Today In Pro Wrestling History: November 8th

Long reigns, long gaps between reigns, crowning of new main eventers and the final match for Latino Heat. All events carry different weight, but they all matter to history. Let’s get history started.

• AWA at the Auditorium: AWA World Heavyweight Championship: Verne Gagne (c) vs Nick Bockwinkel (1975)

This is notable because Verne Gagne came in as champions with a reign of 2,625 days. Yes that’s over 7 years as champion with 172 title defenses. Bockwinkel came in with his technical wrestling but smooth talking heel prowess and the support of the Heenan Family to finally dethrone the reluctant king of AWA. The irony being that Bockwinkel’s reign lasted 1714 days, which is over 4 and a half years, only to drop it back to Verne. And people wonder why the AWA failed?

• WWE SmackDown: Eddie Guerrero vs Mr Kennedy (2005)

There was a poetic nature to this match. We got a classic Lie, Cheat and Steal Eddie Guerrero match. The steel chair fake out, making Kennedy look like a chump, and the fans got to see a laughing and teasing Eddie. Sadly, this would mark Eddie’s final match, as he was found unresponsive 5 days later in his hotel by Chavo Guerrero Jr. Autopsy reports attributed it to the past substance abuse, which made the loss more heartbreaking since Eddie worked hard to comeback from that shame, even utilizing it in his program with Brock Lesnar the previous year.

• NJPW Power Struggle (2014)

Some great trivia nuggets for this show. One is a negative moment, where this is the show that had Yoshitatsu tuck his chin incorrectly while taking the Styles’ Clash, Yoshitatsu broke two bones in his neck, but finished the match. The injury sidelined him for over a year and gave the Styles Clash a dangerous reputation, event though the mistake was 1000% on Yoshitatsu. A positive for many fans in the IWC, this was the debut event of Kenny Omega. While he didn’t wrestle on the card, he appeared to challenge Ryusuke Taguchi at Wrestle Kingdom for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. Continuing in the moment of Junior Heavyweight history, we saw Chase Owens defend his NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title against Jushin Thunder Liger. While the match was forgettable, the moment comes from the length of time between reigns. The last time Liger held this title, it was still part of the J-Crown in 1997. So a 17 year gap between title reigns, is the longest gap in the history of the title.

• Stardom Goddesses Tag League Finals: Hiroyo Matsumoto & Santana Garrett vs Thunder Rock (Io Shirai & Mayu Iwatani) (2015)

This was the peak of the Threedom era of Stardom. This was also their first ever joint victory. Everyone knows Stardom had three icons, Kairi Hojo, Io Shirai and Mayu Iwatani, but much like the AJPW Heavenly Pillars, they weren’t officially a stable, just a moniker the fans gave to the most important women in the company. So with Thunder Rock, defeating Garrett and Matasumoto, this year was the zenith for them. The entered the tournament as the Goddesses Tag Champions, Mayu was also High Speed Champion, Io was also Wonder of Stardom Champion. Double champs, tournament winners, this was the peak. Even though Io loses the Wonder to Santana a few weeks after this match, it was so she could pick up the World title in December. Mayu, Kairi and Io, were the definition of Joshi wrestling during this period.

• NOAH Star Navigation (2025)

There were two big moments here and both involve the WWE/NOAH working relationship. In the semi-main event, Team 2000x (Takashi Sugiura & Masa Kitamiya) defended their GHC Heavyweight Tag titles against Hank & Tank from NXT. This was during their brief excursion that started in October and ended in December. Many of the NXT talents or underused talents earned a lot of valuable experience in NOAH. Hank & Tank actually also won the titles, so while the match wasn’t notable, the achievement is something that helped them in their career. In another moment of some NXT overlap, Yoshiki Inamura challenged KENTA for the GHC Heavyweight Championship once he returned from his NXT excursion. Inamura’s NXT run was well received so he brought a lot of nice hype to the NOAH main event scene. In a solid 17 minute match, Inamura defeated KENTA to begin his first GHC Heavyweight title reign.

A little bit of Nick Bockwinkel lore to quell the masses, even though the match does more to illustrate the issues with AWA’s booking that lead to their eventual demise. But in a weird twist of fate, I never realized until today that Eddie passed away very close to Art Barr’s day of death. Spooky when just a few days ago we covered Love Machine’s final match where he and Eddie were tagging.