Today In Wrestling History 6/3: Steve Austin Wins First Major Title, Rockers Nixed, Mr. T Returns
* 29 years ago in 1986, the WWF held a Championship Wrestling taping at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. The big angles shot were a series of Adrian Adonis's Flower Shop segments with Hulk Hogan, Paul Orndorff, and Bobby Heenan as guests to set up Orndorff's heel turn. Adonis and Heenan were pushing the idea that Hogan was stealing Orndorff's spotlight and being a bad friend. Heenan offered Orndorff and Hogan a tag team match against John Studd and King Kong Bundy the following week, which Orndorff accepted pending confirmation from Hogan over the phone. The last show of the taping went off the air with Orndorff saying he couldn't reach Hogan.
Also during that taping, Paul Roma and Special Delivery Jones won a squash match taped exclusively for broadcast in Australia. For whatever reason, even though they had secured a mainstream localized endorsement deal with Toyota, the WWF clearly viewed Australia as a secondary market at best. That included Roma and Jones being pushed as a headlining tag team on B-team or C-team quality house shows.
* 28 years ago in 1987, the WWF held a Wrestling Challenge taping in Rochester, NY at the War Memorial. Of note:
The Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty) taped their television debut...which didn't air because they were fired later that night. Per Bret Hart's book, they caused a "drunken disturbance" at the post-show gathering at the hotel bar, smashing bottles and glasses. It wasn't until a year later that they got their second chance.
Mr. T, coming off the cancellation of "The A-Team," returned as "the WWF's new enforcer," his forgotten last run with the WWF. He appeared on both TV and house shows reversing decisions, serving as an outside the ring referee, working as a special guest referee, etc. He didn't last long, as he doesn't show up in any results after August.
* 26 years ago in 1989, the WWF ran a house show at the Boston Garden. It was the last Boston show to air live on New England Sports Network, as aside from Madison Square Garden (lasted until March 1992) and the various arenas taped to fulfill CRTC "Canadian Content" requirements (done after the end of 1991), they were dropping televised house shows. It's believed that the house style of doing the same match move for move on each show contributed to the decision.
The big news coming out of the show was the debut of Dusty Rhodes. A few nights earlier in Montreal, he appeared with no advance hype (even an announcement at the start of the show) as a replacement for Jake Roberts against Ted DiBiase. He did the same thing here and got an absolutely gigantic pop in a crazy scene where fans were jumping up and down, hugging each other, etc. And of course it was apropos for Dusty, real name Virgil Runnels, to debut against the man accompanied by Virgil, the character that was, um, lovingly named after him. Being a substitute, Dusty won clean, cradling DiBiase for the pin after he accidentally ran into Virgil (the bodyguard, not Dusty).
For a WWF house show of that era it was a very good lineup for good or otherwise exciting matches, as the card also featured Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage, Mr. Perfect vs. Bret Hart, Demolition vs. The Twin Towers (Big Bossman and Akeem), and Tim Horner vs. Barry Horowitz (who had excellent chemistry together).
* 24 years ago in 1991, WCW ran a taping of Worldwide Wrestling in Birmingham, Alabama where "Stunning" Steve Austin defeated "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton to win the WCW World Television Championship. Austin had debuted just three weeks earlier, so it became clear that WCW had big plans for him. This was also the WCW debut of Lady Blossom, who was Austin's real-life wife at the time, Jeannie Clark, who had been his valet in Texas.
As for Eaton, he had just won the title 16 days earlier and was picking up steam as a babyface, so it was a shock to see him drop the title so quickly. Austin held the title for most of the next 15 months (a short reign for Barry Windham excepted), which is a big reason why he's one of the wrestlers most associated with it along with Arn Anderson and Lord Steven Regal.
* 23 years ago in 1992, after two nights of the usual Superstars and Wrestling Challenge tapings, the WWF ran an experimental TV taping in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, shooting matches primarily for Prime Time Wrestling. Prime Time was undergoing its last format change, becoming a panel discussion in between matches, and seemingly there was an idea to ramp up the number of original matches airing on the show. This was the only time they ran a Prime Time specific TV taping, though in the '80s, there were some house shows taped only for the recap-style shows like Prime Time, All-American Wrestling, Wrestling Spotlight, and the international version of Wrestling Challenge.
Like the syndication tapings, the matches were primarily squashes with some competitive bouts mixed in. The non-squashes taped for Prime Time saw "El Matador" Tito Santana defeating Kato, Randy Savage defeating Skinner, High Energy (Owen Hart and Koko B. Ware), and Shawn Michaels defeating "Texas Tornado" Kerry Von Erich. The other star vs. star matches were taped to be Coliseum Home Video exclusives.
* 21 years ago in 1994, All Japan Pro Wrestling ran a car at Budokan Hall in Tokyo (the famous arena from the Cheap Trick live album), their equivalent to Madison Square Garden. The card was headlined by one of the greatest matches of all time, Mitsuharu Misawa retaining AJPW's Triple Crown Championship by defeating Toshiaki Kawada in just under 36 minutes. AJPW had been putting on the best main events in the world for several years and this was arguably, at least when it comes to singles matches, the in-ring peak.
Relative to AJPW's booking cycles, it was still pretty early into their singles feud, which started when their tag team broke up in 1992. Your mileage may vary if watching it cold, and one of the other definitive classic AJPW matches (which we'll talk about next week) is probably a better entry point into the style.