On this day in wrestling history 12/31

[Guest Sassquatch]

From Dave Meltzer:

 

ON THIS DAY IN PRO WRESTLING HISTORY FOR 12/31

 

1923 - Ed "Strangler" Lewis defeated Taro Miyake in Chicago in a match billed as being for the Jiu Jitsu championship of the world

 

1975 - Newcomer Frank "The Hammer" Goodish captured his first major pro wrestling title when he defeated Rocky Johnson in Tampa at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory to win the Florida heavyweight title. Goodish later became Bruiser Brody, and just a few weeks ago was voted by active Japanese wrestlers as the single greatest American wrestler of all-time.

 

1989 - The first pro wrestling event of all-time was held at Lenin Stadium in Moscow before 15,000 fans headlined by Antonio Inoki teaming with former Olympic gold medalist Shota Chochyashivili of the Soviet Union defeated former U.S. Olympic Brad Rheingans and former Japanese Olympian Masa Saito in the main event. Americans Manny Fernandez and Bam Bam Bigelow worked the show, promoted by New Japan Pro Wrestling.

 

1994 - Woody Strode, one of the first African Americans to be a headline wrestler during the 1940s and 1950s, passed away at the age of 80. Strode was far more famous for his later work as an actor including appearing in movies like "The Ten Commandments" and "The Cotton Club."

 

1996 - Request TV President Hugh Panero said that based on information garnered from staff research on ECW, that he had decided to temporarily cancel doing any PPV events until doing more research. "During these discussions (about carrying an ECW PPV show) we learned about specific incidents involving an underage ECW wrestler who appeared to be seriously injured during an event in Massachusetts. We were surprised that ECW never mentioned that these public relations problems existed, and contrary to the claims made by the ECW, no tape of the incident was sent to anyone at Request TV. . . My staff was instructed to research these alleged incidents and discovered that they were true, and also learned that generally the ECW was theatrically more violent than other wrestilng events. Based on this new information and the fact that an ECW event would be a step up from being a local event to a national TV event, we decided it would be prudent to temporarily cancel the event while we did additional research to better understand how the ECW operates." Just a short time later, Panero approved of ECW's first PPV event, which took place in April of 1997.