Today In Wrestling History 7/24: The Undertaker Conquers Terrorism, Sherri Wins WWF Title, & More

* 27 years ago in 1987, the WWF ran its short-lived once every three weeks house show at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, Texas. The show, which was taped for local TV, recap shows, and home video use, was the next to last ever put on by legendary promoter Paul Boesch, as he had his retirement extravaganza a month later with a very unique, memorable card.

By far the most newsworthy happening on this show was "Sensational" Sherri Martel making her WWF debut in style, as she defeated The Fabulous Moolah to win the WWF Women's Championship. Meanwhile, Sherri, having just left the AWA, was still technically their champion, as she wasn't stripped of the title until she showed up in the WWF. That gives her the unusual distinction of being the only wrestler ever to hold WWF and AWA titles at the same time.

Sherri would defend the title against Moolah, Debbie Combs, and Velvet McIntyre over the next few months. That was the beginning of the end of Moolah's '80s WWF run, as she was gone after the feud with Sherri was blown off at the Survivor Series. At that point, Moolah left, Rockin' Robin was switched into the challenger spot, and The Glamour Girls vs. The Jumping Bomb Angels started a short run as the top women's program.

* 13 years ago in 2002, NWA-TNA held their fifth weekly pay-per-view event live from Nashville, Tennessee. However, unlike the previous three shows, which were at the mid-sized Municipal Auditorium, this show was shot at what was announced as TNA's new home: The much smaller Tennessee State Fairgrounds Arena, or as TNA dubbed it, the Asylum. On one hand, the building was inexpensive and had history, as it was the home of decades of Saturday night wrestling shows in the city for the promotion run by Jerry Jarrett and later local indie promoter Bert Prentice. On the other hand, it was not fit for a national television shoot, especially on short notice.

They tried their best. The entrance set was decent, and the Jarretts (including Jill, recovering from breast cancer), worked overtime repainting the interior of the building to bring it up to snuff. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough. The Fairgrounds Arena looked better than ever, but it still looked like the Fairgrounds Arena. The show went from a WCW-level production to a Nashville independent promotion with more expensive television production equipment.

Fans who didn't let themselves get distracted by the drop in production values got a good show with a lot of variety. The Hot Shots and America's Most Wanted were very familiar with each other and always had good, southern style tag team matches together, plus the crowd was really into them because they were local favorites. On top of that, Low-Ki and The Amazing Red, who had wowed fans in the northeast with their kung fu movie take on a cruiserweight/X Division style match got to take their act national.

In title matches, both the NWA World Heavyweight and Tag Team Titles were on the line. The tag title match featured all X Division wrestlers, as champions A.J. Styles and Jerry Lynn defeated The Flying Elvises (Jimmy Yang and Jorge Estrada) to retain. Lynn bled heavily in a match where a miscommunication finish furthered his singles feud with Styles. The main event for the World Heavyweight Title saw champion Ken Shamrock go to a no contest with Sabu in a ladder match after Malice interfered and took the belt. While not as good as Sabu vs. Malice the week before, it was a very entertaining style clash between two very, very different wrestlers.

* 10 years ago in 2005, WWE ran their second annual Great American Bash pay-per-view at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York. The big story was that WWE, for all intents and purposes, killed off the Muhammad Hassan character.

On July 4th, they shot an angle at that week's SmackDown tapings. Khosrow Daivari was booked against The Undertaker, and Hassan hyped him up by pushing that he was making a sacrifice. After The Undertaker won, a group of five masked "sympathizers," seemingly dressed to resemble like terrorists in kidnapping and beheading videos, assisted Hassan and Khosrow Daivari by attacking The Undertaker. He was choked out by an attacker using piano wire, which was imagery similar to the Daniel Pearl beheading video. It would be hard to take the angle as anything other than Islamic extremist terrorists attacking The Undertaker.

The show was to air on July 7th. The "7/7" London train bombings happened first. In the United States, a crawler was added during the segment that said "In light of today's tragic events in London, parental discretion is advised when viewing tonight's episode." Internationally, it was edited off of the show. As you'd expect, WWE got a ton of bad publicity in the United States, and it got so bad that the Hassan character was banned from UPN, the network that carried SmackDown at the time. The only way to deal with it at that point was for The Undertaker to defeat Hassan and then single-handedly lay out Daivari and the "sympathizers" before destroying Hassan with a powerbomb through a hole in the stage.