Today In Wrestling History 6/9: Fatal TNA Accident, Failed WWE Drug Test, Legendary Tag Match, More
* 24 years ago in 1991, Herb Abrams' Universal Wrestling Federation held Beach Brawl, its only pay-per-view event, live from the Manatee Civic Center in Palmetto Florida. The show was a disaster in every way, including business, as the live event drew 600 fans and PPV buys were negligible.
Abrams' UWF had been running shows for a little over nine months, with TV both in syndication and on SportsChannel America. Abrams launched with a press conference at a fan convention where he claimed that Bruiser Brody and Adrian Adonis, both of whom died in 1988, would be part of the UWF. Later, angry over what was written about his odd behavior, he named a jobber "Davey 'The Observer' Meltzer" at his first TV taping. On their first TV show, Steve "Dr. Death" Williams squashed "Meltzer," shoved a sheet of paper in his mouth, and poured dirt on it.
Beach Brawl was headlined by Doc defeating Bam Bam Bigelow to win a tournament final for the UWF SportsChannel TV Title. It was the best match on the show, but nothing special at just over seven minutes long. The only other notable match was Bob Backlund's return to (semi)-national fame after several years off, as he defeated Ivan Koloff in less than three minutes. It was a bad show with worse production, and it did so badly on PPV that all of the matches were aired on SportsChannel America in the next month or so. For most promoters, that would have spelled the end of the company.
Abrams would start running less frequently after this show, fill his contractual commitments with SportsChannel America by licensing reruns of Howard Brody's Wild Women of Wrestling promotion, and eventually lose the time slot. He still ran infrequently for a few more years, with TV on Prime Ticket, ESPN 2, and syndicated on scattered local stations. His last show was the Blackjack Brawl, which aired on various regional SportsChannel affiliates in 1994 with a Williams vs. Sid Vicious main event.
Abrams died in 1996. He suffered a heart attack in police custody after he was arrested for running around his New York City office building naked, covered in baby oil, while smashing furniture with a baseball bat and pulling fire alarms.
* 20 years ago in 1995, All Japan Pro Wrestling ran a TV taping at Budokan Hall in Tokyo. While historically best known for the main event, the card goes a little deeper than that.
In the main event, Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue defeated Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi to win AJPW's Unified World Tag Team Championship in 42:37. This is widely considered to best tag team match of the era in AJPW, and those who don't think it's the best have it as a very close second. If you're looking to get into '90s AJPW, then this match is the best place to start, as it's the most accessible: Kawada and Taue are clearly the heels, Misawa and Kobashi are clearly the babyfaces, and there's a lot of storytelling built around Kobashi's injured knee. It's much easier to go into this one cold than it is with a lot of the other AJPW classics, but it's even better if you know the backstory, including that this is the first time Kawada pinned Misawa.
In the co-feature slot, Danny Kroffat (Phil LaFon) defeated Rob Van Dam to retain the PWF Junior Heavyweight Championship in 17:10. While Van Dam became a more charismatic and complete performer later on, there's a strong argument for this being the best match of his career. Kroffat was a master at laying out great, exciting matches that built to a hot finish, and he gave Van Dam plenty of opportunities to hit his big moves. One of the best matches of this era of the AJPW junior heavyweight division, too, and it makes you wish Kroffat had been champion long-term.
* 7 years ago in 2008, TNA production contractor Kevin "Angus" Sinex passed away when scaffolding collapsed out from under him as he was taking down the lighting array a few hours after the end of the Slammiversary pay-per-view at the DeSoto Civic Center in Southaven, Mississippi (just outside Memphis, Tennessee). What happened was that three sets of scaffolding were set up side by side, and when one collapsed, it took the others with it. Another contractor, Paul Martin, survived his own fall, but suffered a severed thumb in the process. TNA dedicated the next episode of Impact to Sinex.
This was in the middle of the "McMahon's Millions" contest on Raw. When that ended with the Raw set collapsing on Vince McMahon (the "Paul, I can't feel my legs" angle), it was considered in bad taste by some due to how soon it was after Sinex's death.
* Later that day, WWE announced that Jimmy Yang was suspended for 30 days, having violated the Talent Wellness Policy for the first time. Later, in a 2010 shoot interview with Highspots, Yang attributed the suspension to "partying too much" on his birthday (May 13th) and rubbed his nose emphatically. Yang came back a month later and lasted in WWE until April 2010. Despite his history of finding ways back into the company thanks to Vince McMahon being such a big fan of his work (that's not a joke), he hasn't returned since.