earlier.

Definitely not companies or wrestlers I thought would have a ton of crossover with each other. But Willie Mack moments are always fun, Booker T proving to be the most successful WCW invader, Sasha and Charlotte making history and Frankie Kazarian being ageless everywhere he goes.