Today In Wrestling History 6/24: Kurt Angle Gets Extreme, Paul Orndorff Turns On Hulk Hogan, More
* 29 years ago in 1986, the WWF taped three weeks of Championship Wrestling at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. The taping was the final part of the build to Paul Orndorff turning on Hulk Hogan, which took place in the main event of the final episode of the taping. Perhaps not coincidentally, this taping covered three weeks of July Sweeps.
When we last left this storyline at the previous set of tapings, Orndorff was unable to get Hogan on the phone as Adrian Adonis prodded and instigated. On the first show of this taping, Orndorff announced they face the Moondogs the following wek. For some reason, the promo was shot twice that night, and while one version was used on the TV show proper, the other was used in highlight packages and on the Hulkamania 2 home video release. In that match, Orndorff won single-handedly, refusing to tag Hogan in.
The next week, they faced John Studd and King Kong Bundy, who were managed by Bobby Heenan. Before the match, Orndorff tried to talk about the missed phone call that caused dissention between them and Hogan told him he needed to let it go. So Orndorff turned on Hogan after the match, famously clotheslining him while raising his arm in victory. He and the rest of the Neenan Family beat up Hogan until the babyface locker room emptied.
A great and famously successful angle, but also the first Hogan storyline where fans could theoretically sympathize with the heel's motivations.
* 19 years ago in 1996, the WWF taped four weeks of Monday Night Raw, including a live show, at the Brown County Expo in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The shows taped that night turned out a lot more eventful than they seemed at first. There were some good matches, including a very strong bout between Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty, but the big news came out of shows hastily being rearranged when the Ultimate Warrior more or less walked out on the promotion. But we'll get to that shortly.
* 17 years ago in 1998, the Pride Fighting Championships promoted Pride 3 at Budokan Hall in Tokyo Japan. This was not the Pride everyone knew and loved yet, as they hadn't stumbled onto the boom period. Here, at Budokan, the arena was less than a third full, with just 4,500 fans in attendance.
As far as relevance to pro wrestling goes, there were two fights with name pro wrestlers on the card. In the first, Kazushi Sakuraba knee barred Carlos Newton in round two to win the definitive classic fight in the promotion's early days. While his home promotion, Kingdom, had just closed, and he won a UFC tournament in late 1997, Sakuraba was still known as a pro wrestler first and foremost. Here, he took on one of MMA's most entertaining grapplers in Newton, and it's one of the most spectacular ground fights in the sport's history.
The main event saw pro wrestling legend Nobuhiko Takada submit Kyle Sturgeon is just over two minutes with a heel hook. Rule of thumb with Takada in Pride: If he lost, it was a shoot. If he won, it was a work, and that should be apparent from watching th finish to this "fight." While he was a good athlete who could kick hard, he didn't pick up enough legitimate grappling knowledge to be competitive and didn't have what it took to be competitive in a real prize fight. Here, he got a quick win to help him rebound from an embarrassingly one-sided loss to Rickson Gracie at Pride 1, where it looked like he had no idea how to defend against submissions.
* 14 years ago in 2001, the WWF promoted that year's King of the Ring pay-per-view live from Continental Airlines Arena (now the Izod Center, though technically the arena closed recently) in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In the tournament, Edge defeated Kurt Angle to win the crown before famously declaring the next night pn Raw that he wouldn't "Billy Gunn" the honor. That said, the most interesting things on the show happened outside of the tournament.
In New Jersey, the state legislature had recently passed a law banning what they termed "extreme wrestling," essentially trying to outlaw the brand of "deathmatch" wrestling practiced in the state by Combat Zone Wrestling and Jersey All Pro Wrestling. Pro wrestling had been deregulated for years in New Jersey, so this was a way to ban what was seen as embarrassing without bringing back the oversight that the WWF had pushed against. Extreme wrestling was defined as "an activity in which participants struggle hand-to-hand and cut, slash or strike each other or themselves with an implement to intentionally cause bleeding or perform any intentional act which could reasonably be expected to cause bleeding, primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest."
So it came as a shock when the Kurt Angle vs. Shane McMahon match was a brutal spectacle of a match that featured plenty of real broken glass. It was unlike anything seen before or since in the company. And, well, it was no skin off the nose of anyone in the WWF because, according to the bill, it "does not re-regulate professional wrestling groups such as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) or Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), but instead distinguishes extreme wrestling from professional wrestling."
The main event saw Steve Austin retain the WWF Championship in a Triple Threat Match, defeating Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho. It was a very good match, but disappointing after the ridiculous run all three had been on for the preceding several weeks, which was understandable given Benoit's injury. The spot that led to the finish, Benoit taking a ridiculous bump delivering a back superplex, was used as the storyline explanation for his needing spinal fusion surgery.
After the match, Booker T made his debut as WCW Champion by attacking Austin and throwing him through a table...re-injuring Austin's neck and back in the process. This was the first major re-aggravation of Austin's spinal injuries, just seven or eight months after he returned from his original fusion surgery. He'd wrestle for another year full time and would retire a year after that, so in a way this was the beginning of the end.
* 8 years ago in 2007, WWE promoted Vengeance: Night of Champions on pay-per-view live from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. It was the first show with the Night of Champions gimmick and they did a nice job getting it over, with videos of and appearances by various legendary former champions, including Rick Martel and Tony Garea doing a run in to save Sgt. Slaughter and Jimmy Snuka from Deuce and Domino.
The most newsworthy occurrence was that the scheduled Chris Benoit vs. CM Punk match for the vacant ECW Championship didn't take place due to what was stated to be some kind of family emergency for Benoit. The plan was for Benoit to win the title to set up a program between the two where he would serve as a "player/coach" to Punk. Remember, the "new ECW" brand was supposed to be a "last level of developmental," so WWE wanted great veteran workers to help teach the younger talent.
With Benoit not at the show, fellow new ECW draftee Johnny Nitro got the spot...and beat Punk. It was a strange move since Punk was the once scheduled to be in the title program. However, it was likely a decision made in panic, as nobody in the office had heard from Benoit since he called to miss the previous night's house show in Beaumont, Texas. The truth was worse than anyone imagined, as they found out the next day.