Today In Wrestling History 5/25: Jeff Jarrett Gets Owen Hart's Title Win, Chikara Debut Show, More

* 26 years ago in 1989, New Japan Pro Wrestling ran a big TV taping at Osaka Castle Hall that's best remembered for Jushin Thunder Liger winning the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship for the first time by defeating Hiroshi Hase. He picked up the win with his original finisher, the Liger Suplex, which was similar to a bridging version of Shawn Michaels' Teardrop Suplex.

The Liger gimmick had debuted a month earlier and Keichi Yamada was seemingly still adjusting to the costume, which was based directly on the Liger anime and looked nothing like the iconic costume you identify him with. He came into his own a few months later when he adopted the famous horned mask and started feuding with Naoki Sano in one of the greatest junior heavyweight rivalries in the history of the division.

* 26 years ago in 1990, WCW's Power Hour (their Friday night TV show on TBS) featured a very intriguing main event in the form of Brian Pillman vs. Bam Bam Bigelow. Pillman won by disqualification when Bigelow threw him over the top rope. but he landed on his feet and the show closed with him taking it to Bigelow. It appears that they only had a few matches together and this was the only one televised.

It wasn't quite the barnburner you'd expect, but it's a fun television match between two of the most impressive athletes in the business at the time. The show was watched in 981,000 homes for a 1.8 rating and 3.8 share based n the size of TBS's universe at the time. Power Hour's 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning replay the next day was watched by 491,000 viewers, which amounted to a 0.9 rating and in impressive 8.3 share thanks to the smaller number of TV viewers.

The combined number of 1.47 million homes actually made it the second most watched wrestling show on cable that weekend. The flagship World Championship Wrestling (Saturday evening show) was viewed in 1.53 million homes that week.

* 23 years ago in 1992, Kenta Kobashi and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi defeated The Can-Am Express (Doug Furnas and Phil "Danny Kroffat" LaFon) to win the All-Asia Tag Titles on an All Japan Pro Wrestling card in Kikuchi's home town of Sendai.

Furnas and Kroffat are seemingly being erased by history to the point they've become one of the most underrated teams in the history of the business. By the time they reached the WWF, they were relatively broken down and miscast as babyfaces. They thrived in AJPW as very charismatic heels in the ring, and this might be their finest moment.

With a lovable hometown babyface, Kobashi as he was about to turn into the best wrestler in the world, and the Can-Ams' patented patch that built and built into a crazy string of false finishes, this is one of the best tag team matches you'll ever see.

* 16 years ago in 1999, Jeff Jarrett won the WWF Intercontinental Championship from the Godfather at the taping of the 5/31/99 edition of Monday Night Raw in Detroit, Michigan. The Blue Blazer had originally been scheduled to win the title at Over the Edge, but obviously that didn't happen.

Instead, Jarrett, his friend and tag team partner, was given a pseudo-memorial title win in the sense he was a heel but everyone watching knew from the Hart tribute show (where Jarrett worked as a babyface) that they were good friends. Jarrett ended up being an excellent choice to re-anchor the Intercontinental Championship after it had been a hot potato for a few months, and until he left the company in October, he was champion most of the time.

That wasn't the only title change that night: On the same show, The Acolytes (Bradshaw and Faarooq) won the WWF Tag Team Championship from Kane and X-Pac.

* 13 years ago in 2002, WWE revamped their B-level television lineup:

Excess, a two hour Saturday night show on Spike TV that mixed recaps with magazine style content, was replaced with two new shows: Velocity, a new in-ring show, and Confidential, a magazine show that theoretically offered a more "behind the scenes" look at WWE than Excess did.

In syndication, WWE had been taping one set of matches for two syndicated shows that had different commentary teams: Jakked, which aired the more "adult" clips from Raw and SmackDown, and Metal, which was more kids/family-oriented. With Velocity on Spike replacing it as an in-ring wrestling show, they were replaced by recap shows: Bottom Line (Raw recap) and Afterburn (SmackDown recap).

Afterburn and Bottom Line stopped airing in the United States when WWE dropped domestic syndication in 2005. They're still produced for overseas use, though, airing primarily in the Middle East and East Asia.

* On that same day in 2002, Chikara Pro ran their first show at the original Chikara Wrestle Factory location in Allentown, PA. It wasn't long before they stopped running shows there due to zoning issues.

Early on, the big comic book/fantasy influence wasn't a part of Chikara, with the promotion seeming more like Super Delphin's Osaka Pro Wrestling: Family friendly shows where junior heavyweights with wacky gimmicks did lucha libre-inspired matches. To go along with that tone, the early Chikara home video releases experimented with "Pop-Up Video" style commentary instead of using announcers.

The show featured the debuts of the original Chikara trainees like Ultramantis and Mr. ZERO (whose mask hadn't arrived yet, forcing him to work in a rubber "businessman" mask). The main event was the big draw, with The Black T-Shirt Squad (Mike Quackenbush, Reckless Youth, & Don Montoya) defeating The Gold Bond Mafia (CM Punk, Colt Cabana, & Chris Hero) in Punk's only Chikara appearance.

* 12 years ago in 2003, Andrew McManus's World Wrestling All-Stars ran their last pay-per-view taping, WWE The Reckoning, in Auckland, New Zealand. WWA was one of the startup promotions that popped up after WCW died, and arguably the most successful. Started by Australian concert promoter Andrew McManus, WWA filled a void in the international markets where WCW was still able to draw solid crowds, like the United Kingdom and on the Australian Continent.

Much of the talent overlapped with TNA, and the main event saw Jeff Jarrett defeat Sting to unify the WWA and NWA World Heavyweight titles. Chris Sabin also unified his TNA X Division Championship with the WWA International Cruiserweight Championship by winning a four way over Jerry Lynn (incumbent WWA champion), Frankie Kazarian, and Johnny Swinger.

* One year ago in 2014, New Japan Pro Wrestling ran their first show at Yokohama Arena in many years, a pay-per-view event and TV taping that was shown in part on the last episode of the first cycle of NJPW on AXS TV. The main event was A.J. Styles defeating Kazuchika Okada the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in a match that satisfied those who were disappointed by Styles' gimmicky, interference-heavy title win. On the undercard, Takashi Iizuka turned on his tag team partner and CHAOS stablemate Toru Yano to join Minoru Suzuki's Suzuki-Gun stable.