Today In Wrestling History 6/8: Triple H Wins King Of The Ring, Legendary Japanese Match, And More

* 27 years ago in 1988, All Japan Women ran a card in Omiya where the Glamour Girls (Judy Martin and Leilani Kai) defeated the Jumping Bomb Angels (Noriyo Tateno and Itsuki Yamazaki) by count out to regain the WWF Women's Tag Team Titles. For those not familiar, count outs are title changes in Japan. Both teams hadn't worked on WWF shows for a couple months, and while the titles were "officially" retired in early 1989, this match was effectively the end of them. The Angels were done with the WWF, Kai didn't return for several years, and Martin only stuck around for a bit as Rockin' Robin's challenger for the singles title around the horn.

* Later that day in 1988, Jim Crockett Promotions aired Clash of the Champions II: Miami Mayhem live on TBS. While a good show for in-ring wrestling, it was underwhelming and uneventful compared to the highs of the first show, which was the best card of the year and was never really topped by any other Clash of the Champions special in the subsequent nine years. In the main event, Sting and Dusty Rhodes fought NWA World Tag Team Champions Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard to a double disqualification.

Out of the ring, the big news was the return of the Rock 'n' Roll Express, who had left the company earlier in the year. Their return didn't exactly last long: Robert Gibson was gone after a few weeks when he saw how bad the payoffs were, as he got $1,000 for a week's worth of shows during the Great American Bash tour. Suffice to say, that was way down from what he got the previous two years. Ricky Morton stuck around a few months as a singles wrestler and sometimes Nikita Koloff's tag team partner.

Also on the show, it was announced that the Road Warriors would face the Powers of Pain (The Barbarian and The Warlord) in scaffold matches during the Great American Bash tour. The Powers of Pain rightfully balked at taking scaffold bumps night after night, especially being as big as they were, so they quit the company and jumped to the WWF, where they were able to kep their team name since Crockett didn't trademark it.

In JCP, Ivan Koloff (who was almost 46 years old) and The Russian Assassin (Dave "Angel of Death" Sheldon, who was bigger than the Powers of Pain) replaced them in the scaffold matches, which couldn't have been fun. In the WWF, fans at house shows who were only vaguely familiar with JCP thought that the Powers of Pain were the Road Warriors with new names and gave them gigantic "Road Warrior pops" each night for weeks until they showed up on TV.

* 25 years ago in 1990, All Japan Pro Wrestling ran a major show/TV taping at Budokan Hall in Tokyo. While the card featured a Triple Crown Championship change with Stan Hansen defeating Terry Gordy, that was not the main event or the big story coming out of the card. That distinction went to Mitsuharu Misawa pinning Jumbo Tsuruta at the 24:06 mark.

This was the first singles match between the two since Misawa had dropped the Tiger Mask II gimmick and formed the Super Generation Army to take on Jumbo and his allies. Originally, it was scheduled to end with Tsuruta going over, but promoter/booker Shohei "Giant" Baba noticed that not only was Misawa's merchandise flying off the gimmick table, but the fans were going crazy chanting "MI-SA-WA!" before the card even started.

He sent a message to the locker room: Misawa was winning. Tsuruta sent back a message asking if it could be a count out. Baba sent back a one word message: No. AJPW had recently dropped all non-clean finishes, plus it wouldn't do for Misawa what Baba wanted it to do. The match became legendary thanks to both the in-ring work and the crowd's emotional reaction to finish, with incredibly loud "MI-SA-WA!" chants and everyone in tears. From that day forward, he was one of the top stars in Japan.

On the undercard, Bam Bam Bigelow defeated Toshiaki Kawada. Earlier in the year, AJPW and NJPW had opened up relations that included trading talent. NJPW got to use the Road Warriors while AJPW got Steve "Dr. Death" Williams and Bam Bam Bigelow. Doc stuck with AJPW while Bigelow went back to NJPW. Why? When he got his payoff for this tour, Bam Bam opened the envelope and counted the money in front of Baba. Nobody told him that you never had to worry about that with Baba, so it was seen as a sign of disrespect and that was the end of him in AJPW.

* Later that day in 1990, Harley Race got in a boating accident in his home Kansas City, Missouri. This led to him being arrested the next day on three separate charges: Operating a boat under the influence of alcohol, careless operation of a boat, and resisting arrest. Race had taken his boat out on Lake of the Ozarks and ended up ramming into another boat shortly before midnight, injuring four people, including a woman who broke both legs and her husband, who suffered a collapsed lung. Both boats were destroyed beyond repair in the accident.

* 18 years ago in 1997, the WWF ran King of the Ring on pay-per-view live from Providence, Rhode Island at the Providence Civic Center. The big draw for the show, the first Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart match since WrestleMania 12, was dropped when it was determined that Hart hadn't recovered in time from arthroscopic knee surgery. Instead, Michaels faced the man he held the WWF Tag Team Championships with, Steve Austin. The match was disappointing, though still very good, but the most memorable moment is a mentally disabled fan trying to hop the rail and the wrestlers stopping the match to make sure security didn't upset or harm him.

In the King of the Ring tournament, Hunter Hearst Helmsley (Triple H) defeated Mankind (Mick Foley) to win the crown. This match also fell a bit flat, going too long at about 20 minutes, though it did do a good job cementing Foley's babyface turn and the rest of their feud went much better. Foley took a lot of abuse, like going through a table and being hit with the King of the Ring scepter, before eating the Pedigree for the win.

Triple H had originally been scheduled to win the previous year, but that was nixed several weeks in advance to punish him for participating in the infamous "Clique Curtain Call" at Madison Square Garden. Steve Austin got the nod that year, and the rest was history.