Today In Wrestling History 8/14: CM Punk Screwed By Kevin Nash, Final Wrestling Challenge, & More

* 20 years ago in 1995, the WWF held a TV taping at the Worcester, Massachusetts for most of its TV shows other than Superstars. With the U.S. Open messing up the USA Network schedule and Wrestling Challenge being removed from syndication, it made sense t do a combined taping for once.

The live Raw show was largely uneventful, though it featured a fun main event in Shawn Michaels vs. Jerry Lawler. The most memorable moment came in the opener, where Waylon Mercy (Dan Spivey doing a gimmick similar to Bray Wyatt) defeated Doink the Clown in a squash match. Doink had been off TV for months and the fans did NOT want to see him, so they chanted "KILL THE CLOWN!" throughout and popped huge when Mercy finished Doink off with the sleeper hold.

The big angle of the show was shot for the next week's episode of Raw. Men on a Mission challenged The Allied Powers (Lex Luger and "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith) to wrestle thm in the main event. Luger wasn't there, so WWF Champion Diesel volunteered to team up with Davey Boy. Early in the match, Davey Boy calmly entered in the ring and clotheslined Diesel, ending the match and leading to a three on one attack. He stayed a heel for the rest of his WWF stint (with the exception of matches in Canada and Europe in 1997) and parlayed the turn into being a main event level wrestler with WWF Championship shots at Diesel, Bret Hart, and Shawn Michaels.

Also on the taping, they taped a few squash matches for WWF Mania, as well as two Action Zone main events (Action Zone was usually Wrestling Challenge minus local promos plus a fresh main event). Diesel and Shawn Michaels defeated Men on a Mission in an international exclusive (U.S. Open coverage cut the September 10th show to 30 minutes) while Barry Horowitz defeated Hakushi thanks to botched interference from the Bodydonnas. Hakushi turned babyface, which was a welcome change from feuding with Bret Hart because Jerry Lawler accused Hart of being racist towards Japanese people.

Finally, they also taped the final episode of Wrestling Challenge (known as WWF Cavalcade in Canada) that night, with the show airing in syndication during the last weekend of the month. After nine years on the air (longer if you count All-Star Wrestling, the show it replaced), it was a pretty uneventful ending, with no content of note, That's kind of apropos for Wrestling Challenge (and the syndicated B-show slot in general), though. Most of the angles, title changes, etc. were shot on the A-show, Superstars (previously Superstars of Wrestling and Championship Wrestling) and recapped on Challenge. If something DID happen on Challenge, it was usually on one of the Piper's Pit style interview segments, like The Snake Pit or The Barber Shop.

Technically the show didn't completely disappear. For international consumption as well as the few American stations that still wanted a second WWF show. It was renamed WWF Challenge (no "wrestling") and became a straight-up recap show a la WWF Wrestling Spotlight, which was also cancelled at this point.. WWF Challenge lasted until early 1997, when it was replaced by Shotgun Challenge, the toned down/daytime version of the newly launched Shotgun Saturday Night. That was eventually became known as simply "WWF Shotgun" before morphing into WWF Metal, the family-friendly counterpart to WWF Jakked.

* Four years ago in 2011, the WWF held SummerSlam at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Aside from Randy Orton regaining the World Heavyweight Championship, ending Christian's month-long reign, it was actually a fairly uneventful show until the CM Punk vs. John Cena main event. The winner would unify the two claims to the WWE Championship, an issue that came when Punk "left the company" as champion.

Punk was originally supposed to be out longer, but came back after a week when someone realized they had no main event for SummerSlam. He and Cena had another excellent match, though not quite at the level of their match at Money in the Bank four weeks earlier. The finish was a bit strange and anti-climactic: Punk hit a spin kick to the body, a flying knee, and the Go 2 Sleep. Cena got his foot on the rope, but special referee Triple H kept counting, and that was it. The bad call was never really followed up on.

Punk celebrated...and Kevin Nash ran in, attacking him for some reason. Alberto Del Rio cashed in Money in the Bank to win the title, with the belt becoming a hot potato. A planned Punk-Nash feud went nowhere because it turned out Nash was on blood thinners and couldn't wrestle. So we got Punk vs. Triple H instead, with Punk losing clean when he shouldn't have, though it's been forgotten that it was a competitive match with Punk kicking out of the Pedigree.