On this day in wrestling history 12/19

[Guest Sassquatch]

From Dave Meltzer:

 

ON THIS DAY IN WRESTLING HISTORY 12/19

 

1968 - Billy Robinson pins Thunder Sugiyama to win a tournament in Japan to be crowned the first IWA World heavyweight champion. Robinson, who held the British Empire heavyweight title, debuted in Japan and it was his first time he was exposed internationally. This led to Robinson being brought into Stampede Wrestling, where he was a huge star, as well as when the IWA became affiliated with the AWA, it led to Robinson joining the AWA a few years later where he became one of the company's biggest stars of the 70s.

 

1970 - Giant Baba pinned Gene Kiniski at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles to retain the International heavyweight championship.

 

1972 - In a famous match in Japanese history, Giant Baba, in his home town of Niigata, beat The Destroyer, the only man to ever beat Rikidozan in Japan in a singles match. The stipulation was that if Destroyer, one of the most hated heels ever in Japan, lost the match, he would do an about face and become Baba's regular tag team partner. Baba & Destroyer became the headline tag team, along with Anton Geesink and Jumbo Tsuruta, in the developmental years of the All Japan promotion and Destroyer was so popular as the first true foreign main event babyface, that he became a TV sitcom star in Japan as well.

 

1973 - Ken Mantell upsets Danny Hodge to win the NWA world junior heavyweight title at a time the title meant something. Mantell, whose real name was Ken Lusk and actually gained most of his fame in wrestling as booker in the 1983-1984 period when World Class Wrestling was on fire, was an interesting world champion. He had wrestled under names Ken Mantell and Clay Spencer in different territories, so as champion, he used both names, depending upon the territory he defended the belt in.

 

1977 - Before a sellout crowd of 20,225 in Madison Square Garden, Superstar Billy Graham retained the WWWF title losing via a blood stoppage to Mil Mascaras. To show the drawing power of Graham and Mascaras, the semifinal on the show was Arnold Skaaland vs. Lou Albano and Bob Backlund vs. Mr. Fuji.

 

1985 - Buddy Landel was fired by Dusty Rhodes. Landel was coming off drawing a record house that week in Raleigh against Ric Flair and held the National heavyweight title and was in line for the biggest push of his career. However, after a cocaine binge, he literally couldn't get out of bed the morning of an Atlanta TV taping where he was about to shoot the biggest angle of his career for the major program with Flair. When Rhodes couldn't get him out of bed, he came on TV at the old TBS studios holding the belt claiming to have beaten Landel in a fictitious match and Landel never reached that level of stardom again.

 

1995 - A story in the Village Voice entitled "The Fixer," alleged that Marty Bergman, the secret husband of Laura Brevetti, the lead defense attorney in the trial of Vince McMahon during the summer of 1994 on steroid distribution charges, had been involving in fixing the trial that McMahon was acquitted in. It alleged that Bergman had planted false stories alleging wrong doings by government investigator Tony Valenti and NBC producer Len Tepper in 1993, as well as a story involving lead government attorney Sean O'Shea about dating a woman while investigating her father, which came out on the eve of the trial. Bergman also, according to the story, represented himself as a producer for "A Current Affair" and allegedly offered Emily Feinberg, McMahon's former secretary and the strongest witness against him, $350,000 in exchange for a tell-all interview about McMahon that he would broker and result in a Fox Network movie. One of the most telling parts of the trial was the amazing job Brevetti did in cross-examination of Feinberg, hurting her credibility when she had the most damaging evidence on McMahon. A year later it became obvious as to why, her secret husband was acting himself out as Feinberg's agent. Bergman allegedly had gained Feinberg's confidence in telling her that Fox wanted Sly Stallone to play McMahon in a movie that she would get $300,000 for her work in putting it together. Bergman also contacted other people believed to have knowledge on McMahon under the guise of a "60 Minutes" producer, a role his brother (Lowell Bergman, who was featured in a major award winning movie for his work in exposing the tobacco industry) actually held.

 

1999 - Starrcade '99 took place at the MCI Center in Washington, DC headlined by Bret Hart vs. Bill Goldberg in the now famous match where Goldberg threw the kick that ended Hart's career. A crowd of 8,582 paid $362,550 for a show headlined by a flat finish where booker Vince Russo decided to reenact the famous Survivor Series finish, this time with Hart as the winner and Goldberg being screwed by ref Roddy Piper. The show drew an 0.32 buy rate, and clearly people weren't happy with the finish because WCW has never approached that level on PPV since. Chris Benoit won the vacant U.S. title in a **** ladder match with Jeff Jarrett. The show was overall poorly received, with just 24% thumbs ups.