Today In Wrestling History 5/31: Owen Hart's Funeral, Classic Attitude Era Main Event, And More

* 27 years ago in 1988, the WWF held a Wrestling Challenge taping in Fresno, California that included a few historically significant moments. Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty, now known as The Rockers, had their first WWF match since they were fired after their first TV taping a year earlier. Still using their AWA entrance music, Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight," The Rockers beat Steve Lombardi and a wrestler whose name wasn't announced.

Also at the taping, Bruce Prichard as the Brother Love character was introduced by Bobby Heenan and debuted The Brother Love Show, his talk show segment. A televangelist character at the height of the various scandals around preachers like Jim Bakker, he showed up just weeks after a similar character, Brother Ernest Angel, started on CWA/Memphis TV. This was during the period where the CWA show aired nationally on cable on the Score Network, for what it's worth.

* 22 years ago in 1993, the WWF aired a live Monday Night Raw on USA Network from the Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center in New York, New York. The main event opened the show and it was a really interesting one: Marty Jannetty successfully defending the WWF Intercontinental Championship for the only time on TV by getting a countdown win over Bam Bam Bigelow.

This is an excellent match, one you should really check out on WWE Network, as Bigelow was tremendous and Jannetty was on probably the best singles run of his career. He had great matches on Raw against Bigelow, Shawn Michaels, and Doink within a few months, plus matches with The 1-2-3 Kid and Pat Tanaka on All-American Wrestling in September and October, respectively.

* 17 years ago, the WWF promoted Over the Edge: In Your House on pay-per-view, when was broadcast live from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The show is best remembered for the main event, which is one of the most beloved matches of the Attitude Era: Steve Austin vs. Dude Love with Vince McMahon as referee, The Undertaker in Austin's corner, and The Stooges (Pat Patterson as guest ring announcer and Gerald Brisco as guest timekeeper) at ringside as all sorts of stipulations were made up on the fly and announced as "reminders" by Patterson.

Vince Russo tried to re-use the gimmick later in his career and it never came off close to as well without these performers and the WWF's amazing production. Austin won by grabbing Vince's hand (after he got knocked out by an errant Dude Love chair shot) to count the fall after a Stone Cold Stunner.

Also on the show, Marc Mero defeated Sable in an inter-gender match, forcing her out of the WWF in a stipulation that was undone almost immediately. Mero claimed to have had a change of heart, offered to let Sable pin him...and he cradled her for the win.

Elsewhere on the undercard, Taka Michinoku got a rare showcase bout, teaming with Bradshaw to defeat Kaientai (Shoichi Funaki, Dick Togo, and Men's Teioh with manager Wally "Yamaguchi San" Yamaguchi), his former stablemates in Japan, in a handcap match, while Kane beat Vader to win one of the more ridiculous on its face mask vs. mask matches in wrestling history.

* 16 years ago in 1999, Owen Hart's funeral was held in Calgary. As much as some wrestling fans like to criticize Martha Hart for downplaying Owen's career and not thinking of his fans, she made a point of allowing a public address system allowed outside the funeral home and inviting fans to congregate to say goodbye. Unfortunately, the service was marred by a number of issues between the WWF and the family. For starters, a WWF logo floral arrangement was sent by the company (probably not the best idea given the circumstances of Owen's death), so Martha had it rearranged with Owen's initials.

The most public issues surrounding the funeral had to do with airing footage of it on Raw. Martha Hart had mad it very clear she didn't want that happening. That night, Raw (the show taped the previous Tuesday with Jeff Jarrett winning the Intercontinental Championship from The Godfather) opened with clips of WWF talent entering the funeral home accompanied by somber music. This did not go over well. When Martha went to the Calgary Sun in protest, it led to an ugly battle in the newspaper between her and Vince McMahon about who paid for the funeral.

Later that night, she and Bret Hart appeared via satellite on Larry King Live to discuss Owen's death, the funeral, and so on. In his book, Bret Hart wrote that when he got home from the long day, he found, sitting among many deliveries of flowers, a package Carl DeMarco of the WWF (Bret's old friend) sent containing the bloody Blue Blazer gear that was cut off Owen. It wasn't explained why police would have returned the items to the WWF and not family; even then, Martha was his next of kin, not Bret.

On a much lighter trivia note, the famous photo of Hulk Hogan with Bret, Terry Funk, Stu Hart, Shane Douglas, Chris Jericho, and others in suits was taken at the funeral. Jericho has written about getting to have a casual, no-B,S, conversation with Hogan for the first time, telling him he was going to the WWF when his contract expired shortly, and Hogan asking "Can I come with you?"