Today In Wrestling History 5/26: WWE PPV Blacked Out By Act Of God, Legendary Tag Match On Raw, More

* 33 years ago in 1982, the original Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama) defeated the original Black Tiger (Marc "Rollerball" Rocco) to regard the WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship on a NJPW card in Osaka, Japan. This started the second and longest (312 days) of Tiger Mask's title reigns, which was the second longest behind Tatsumi Fujinami's 617 day reign that brought the title to Japan.

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The Black Tiger character was taken from the Tiger Mask anime, where the character was Tiger Mask's evil brother, similar to the Racer X character on Speed Racer. He was one of Tiger Mask's most famous opponents along with Dynamite Kid and Kuniaki Kobayashi, getting the gig after working extensively with Sayama in England when he was on a learning excursion as Sammy Lee a few years earlier.

* 19 years ago in 1996, the WWF held the In Your House: Beware of Dog pay-per-view event in Florence, South Carolina. This show is best remembered for being the one ruined by a major power outage cause by a thunderstorm, and most of the matches were worked off the air in the dark, lit by emergency lighting with Howard Finkel doing ring announcing using a megaphone. The power came back in time for the main event, and the literal dark matches were redone live at the Superstars tapings in what was scheduled to be the replay slot two days later. During the outage, fans at home saw nothing other than brief, occasional messages from Vince McMahon that they somehow managed to transmit.

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The highlight was apparently the Caribbean Strap Match with Savio Vega vs. Steve Austin, as the crowd was incredibly hot for anything in light of the blackout and the wrestlers fed off them to have a match that may have been better than the Tuesday rematch. In the main event, which aired live, Shawn Michaels and Davey Boy Smith had a disappointing outing marred by Michaels arguing with a heckler and a sound technician.

The card also saw the climax of the Sunny as a gold digger angle, as in the pre-show match, The Smoking Gunns defeated the Godwinns to win the WWF Tag Team Championship and Sunny switched her allegiance for the second time in a week. She had moved over to the Godwinns after they dethroned her Bodydonnas at Madison Square Garden a week earlier.

* 18 years ago in 1997, there was another May 26 WWF Tag Team Championship switch: On a live Raw from Evansville, Indiana, reluctant partners Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels defeated Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith in one of the greatest matches in the history of Monday Night Raw. This was Michaels' first match back after the infamous "lost my smile" interview where he claimed to have a career-ending knee injury, so he didn't make any friends when his first spot in the match was a backflip off the top rope where he landed on his feet.

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The post-match angle was one of the best of the year and a perfect Austin character moment. Michaels was attacked by every member of the Hart Foundation...except for Bret, who was watching from the stage on crutches while recovering from getting his knee scoped. Austin left Michaels to his own devices, grabbed his belt, calmly walked over to the ramp, spotted Bret, and sprinted up the ramp, tackling him and dropping down a barrage of punches.

The same show also included two King of the Ring quarterfinal matches, with Jerry Lawler defeating Goldust and Ahmed Johnson defeating Vader. The former is notable for Lawler cutting a pretty offensive promo on Goldust that the crowd cheered because it was Jerry Lawler in a town that was a weekly stop in the Memphis/CWA/USWA territory for decades.

* That same night on WCW Monday Nitro, they shot an angle that had global repercussions. After Masahiro Chono turned on Sonny Onoo to join the NWO, Onoo brought in The Great Muta to get revenge. On that night, Muta put Chono in a headlock, let it go, blew the green mist in Onoo's face, and joined the NWO. In Japan, this was what really got NWO Japan going, and the group was so popular there that their t-shirts were a mainstream fashion trend, even bigger than something like the Austin 3:16 shirt.

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* 11 years ago in 2004, WWE Hall of Fame inductee James Dudley passed away just two weeks after his 94th birthday. WWE's version of history with regards to Dudley is not a complete fabrication, but it's heavily exaggerated. Yes, he did manage Bobo Brazil on some shows, and yes, Vince McMahon Sr. did set him up with a job managing the Turner Arena in Washington, DC, but his primary job was being Vince the elder's limo driver.

When you hear about Vince Sr. giving Vince Jr. a list of names to take care of after his death, Dudley is always one of the people cited as being on that list. Your mileage may vary, but for years his induction was considered a reason not to take the WWE Hall of Fame seriously.

* Two years ago in 2013, Hector Garza passed away at the age of 43 from lung cancer. Best known to English speaking fans for his runs in TNA and WCW as well as a short WWE stint, he was a huge star in Mexico for most of his career. After coming up in the Monterrey promotion that was built around handsome heart throbs as the top babyfaces (this was where Chris Jericho got his break in Mexico), he was hired by CMLL in Mexico City in 1995. CMLL had been looking for new stars after suffering for a few years when much of the top talent jumped to AAA, which started up in 1992.

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He became a solid draw for a couple years before growing dissatisfied and jumping to AAA, where he was one of the "big four" with Heavy Metal, Latin Lover, and Perro Aguayo Jr. The promotion was built around their four-way feud for years during the period where they were gutted by jumps to other companies, and they helped keep AAA afloat.

It was via AAA that he both found himself as a heel personality and got his TNA deal. The plan was for Garza to be their big Hispanic star, but that went south when he was busted with steroids coming into the country.

Not long after that, he joined Aguayo in CMLL, where they formed the Perros de Mal group whose t-shirts became the hottest non-mask piece of merchandise in the history of lucha libre. Being the biggest draws in the country led to them trying to split off as an independent promotion, which didn't go well, and they returned to AAA, where Garza was working when he got his cancer diagnosis.

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