Today In Pro Wrestling History: November 3rd

We get a few firsts, and a few lesser covered promotions to fill out the rest of the list. You know we like to keep the variety here. So let’s get to it!

• WCW Nitro: Television Championship: Disco Inferno (c) vs Perry Saturn (1997)

Perry Saturn made his WCW Nitro debut alongside Raven as the enforcer of The Flock. Disco was the perfect television guy to be a believable enough lower card champion and also make someone look good. Saturn came in, dominated the entire match with Suplexes and Lariats, before putting Disco away with the Rings of Saturn. So Saturn gets to be one of the few people to win a title on their debut.

• NJPW Yokohama Dead Out: IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Yoshihiro Takayama (c) vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan (2003)

A lot of the NJPW history lately has been during this weird Inoki-ism period that is considered the dark period of NJPW. Takayama as many know, had a crazy Pride career, where even though his record is 1-4, his fights are great. Many will know his fight with Don Frye where they just throw haymakers and don’t try to dodge anything. Just eating fists and throwing their own. Thanks to winning the G1, Tenzan got this shot at the Heavyweight title. While the match was decent, the history comes from the fact that Hiroyoshi Tenzan won the match, and this was his first IWGP Heavyweight Championship reign.

• HUSTLE HustleMania (2005)

This was the inaugural super fight event for HUSTLE. We saw the peak of Razor Ramon HG (stands for Hard Gay, remember it’s 2005). HG had great cross entertainment appeal, he still makes plenty of variety show appearances and is the co-host of the online STARDOM talk show with his tag partner Razor Ramon RG (Real Goods). HG submitted Yinling the Erotic Terrorist during the main event of the show, for a nice pop. Jimmy Yang and Kaz Hayashi teamed against Kota Ibushi and Taiji Ishimori in the opening match. Genichiro Tenryu & Tadao Yasuda won the vacant tag titles over Masato Tanaka & Kintaro Kanemura.

• WWE Raw: World Heavyweight Championship Steel Cage Match: Batista (c) vs Chris Jericho (2008)

This stands out because of the fact that Batista only won the title eight days prior at Cyber Sunday. And given how Batista was booked, fans generally expected a lengthy title reign. So with Batista getting attacked prior to the match, Jericho was portraying an opportunistic heel…so the drama wrote itself. Batista being busted open around the time that WWE was sanitizing their product was also surprising to many. Couple that with the fact Chris Jericho actually did win the match, he would go on to be the one that John Cena challenged after returning from legit injury hiatus at Survivor Series.

• Dragon Gate The Gate Of Destiny (2020)

This was actually a fantastic event for storylines. Keisuke Okuda paid off his weeks of work. Okuda infiltrated R.E.D. as the Yellow Masked Demon all as a clever subterfuge to save his best from Ben-K. So Okuda faced Kaito Ishida for the Brave Gate title and managed to win the championship after all that work to sabotage R.E.D. The other massive moment came from Kento Kobune. Earlier in the night, the rookie team defeated the veteran team lead by Ultimo Dragon in an undercard six man. Due to an injury to Diamante the Trios title was vacated, and the villain faction R.E.D. mentioned having a surprise partner. Kento Kobune walked out and revealed himself. The R.E.D. trio won the vacant titles and keep them in R.E.D.’s possession, this was also the rebranding of Kento to SB Kento. We did get a surprise return as well, when Eita defeated Kazy to defend the Dream Gate title, Shun Skywalker made an unadvertised appearance to challenge Eita claiming he was “major league guy” now.

It’s always funny how so much of the Dragon Gate history has involved Shun Skywalker. But people who follow AAA and the Dusty Classic may not realize that Kento Kobune or SB Kento, is the same Kento in Tokyo Bad Boys.