Today In Wrestling History 5/29: WWF Shoots Rock & Wrestling Connection Angle, NWA Invades NY, More

* 31 years ago in 1984, the WWF taped three weeks of Championship Wrestling for syndication at Agricultural Hall in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This was the next to last taping in the building before Championship Wrestling was moved to the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, New York for the rest of its run. Vince McMahon was not present for the taping (or the All-Star Wrestling taping the next night in Hamburg) due to his father's death.

The big story coming out of the taping was that Cyndi Lauper was brought to TV for the first time to confront Captain Lou Albano on Piper's Pit about his claims that he managed her career. After Lauper tried to calmly diffuse the situation, Albano cut a misogynistic promo on her, which led to her attacking him and Roddy Piper with her purse until manager/boyfriend David Wolff (a wrestling fan who brokered the whole program) pulled her off.

On the next episode, they issued the challenges for each to bring in their own female wrestler to manage to settle the issue. Of course, this became the Wendi Richter vs. Fabulous Moolah feud.

Another major angle aired on the shows coming out of this set of tapings...but it wasn't shot at this set of tapings. The Piper's Pit that aired on the first show (aired the weekend of 6/9/84 in New York) of the tapings was the famous one with Jimmy Snuka where Piper attacked him with a coconut to set up their big feud. It was actually shot at the All-Star Wrestling taping on March 29th in Hamburg, and while they immediately aired the angle on the local St. Louis WWF show (Wrestling at the Chase) and started the feud there, they held it up for months nationally.

* That same day was one of the most famous house shows of the modern era in pro wrestling, as Jim Crockett Promotions (with some assistance from Georgia Championship Wrestling so the show could be promoted on TBS) made their New York market debut, promoting the Night of Champions at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands (eventually the Izod Center before its recent closure) in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This was the NWA promotions' first attempt at firing back at the WWF's national expansion.

The show was promoted locally off a Spanish-language version of World Wide Wrestling hosted by Hugo Savinovich (currently with AAA and Lucha Underground) with the idea that they could use Carlos Colon to draw Puerto Rican fans. In practice, that didn't quite work. The show drew about 12,000 fans paying $127,900 in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm and Colon was the least over big name star on the card.

Historically, besides the political/wrestling war implications, the card is best remembered for the main event, where Ric Flair defeated Ricky Steamboat in about 32 minutes to retain the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in a fantastic match. The fans, who were used to the old-school (W)WWF style focusing on bigger, slower wrestlers without much concern for match quality, were completely blown away. It's rare that you'll find a fan who was there and didn't think it was the best match they'd ever seen up to that point.

When JCP debuted in Philadelphia, another WWF stronghold, they brought in Flair-Steamboat as the main event again.

* 20 years ago today, a pre-taped Monday Night Raw aired with a main event (the only competitive match on the show) of The Undertaker defeating Jeff Jarrett in a King of the Ring qualifying match. While business was not good overall, Raw had picked up a lot of steam as a television show, and the 3.9 rating for the episode was the highest up to this point in the show's history.

* 12 years ago in 2003, WWE aired a SmackDown episode that included a match in the feud between The World's Greatest Tag Team and WWE Tag Team Champions Eddie Guerrero and Tajiri. Tajiri had replaced an injured Chavo Guerrero to win the titles. If you've never seen Eddie and Tajiri together, make an effort to check out their matches, as they had incredible chemistry and are up there with the best "What if?" teams in wrestling history. They were broken up quickly when WWE tried to turn Guerrero heel after they lost the titles...only for it to backfire and make him a bigger babyface.

* 11 years ago in 2004, Southern Comfort (Tracy Smothers and Chris Hamrick) defeated CM Punk and Colt Cabana in the finals of a loaded tournament full of some of the best indie tag teams to win the vacant IWA Mid-South Tag Team Titles. Also in the tournament were The Wildcards (Eddie Kingston & Blackjack Marciano), Nigel McGuinness & Chad Collyer, The Havana Pitbulls (Ricky Reyes & T.J. "Puma" Perkins), Brad Bradley & Ryan Boz, Homicide & B-Boy, and M-Dogg 20 (Matt Cross/Son of Havoc) & Josh Prohibition. Coming off the closing of XPW, where they first started teaming up, Southern Comfort were on a hot streak, also being the champions of Norm Connors' IWC in the Pittsburgh area, making them double champions with the IWA tournament win.

* 4 years ago in 2011, an episode of Florida Championship Wrestling (taped a month earlier) aired that gives us an interesting look into the state of WWE developmental at the time. Aside from the second match (Calvin Raines defeating DeSean Bishop), everyone on the show is still with WWE. Husky Harris (now Bray Wyatt) defeating Johnny Curtis (now Fandago) in the opener, Epico (now Fernando; at this point he was a masked luchador) and Hunico (now Sin Cara) teamed as Los Aviadores to defeat Leo Kruger (now Adam Rose) and Rick Victor (now Viktor of The Ascension) and earn a title shot, and the main event saw Titus O'Neil defeat Damien Sandow.

* Last year in 2014, Charlotte won the vacant NXT Women's Championship by defeating Natalya in a tournament final at the first NXT TakeOver special (the first NXT special was called NXT Arrival). The title had been vacated by Paige since she couldn't hold it and the WWE Divas' Championship simultaneously.

While Paige and Emma had put on a very good match at NXT Arrival, this match set the tone for what to expect of the NXT women on a major special and was arguably the greatest women's match in WWE history up to that point, though it was most likely outdone since, especially now that Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch from NXT TakeOver Unstoppable is in the rear-view mirror.

Also on the card, Tyler Breeze was put on the map as a serious, high level talent by beating Sami Zayn to become the number one contender to Adrian Neville's NXT Championship, which Neville retained by defeating Tyson Kidd. The top three matches were all tremendous matches that went a long way in establishing the quality of the NXT specials.