If you could write your way to a world title in your hometown in front of a national TV audience, would you do it? Vince Russo did 17 years ago today.
2016: WWE presented Clash of Champions from the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.
In a preshow match, Nia Jax defeated Alicia Fox.
The New Day (Big E & Kofi Kingston) defeated Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson to retain the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship.
T.J. Perkins defeated Brian Kendrick by submission to retain the WWE Cruiserweight Championship.
Cesaro and Sheamus fought to a no contest in the seventh match of a best-of-seven series.
Chris Jericho defeated Sami Zayn.
Charlotte defeated Sasha Banks and Bayley to retain the WWE Raw Women's Championship.
Roman Reigns defeated Rusev to win the WWE United States Championship.
Kevin Owens defeated Seth Rollins to retain the WWE Universal Championship.
2016: New Japan Pro Wrestling presented Destruction in Kobe from Kobe World Memorial Hall in Kobe, Japan.
Henare, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask defeated CHAOS (Beretta, Rocky Romero & Will Ospreay).
Chase Owens & Yujiro Takahashi defeated Captain New Japan & Yoshitatsu in just 48 seconds.
Great Bash Heel (Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma) defeated Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Teruaki Kanemitsu.
reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly) defeated Manabu Nakanishi & Yuji Nagata.
David Finlay, Ricochet, and Satoshi Kojima defeated BULLET CLUB (Adam Cole, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson) to win the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship.
BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Kenny Omega, Tama Tonga, and Tanga Loa) defeated the Briscoe Brothers (Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe) and CHAOS (Hirooki Goto & Tomohiro Ishii).
Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, EVIL, and SANADA) defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robinson, and KUSHIDA.
CHAOS (Gedo, Jado, Kazuchika Okada, and YOSHI-HASHI) defeated Momo No Seishun Tag (Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada), Naomichi Marufuji, and Toru Yano.
Tetsuya Naito defeated Michael Elgin to win the IWGP Intercontinental Championship.
2016: PROGRESS Wrestling presented Chapter 36: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Room… Again from the O2 Academy Brixton in Brixton, England.
Rampage Brown defeated Joe Coffey in a tournament final to win the PROGRESS Atlas Championship.
Alex Windsor, Dahlia Black, and Jinny defeated Laura Di Matteo, Nixon Newell, and Pollyanna.
Sebastian and William Eaver fought to a no contest in a no disqualification match.
British Strong Style (Pete Dunne & Trent Seven) defeated The London Riots (James Davis & Rob Lynch) to win the PROGRESS Tag Team Championship.
Paul Robinson defeated Chuck Mambo.
Zack Sabre Jr. defeated Tommaso Ciampa 2-1 in a best of three falls match.
The Origin (Dave Mastiff, El Ligero, Nathan Cruz, andZack Gibson) defeated Damon Moser, FSU (Eddie Dennis & Mark Andrews), and Jack Gallagher
Mark Haskins defeated Marty Scurll and Tommy End to win the PROGRESS World Championship.
2010: In Rahway, New Jersey, Jay Lethal defeated The Amazing Red to win the TNA X Division Championship. This would be the second time the title changed hands in three days, and the third time that month.
2007: At a Smackdown taping in Indianapolis, Indiana, the WWE Cruiserweight Championship held by Hornswoggle is vacated and subsequently retired by general manager Vickie Guerrero.
Born as the WCW Light Heavyweight Championship in October 1991, 38 men and two women (Madusa and Daffney) held the championship. The Light Heavyweight Championship was contested in 1991 and 1992 in WCW before the championship was abandoned.
The title was reborn as the Cruiserweight Championship was born in 1996 with Shinjiro Otani winning the title in a tournament final. The belt would be contested up to WCW's demise in 2001, then brought into the WWF after the buyout. The Cruiserweight Championship was unified with the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship in late 2001 and became a staple of Smackdown following the roster split in 2002.
In an interesting bit of trivia, each of the last three champions won the title in one-fall, multi-man bouts. Gregory Helms won the title at the 2006 Royal Rumble in a six-way match (he would go on to hold it for 385 days, far and away the longest reign in the championship's history), Chavo Guerrero won it at No Way Out the next year in an eight-man match, and Hornswoggle won the title at The Great American Bash in a six-way bout.
A new version of the Cruiserweight Championship was created last September as the prize for winning the Cruiserweight Classic. TJ Perkins won the tournament, defeating Gran Metalik in the final. The new Cruiserweight Championship has a separate lineage from the version retired in 2007. Enzo Amore won the title last night from two-time champion Neville at No Mercy.
2006: RAW from Oklahoma City was browned out. Sort of.
The show opened with Candice Michelle and Lita facing off without the lights, with Lita quickly getting the win following a spear by Edge to Michelle. Power would be restored by the second match.
It wouldn't be Lita's only match that night: she would face a one-armed John Cena in the main event, and unsurprisingly, the one-armed Cena won in just 45 seconds.
2001: At a Smackdown taping in Dayton, Ohio, Test & Booker T defeat The Brothers of Destruction (Undertaker & Kane) to win the WCW Tag Team Championship.
2000: On Nitro from Uniondale, New York, Vince Russo defeated Booker T in a Caged Heat match to win the WCW Championship.
Actually, Russo was never announced as the winner during the Nitro broadcast. The match (and show ended) with Goldberg spearing Russo out of the cage. Russo was seen on Thunder two days later with the WCW world title belt in his possession declaring himself the champion—and retired from in-ring competition.
Russo officially vacates the title the following Monday on Nitro (the ninth time the title was vacated since Russo came aboard, and the seventh in 2000 alone—to put that in perspective, the WCW world title was vacated three times total prior to the Russo era), with a new champion crowned that evening in one of the most infamous matches in wrestling history, the San Francisco 49ers match.
On the same show, The Natural Born Thrillers (Sean O'Haire & Mark Jindrak) won a tag team battle royal, last eliminating the Filthy Animals’ Rey Mysterio, to the vacant WCW Tag Team Championship.
2000: WWF presented the first RAW is WAR on TNN from the Bryce Jordan Center in State College, Pennsylvania.
It is the first RAW on a network other than USA since its debut in 1993, and would be the signature show on the newly-rebranded National Network. The show remained on the network, which would later be rebranded as Spike TV, for five years before returning to USA in 2005.
The show also featured the first appearance of Stone Cold Steve Austin on RAW since the Monday before Survivor Series last November, and the first non-PPV appearance by Austin since the Smackdown before Backlash in April.
Kane fought Rikishi to a double disqualification.
Tazz pinned Bubba Ray Dudley.
The Hardy Boyz (Matt & Jeff) defeated Edge & Christian in a ladder match to retain the WWF Tag Team Championship.
X-Pac defeated Chris Jericho in a first blood match.
Eddie Guerrero defeated Val Venis to retain the WWF Intercontinental Championship.
The Rock defeated Chris Benoit to retain the WWF Championship.
1993: At a WWF live event in Madison Square Garden in New York City, Brian Christopher makes his WWF debut against a returning Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka. Unsurprisingly, Snuka won, but Christopher would go on to greater pastures in the WWF a few years later as Grandmaster Sexay.
1993: Shawn Michaels, then the WWF Intercontinental Champion, walks out on the company.
Allegedly, the falling out had to do with Michaels testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Just two days after his walkout, he is stripped of his Intercontinental Championship, the storyline reason given being that Michaels did not defend the championship over the last 30 days (actually, he did, last defending it at Summerslam on August 30 against Mr. Perfect). But seeing he wasn't going to be back any time soon, you know since he probably had a suspension coming had he returned, the call was made to separate Michaels from his belt.
Michaels was actually offered a job in WCW in his time away, but ultimately turned it down and returned in November at Survivor Series as a substitute for Jerry "The King" Lawler.
1987: In Detroit, Michigan, Ron Garvin defeated Ric Flair in a steel cage match to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
"The Man with the Hands of Stone" was a reluctant champion, as other wrestlers passed on being a transitional champion (the belt would be switched back to Flair at Starrcade '87, which was up against the first Survivor Series).
Garvin, who was 42 at the time, realized this was his last best chance at a main event run, and took up Jim Crockett on his offer. As for Garvin, he disappeared for most of his two month run, rarely wrestling on television until his loss to Flair, ironically, in a steel cage match, at Starrcade.
It’s a happy 47th birthday to joshi legend Erika Shishido, though she is best known as Aja Kong.
Trained by Jaguar Yokota, she debuted in 1986 and became an immediate player, joining Dump Matsumoto's Gokuaku Domei (translated as "Atrocious Alliance") with Noboku Kimura. The duo split up in 1988 due to Matsumoto's retirement (at the time, all joshis had to retire by their 25th birthday), but would reunite two years later as Jungle Jack.
The duo would win the WWWA tag titles twice, but once lost their hair in a match to Bull Nakano and the Gokumon-to stable. Kong herself would experience some singles success, most notably in November 1992 when she ended Bull Nakano's three-year reign as WWWA world champion.
Kong briefly wrestled in the United States in 1995, most notably scoring all four eliminations for her team in a Survivor Series bout in the PPV of the same name that year. In one bout on RAW, she broke the nose of Chaparita Asari. Kong was set to feud with WWF Womens Champion Alundra Blayze, but Blayze and Kong—along with the entire women’s roster—was released before the match could occur and the division essentially abandoned.
In 1997, Kong left All Japan Womens Pro Wrestling to start her own company, ARSION, or Hyper Visual Fighting ARSION. She led the company until her shocking walkout in 2001 during a tag team match, then sued president Hiroshi Ogawa for falsely advertising for upcoming events. The company never recovered from her walkout, though it would hang around for two more years.
These days, Shishido, who is half Japanese, half African-American, is a freelancer. She's competed for GAEA, Ladies Legend Pro Wrestling, HUSTLE, Oz Academy, DDT, and for Chikara and SHIMMER in the United States. She has three Wrestling Observer Newsletter-rated five star matches, two with Manami Toyota, and is a member of the publication's Hall of Fame Class of 2006.