Today In Wrestling History 8/20: Mick Foley Wins King Of The Death Matches, World Title Shoot, More

* 61 years ago in 1954 on a card in Atlanta, Georgia, June Byers defeated Mildred Burke to win the NWA World Women's Championship (which was technically not a NWA board recognized world title) in a legit shoot match. Burke was a talented shooter who would challenge men at carnivals, and was a legitimate drawing card as champion. She had an ugly split with Billy Wolfe, her husband and the promoter of the female wrestlers, and he arranged for no golden girl June Byers to train with famed shooter Ruffy Silverstein to prepare for a legitimate match.

Byers won the first fall after Burke's knee went out and the time limit expired with no other falls occurring, as they stalemated. The athletic commission awarded the match and title to Byers, but Burke went home and billed herself as the World Women's Wrestling Association champion where she could get work, with the WWWA title eventually becoming the top belt in the All Japan Women promotion. In the United States, Byers wasn't the draw Burke was, the Fabulous Moolah won her own title in Baltimore, and was eventually able to take over the women's bookings with her husband, Buddy Lee. Under Moolah, the style changed from being not that different from the men to the bad hair-pulling heavy style that dominated the business in the post-network TV era.

* 20 years ago in 1995, IWA Japan ran their legendary Kawasaki Dream show, known colloquially in the west as "King of the Death Matches" for the tournament the show was based around. They dream 28,757 fans paying $1.2 million, an unheard of figure for what was realistically a small independent promotion that specialized in death matches/"garbage wrestling." While other promotions had done successful stadium shows without TV (weekly wrestling magazines and daily sports newspapers were huge back then)., IWA Japan was the smallest of the lot.

This is one of those shows that was fascinating at the time but doesn't really age well. For example, the finals, Cactus Jack vs. Terry Funk, might actually be the least of their singles matches. Famously, it was an exploding barbed wire match, and when the explosion finally happened, it was a dud, to say the least. On top of that, of the best workers in the tournament, while Cactus (defeated post-overdose Terry Gordy, who he asked to punch him as hard as he could; bad idea...) and Funk (defeated Leatherface) advanced, Mr. Gannosuke (lost to Tiger Jeet Singh) and Hiroshi Ono (lost to Shoji Nakamaki) were eliminated by far inferior performers.

Arguably, the highlights were outside of the tournament. On the undercard, The Headhunters defeated Los Cowboys (Silver King and El Texano) to win the IWA World Tag Team Titles. The Headhunters were Dominican twin brothers who looked like shorter versions of Abdullah the Butcher but did crazy high flying moves. They had worked extensively in Mexico with Los Cowboys, so the teams had great chemistry and it's a really fun match.

There was also a really fun smoke and mirrors match with Dan Severn defeating Tarzan Goto to retain the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Severn was, while a nice guy and a great shooter, not good at pro wrestling unless he was in a shoot-style promotion. Goto was a scarred up brawler who was actually really underrated but seen as washed up and overweight at the time. As luck would have it, the match was a blast, with Severn being carefully limited in what he did and they played to Goto's strengths, with a lot f chair-swinging mayhem. One of Severn's very best matches, if not the best.

Oddly enough, one of the most entertaining matches on the show is the worst. Iceman (Ricky Santana) vs. Kamikaze was an absolutely horrible attempt at a lucha libre style junior heavyweight match, with spots blown in spectacular fashion. Santana was usually very good, but likely had trouble adjusting to the mask, while Kamikaze would improve over the years. If you ever wanted to see a stadium laugh at a bad match, this is your chance.

* 19 years ago in 1996, WCW held a WCW Saturday Night taping in Dalton, Georgia for the episode set to air on August 20th. The big news coming out of the taping was that Lord Steven (William) Regal defeated Lex Luger to regain the WCW World Television Title, a belt that was synonymous with from late 1993 through much of 1994.

Regal got the win when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, making a very rare Saturday Night appearance, ran out to attack Luger. They ran him into the ringpost behind the back of referee Nick Patrick (who turned out to be the secret evil NWO referee anyway), rolled him into the ring, and Regal got the pin. Tony Schiavone, concerned that Regal had joined the NWO, interviewed him after the match. Regal said he hadn't seen any interference and that Nick Patrick was a wonderful referee, but he was loyal to WCW. He announced that he'd be going on a world tour to defend the title, with the idea that he wasn't going to wait for challengers to come to him like other champions would.

That thing about the world tour was not a random, throwaway line; Regal had a tour of New Japan Pro Wrestling scheduled in September. On each side of the tour, he was flying to England to visit family, and took a few bookings there for Brian Dixon's All-Star Wrestling, where he was indeed billed as the defending WCW World Television Champion. In NJPW, he had a really strong showing, including an absolutely fantastic match against Shinya Hashimoto, who became one of Regal's all-time personal favorite opponents. WCW being WCW, they didn't air any of this, and they didn't even have anyone videotape his match with Robbie Brookside in England.

As for Regal's title reign, you can make the argument that his runs as champion in 1996 and 1997 were better than his first two in 1993 and 1994. While he got a bigger push earlier on (as did the TV title itself), feuding with wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat, Larry Zbyszko, and Johnny B. Badd, the later reigns had him wrestling a more varied, eclectic group of challengers thanks to WCW importing so much international talent. For example, he had several excellent matches with Psicosis, even though you'd expect their styles to clash in spite of both being excellent workers.