Today In Wrestling History 5/27: Birth Of The NWO, Pro Wrestlers Headline Major MMA Card, And More

* 27 years ago in 1988, Owen Hart became the first foreigner to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship by defeating Hiroshi Hase on a NJPW card in Sendai. The two had worked together extensively before either set foot in a NJPW ring, as they feuded in Stampede Wrestling when Hase (who NJPW sent abroad before his promotional debut) was one half of the masked Viet Cong Express. Hart was one of the most talked about wrestlers in the business at the time and it was a huge deal that he won the title.

* 26 years ago in 1989, the 21st WWF Saturday Night's Main Event special (taped a month earlier in Des Moines, Iowa) aired on NBC. This show is best known for the Hulk Hogan vs. Big Boss Man steel cage main event, which is both one of the best and most famous matches ever aired on the show. It's not always, remembered that way, but the Boss Man feud was one of the best drawing house show runs Hogan had and this was a worthy blowoff match.

The cage match had been going around the horn and this was the televised finale, an excellent bout that everyone remembers for Hogan superplexing Boss Man off the top of the cage. While they didn't do that spot in every city (for example, in Boston, they used a chain link cage, which didn't have the proper footing) as legend would have it, they did do it regularly.

* 21 years ago in 1994, AAA ran TripleMania II-C in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. After the first TripleMania in 1993 drew what is still the record crowd for pro wrestling in Mexico, AAA promoter/booker Antonio Pena decided to split his version of WrestleMania into three shows in three cities over the course of a month. It worked out pretty well, as this show drew 18,000 fans paying $200,000 to see Konnan defeat Jake "The Snake" Roberts in a hair vs. hair match. Jake, who was also working in Smoky Mountain Wrestling at the time, didn't last much longer in either promotion after that due to various management disputes.

* 20 years ago in 1995, WCW ran the Slim Jim Challenge tournament on the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, which aired live on WCW Saturday Night alongside matches taped a few weeks earlier at Center Stage Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. Paul Orndorff defeated Jim Duggan and Brian Pillman (who defeated Big Bubba Rogers) to win an underwhelming tournament. The pre-taped matches were far superior both on paper and in practice: Arn Anderson vs. Tim Horner, Randy Savage vs. Steve Austin, and Ric Flair vs. Alex Wright.

* 19 years ago on Memorial Day 1996, WCW Monday Nitro moved to two hours with a bang, as Scott Hall came out of the crowd to interrupt a Mike Enos vs. Steve Doll match and kick off the NWO angle. An unnamed Hall basically said (without exactly saying) that he was Razor Ramon coming in to start a WWF invasion, and to say that the nature of his debut was shocking would be an understatement. That said, it was an uneventful show otherwise, but that didn't really matter.

In the long run, obviously this was a giant moment for WCW...for better or for worse. In the short term, it propelled the a surging company into a boom period. In the long term, it led to WCW getting in a drawn out legal battle with the WWF, the settlement to which gave the latter right of first refusal if WCW were ever to be put up for sale.

* 14 years ago in 2001, Pride FC 11 was headlined by a battle of pro wrestlers in a real mixed martial arts fight, as Kazuyuki Fujita defeated Yoshihiro Takayama by submission in the second round. Fujita was a fairly solid heavyweight known for being able to take unreal punishment, possibly thanks to his skull being legitimate twice as thick as that of an average human being. Takayama was known for taking unreal punishment for no good reason (in both MMA and pro wrestling), but his popularity was increasing thanks to his fighting spirit and willingness to leave everything in the ring.

* 13 years ago in 2002, Rob Van Dam defeated Eddie Guerrero in a ladder match to win the WWE Intercontinental Championship on a live Raw from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was an incredibly spectacular match, maybe the most spectacular in Raw's nine year history up to that point, highlighted by Guerrero breaking out what would become his trademark ladder match spots like the sunset flip power bomb. That said, the match is probably best known for a fan running in near the end, trying to push Guerrero off the ladder, and just barely avoiding getting punched for his trouble.

This feud put Guerrero back on the map as a national star, as, after a long stint in rehab, he had been cut by WWE the prior November for getting arrested on drunk driving charges. That served as his wakeup call, as he immediately cleaned up, performed brilliantly while working for NJPW and independent promotions, and served as a role model for younger talent. WWE brought him back and put the belt on him so abruptly that he still had independent dates to fulfill, and he worked them as WWE Intercontinental Champion.