Today In Wrestling History 6/13: Bret Hart Wins King Of The Ring, Misawa Dies In The Ring, & More
* 25 years ago in 1990, WCW ran Clash of the Champions XI: Coastal Crush at the McAlister Field House in Charleston, South Carolina, which aired live on Superstation TBS. This was another one of those underwhelming Clash shows with too many matches, though most of the major matches got more time to develop than they did at Clash XV a year later. The show is probably best known for the main event, as the Junkyard Dog defeated Ric Flair by disqualification in a match often cited as one of Flair's worst. It didn't help matters that the match was hyped by a racially charged angle that was heavily criticized.
The match most worth going out of your way to watch is the Midnight Express vs. the Rock 'n' Roll Express. They always had matches that were at least very good, but here, they tried to challenge themselves by making a conscious effort to do none of the trademark spots from their long, storied feud. As a result, it's not at the level of their best matches together, but if you're a fan of the feud, then it's a really interesting bout to watch if you know what they're going for.
Ratings-wise, the show was a success, drawing a 4.1 with a 7.5 share and being seen in an average of 2.23 million homes. For perspective, the episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling that aired two days earlier on USA Network did a 3.1 rating with a 5.1 share in an average of 1.64 million homes. The June 20th replay of the Clash (which aired from 10:15 p.m. to 12:45 a.m. eastern time) blew away expectations by drawing the best replay number to date, a 2.8 rating and a 5.8 share in 1.51 million homes. The previous high water mark for a Clash replay was a 2.1 rating.
* 22 years ago in 1993, Bret Hart won the first modern/televised King of the Ring tournament on its first eponymous pay-per-view event, which took place at the Nutter Center in Fairborn,Ohio. The tournament had previously been an annual house show tradition for fans in the Boston and Providence metro areas, with Hart also winning in 1991.
Hart put in the most amazing one-night performance of his career, having three really good to great matches: Against Razor Ramon in the quarterfinals, Mr. Perfect in the semifinals, and Bam Bam Bigelow in the finals. In the first match, they did a spot where Razor stomped Bret's fingers to explain him being unable to use the Sharpshooter to win any of his matches that night. If you need to get a feel for just how good Bret was, this is the show to watch, because he was dealing with three very different opponents and put on an amazing show. Jim Ross, calling his second WWF PPV, was tremendous on this night, giving the best performance of his first WWF stint.
During the break before the finals, Yokozuna defeated Hulk Hogan to regain the WWF Championship in Hogan's last televised match in the company for almost nine years. Hogan had either refused to drop the title to Hart at SummerSlam, was involved with some weird political game with Vince that Hart got the worst end of, or both. For the finish, a photographer (Harvey Whippleman, but never acknowledged as him in storyline) hopped on the apron, snapped a photo, the flash exploded in Hogan's face, and that set up Yokozuna hitting a leg drop (note the choice of finishing move for the pin.
* 9 years ago in 2006, WWE ran a TV taping at Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, New Jersey that's notable for including the first episode of ECW on Syfy. To give the show a different look, they made a few changes:
1. The mat was replaced with one that had the ECW logo.
2. An older entranceway reminiscent of the original ECW was placed to the side of the stage, which was curtained off.
3. A second hard camera was placed from the point of view of the stage, so the default view was the side with Joey Styles and Tazz visible doing commentary.
It was a nice bit of effort to mix things up, but unfortunately it didn't help much, because the first week was disastrously bad. You probably remember The Sandman beating up The Zombie, which was designed to make fun of Syfy wanting some sci-fi/fantasy themed characters on the show).
You may not remember the main event, which was an "Extreme Battle Royal" for a shot at Van Dam. It consisted of everyone walking around aimlessly while hitting each other with weapons and was legitimately one of the worst matches of 2006.
The show would improve a lot, but the first week made a terrible impression.
* 6 years ago in 2009, Mitsuharu Misawa passed away during a match on a Pro Wrestling Noah show in Hiroshima, Japan. Misawa was teaming with Go Shiosaki against Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith when Saito hit him with a high angle back suplex and he didn't get up. It was a dangerous bump, but one Misawa had taken many times, which it turned out was the problem. Misawa's heart stopped, he was given CPR in the ring, and it was for naught. While he was pronounced dead at the hospital, it was a formality at that point.
Upon autopsy, it was determined that the suplex bump caused a Atlanto-Occipital Dislocation, the injury known colloquially as internal decapitation. and that cause cardiac arrest. If he had gotten the medical attention that would've allowed him to survive, he most likely would have been paralyzed from the neck down (like Christopher Reeve when he suffered a similar injury), though there are very rare cases of full recoveries.
In Noah and previously All Japan Pro Wrestling, Misawa and some of the other main event level talent had been raising the bar for head dropping bumps for many years. It went from Misawa having an extra dangerous move (the Tiger Driver '91) that he would break out once every few years to everyone having big head dropping moves that they used fairly regularly.
Misawa's neck had been badly damaged for a long time and this was just the last straw. Being that he avoided going to the doctor, he likely had no idea just how high the risk was. Steve Austin, Ted DiBiase, and others who suffered major neck injuries talk about how they were told one bad bump could kill them. This was that one bad bump.
Misawa's death was disastrous for Pro Wrestling Noah. Just weeks earlier, they had lost their network TV show on Nippon TV, which carried wrestling going back to Rikidozan's days on top in the '50s and early '60s. NTV was going through budget cuts and wrestling was a casualty. In Japan, paying for TV is not part of the culture, so anything that's only on cable or satellite is just not part of the culture. Losing network TV and their top drawing star was the end of Noah as a viable promotion. New Japan Pro Wrestling ended up taking over the company recently in a somewhat secretive deal that fans caught on to when the Suzuki-gun stable from NJPW started working full-time in Noah.