On this day in wrestling history 1/04 (BIG)

[Guest Sassquatch]

From Dave Meltzer:

 

ON THIS DAY IN PRO WRESTILNG HISTORY for January 4 (and as you can imagine, it's a big one)

 

1929 - Gus Sonnenberg, a college football star from Dartmouth became the new big thing in wrestling through implementation of the flying shoulder tackle. To go all the way with him, Ed "Strangler" Lewis, who was almost universally recognized by this point as the world heavyweight champion, put Sonnenberg's flying tackles over, was knocked out of the ring and counted out to lose the title in Boston for promoter Paul Bowser. At the time it seemed like a great move to put the belt on a younger man who has the game's hottest new draw, but as history showed, the Sonnenberg title reign was filled with problems.

 

1980 - 18-year-old Rimi Yokota captured her first pro wrestling championship, the Japanese jr. title over Chino Sato. Soon to be known as Jaguar Yokota, she was one of the most influential women in wrestling history as her ability at a wide range of styles from suplexes to mat wrestling to Lucha Libre made her easily the greatest in-ring performer women’s wrestling would ever see, and spawned a generation of Crush Gals, Manami Toyotas, Bull Nakanos, Kyoko Inoues and more which for years made the All Japan women’s' promotion a huge success both in ring and a Saturday afternoon TV phenomenon.

 

1988 - Steve Williams was arrested at the Detroit airport enroute on a tour to Japan in possession of three grams of cocaine, 22 grams of marijuana, two grams of psilocybin, 241 steroid tablets and 28 mililetres of injectable steroids. He was released on $25,000 bail. Williams, who was working for New Japan and Jim Crockett Promotions at the time, didn't lose either job, although the Crockett job was in great jeopardy due to the publicity.

 

1991 - A proposed deal where Atlanta wrestling TV personality Joe Pedecino would buy Jerry Jarrett's USWA promotion and turn it into a national touring company fell through when Jarrett got tired of waiting for Pedecino to come up with the money for the purchase. Pedecino had a Nigerian backer, who apparently promised him $25 million to get into the big game, but never came up with the money, including the $3.4 million he was going to pay to Jarrett for the territory and TV syndication.

 

1992 - New Japan ran on January 4th at the Tokyo Dome for the first time, in what became an annual tradition, drawing a turnaway crowd of 60,000 fans for a show in conjunction with WCW. Among the results saw Arn Anderson & Larry Zbyszko over Michiyoshi Ohara & Shiro Koshinaka, Dusty & Dustin Rhodes beat Masa Saito & Kim Duk, Tony Halme (now a heavyweight boxer) pinned Scott Norton in a terrible match, Shinya Hashimoto pinned Bill Kazmaier (now on Met-RX commercials in the U.S.), Big Van Vader went to a double count out with El Gigante, Then Senator Antonio Inoki beat future Senator Hiroshi Hase, Sting & Great Muta as a tag team beat The Steiner Brothers, Lex Luger retained the WCW heavyweight title pinning Masahiro Chono after a low blow and Riki Choshu pinned Tatsumi Fujinami to win the IWGP heavyweight title. Sting & Muta vs. Steiners saved the show as there were a lot of bad matches.

 

1993 - New Japan sold out the Tokyo Dome with an announced 63,500 fans, all tickets gone one week in advance for one of the best Dome shows in history. With the exception of one match, Ron Simmons vs. Tony Halme, every match on the show was good. Among matches that were ***1/2 or better were an eight-man Skinheads vs. Raging Staff feud, the first ever meeting of Jushin Liger vs. Ultimo Dragon for the IWGP jr. title (actually slightly disappointing as Dragon was nervous in what was the biggest match up to that point of his career), Sting beat Hase (who carried him great), Muto beat Chono in a match which unified both the NWA and IWGP heavyweight titles in a super match, The Hell Raisers (Road Warrior Hawk & Kensuke Sasaki) kept the IWGP tag titles going to a double count out with the Steiner Brothers (Steiners refused to do the job, claiming they had already lost two matches in Japan the previous November and refused to lose three in a row) in an excellent match but fans hated the finish, Fujinami beat Takashi Ishikawa in an interpromotional match and main event saw Tenryu beat Choshu in 18:14. Muto vs. Chono was the best match. . . On the same day, Hulk Hogan did a TV interview on The Nashville Network, before they had pop, which was his first public interview since disappearing in wake of the steroid scandal. He blamed time constraints on the Arsenio Hall show for his problems (where he denied using steroids except for three times in his life, I'm not sure how time constraints can be blamed for that statement) when it came out he was lying on the show. Hogan said that he planned to admit to more usage of steroids but he ran out of time. Hogan blamed his usage of steroids on the medical profession saying they were okay to use, and claimed he had stopped using them when he found out they were dangerous. Hey, by the way, if one person believes that line, don't bother e-mailing me. Hogan claimed the Rock & Wrestling Connection was his idea, not Vince McMahon's, that he wanted to return to wrestling, but in Japan, not the United States, and that he had to convince Vince McMahon to allow wrestlers to have entrance music when McMahon was against it. He claimed that he was responsible for preventing many people from using steroids. Hogan claimed the WWF grossed $1.7 billion per year (real figure at that point in time was probably in the $100 million range). He claimed that if the NFL players had to take the same steroid tests as WWF wrestlers, that "there wouldn't be anybody left on the field." Amidst all those silly statements, where Hogan got the most heat in wrestling was for probably the only honest thing he said in the entire interview, saying wrestilng was "an exhibition. It's acting, charisma and good athletes. It’s a show. A lot of the wrestlers are friends. If you want to call it exposing the business, call it whatever you want. I call it good business." Ironically, at the time, those statements were considered a sin.

 

1994 - The first ever non-sellout on January 4 at the Dome took place with a crowd estimated at more than 50,000 highlighted by Inoki vs. Tenryu and Steiners vs. Hase & Muto matches. Jushin Liger pinned the latest incarnation of Tiger Mask with a shooting star press. Mask unmasked, revealing himself, as everyone knew,as Koji Kanemoto. The Hell Raisers regained the IWGP tag titles from the Jurassic Powers, Scott Norton & Hercules (Ray Fernandez) in a terrible match. Steiners beat Hase & Muto. Choshu, in his first match back after surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon, beat Yoshiaki Fujiwara in a disappointing match. Hashimoto retained the IWGP title pinning Chono in 28:00 of a match that was disappointing. Tenryu beat Inoki via pinfall, making him the first wrestler in modern history to score pins on both Inoki and Baba (some guys in the 60s did it before Baba & Inoki reached superstardom).

 

1995 - A five-and-a-half hour Tokyo Dome show was said to be average, highlighted by IWGP tag champs Hase & Muto beating the Steiners in 25:12 and IWGP champ Hashimoto pinning Sasaki in the main event, both of which were very good matches. The show drew a sellout 62,500 fans paying $4.8 million, which was the largest gate up to that point in the history of pro wrestling. The show also included a horrible martial arts tournament featuring three of the worst matches of the year, Sting over Tony Palmore (which was worst match of the year), Inoki over Gerard Gordeau and finally Inoki over Sting.

 

1996 - Keiji Muto and Nobuhiko Takada officially went into the record books as the biggest drawing feud in wrestling history with their second consecutive Doe sellout, ending with Takada winning the IWGP title with an armbar submission in:51 before 64,000 fans paying $5.5 million and a television audience of about 14 million viewers. But the show stealer was the final legendary match of the career of Inoki, as he made Vader via armbar submission in 14:16 of what may have been, at the age of 52, the greatest match of Inoki's career. Surprisingly, Muto vs. Takada drew a larger rating than Inoki vs. Vader. In hindsight, the opener on the show is really interesting today since it was Yuji Nagata & Shinjiro Otani & Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Kendo Ka Shin) over Kazushi Sakuraba & Kenichi Yamamoto (who just challenged Pat Miletich for the UFC lightweight title a few weeks ago) & Hiromitsu Kanehara (who is going to the finals of the RINGS tournament next month). Liger retained the IWGP jr. title over Kanemoto in a fantastic match. An interpromotional match with Kodo Fuyuki of WAR and Yoji Anjoh of UWFI was a total disaster. Sasaki retained the WCW United States title over Hase, Choshu destroyed Masahito Kakihara in a needless destruction and Hashimoto pinned Kazuo Yamazaki.

 

1997 - A weak line-up still drew a sellout 62,500 to the Dome. Hashimoto retained the IWGP title pinning Choshu in 18:04, coming off Choshu's win in the IWGP tournament and a pin on Hashimoto. In their final glory as a team, Fujinami & Kengo Kimura, a top team of the 80s, reunited to win the IWGP tag titles from Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan. In an Americanized bad match, Power Warrior (Sasaki) pinned Great Muta. Jushin Liger captured eight of Ultimo Dragon's ten titles (Dragon's WCW cruiserweight and NWA middleweight titles weren't at stake) in a great match and Inoki beat Willie Williams in a rematch 17 years in the making of an awful match. Two interesting prelim matches saw Otani beat Yoshihiro Tajiri, making his New Japan debut in one of the better matches on the show, and Super Liger, who was Chris Jericho, beat Kanemoto. The idea was to build to a Liger vs. Super Liger feud, but Jericho under the mask didn't get over, and the gimmick was dropped and never heard from again. In fact, the match was never even allowed to air on television. . . The World Wrestling Federation debuted a new show, trying to recreate the success of the original Raw, for late night Saturday night called "Shotgun Saturday Night," an attempt to combine WWF wrestling with a New York night club feel. The show, probably most remembered for The Head Bangers doing a Nuns gimmick and Terri Runnels as Marlena, taking off her top (her back was to the camera and she was actually covered but the idea was she wasn't as Sultan, now Rikishi, who the gimmick was had never been with a woman in his life, was so stunned he lost to Goldust in spot right out of a really bad wrestling movie from a few years earlier)only lasted a few months before it was discarded. . . A match with Kevin Nash & Scott Hall vs. Nasty Boys got out of hand when Jerry Sags, who had been out of action with a concussion and told Hall & Nash to avoid hitting him with a chair to the head, was hit in the head with a thrown chair by Hall. Sags lost his temper and attacked Hall, beating him to the point where Hall needed oral surgery to repair the damage. Sags never wrestled again, as due to the multiple concussions he was forced to retire and later sued both Hall and WCW.

 

1998 - Riki Choshu retired before a sellout 65,000 fans paying $6 million, wrestilng five lackluster matches, beating Kazuyuki Fujita (now a Pride star), Yutaka Yoshie, Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Liger, but losing to Takashi Iizuka. Main event saw Sasaki pin Muto in 25:18 to retain the IWGP title. Interesting undercard matches included Otani keeping the IWGP jr. title over Dragon and newcomer Don Frye beating Naoya Ogawa in the days before Inoki made him unbeatable.

 

1999 - Hashimoto and Ogawa didn't work a shoot, but in fact, shot a work to begin their big money program on a show that drew a packed house of 62,500 paying $5.3 million. Basically Ogawa beat the hell out of Hashimoto before the match was stopped with Hashimoto blown up on the ramp and left for dead, with no actual finish ruled. Satoshi Kojima & Tenzan won the IWGP tag titles over Tenryu & Koshinaka. Fans had trouble getting into pro wrestling since they followed the amazing Hashimoto-Ogawa scene. Main event, which was horrible, saw Muto retain the IWGP title beating Norton with a figure four leglock. Kendo Ka Shin & Dr. Wagner Jr. won the IWGP jr. tag titles over Otani & Takaiwa. Liger retained the IWGP jr. title over Kanemoto in 23:11 after a top rope brainbuster. In a horrible match, Sasaki beat Atsushi Onita via DQ when Onita threw fire. . . Everyone think about this--this was only two years ago. WCW ran a Nitro at the Georgia Dome, drawing 38,809 fans, of which 34,788 were paid, and drew the largest gate in company history, $930,735. This was the show where Hulk Hogan, who announced his retirement six weeks earlier (as part of an elaborate swerve on the boys worked by Hogan, Kevin Nash and Eric Bischoff), returned, and as part of the deal where Nash would book and get to be the first to beat Goldberg (one week earlier), in return, Hogan would get the title, but Nash wouldn't have to do a job for him. So they did the finish where Hogan gave Nash the one finger touch, Nash went down, and Hogan got the title. I mean, think of the heel heat? Was that brilliant or what? And now today, two years later, it was real clever now, wasn't it? It would probably take a full 18 page Observer to list all the reasons that show was a disaster. This was also the night where the title change that was taped a few nights earlier when Mick Foley captured his first WWF title from The Rock aired. This led to yet another of the memorable moments on Nitro, when Bischoff told Tony Schiavone to say that Raw was taped, that Foley would be winning the title so fans shouldn't switch channels. So WCW presented this TV show which was beyond awful, they told fans a world title was changing on Raw, and they expected people not to switch channels? Bischoff then told Schiavone, which ruined Schiavone's rep with fans who don't understand the wrestling industry, to knock Foley and laugh about how stupid it was to put the title on him, saying "that'll put butts in the seat." Let's see who since that period of time drew more revenue, Foley or Hogan or Nash? WWF, which did commentary live, shot back after hearing what was being said, saying they weren't going to present a main event that starts two minutes before the show goes off the air and consists of nothing but walking and talking. The final score of the night was that Raw set its all-time record rating up to that point with a 5.76 rating. Nitro was still healthy at this point doing a 4.96, roughly double what it is doing just two years later. The combined viewership of the two shows was nearly 12 million. The head-to-head world title switches saw the taped Rock vs. Mankind to a 5.9 to the live Hogan vs. Nash fiasco doing a 4.6, although WCW did get some satisfaction as the post-match Goldberg run-in after the fact on Nitro did an amazing 6.5, while an Austin run-in after Foley's title win dropped Raw all the way to a 5.1. From the minute-by-minute numbers, right after Schiavone told viewers there would be a title change on Raw so not to switch channels, about 375,000 homes switched channels--to Raw.

 

2000 - A sellout announced at 63,500 came to a show which included WCW talent Chris Benoit, Rick Steiner and Randy Savage, as well as officials J.J. Dillon and Paul Orndorff at ringside. Dillon, seeing the size of the crowd and the heat in the Hashimoto & Iizuka vs. Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami match, which was probably the most heated match of last year but didn't get match of the year consideration because it didn't fit into what a wrestling match is supposed to look like (which is actually why it got over), came back to the States and thought the Vince Russo direction was all wrong, which led to what happened in WCW less than two weeks later. Sasaki pinned Tenryu in 14:43 to win the IWGP title in the main event, and Chono beat Muto in 25:00 with the STF in the top matches. Steiner beat Savage in a terrible match. Yamazaki retired after a match losing to Nagata, which brought both Akira Maeda, Nobuhiko Takada, Kanehara and even Kiyoshi Tamura to the show. Benoit was pinned by Tenzan in a very good match. In other title matches, Liger kept the IWGP jr. over Kanemoto in their 3:56 match and Otani & Takaiwa kept the tag titles over Minoru Tanaka & Ka Shin. The idea was to build up Liger & Benoit vs. Otani & Takaiwa for a program, but Benoit was gone to the WWF after the debacle two weeks later. Bill Goldberg was set to debut on this show, but he was injured putting hie elbow through the car window.