How do you say sorry for losing the tag titles? You throw a surprise birthday party for your partner. At least, that's what Mankind's idea was. It would be a segment of legendary proportions.
2015: New Japan Pro Wrestling presented Destruction in Kobe from Kobe World Hall in Kobe, Japan.
Sho Tanaka & Yohei Komatsu defeated David Finlay & Jay White.
Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask, and Yuji Nagata defeated Captain New Japan, Juice Robinson, and Manabu Nakanishi.
CHAOS (Beretta, Rocky Romero, Tomohiro Ishii, and YOSHI-HASHI) defeated Great Bash Heel (Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma), Mascara Dorada, and Ryusuke Taguchi.
Matt Sydal & TenKoji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima) defeat BULLET CLUB (Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson, and Kenny Omega).
Tetsuya Naito defeated Katsuyori Shibata.
CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada, Kazushi Sakuraba, and Toru Yano) defeated BULLET CLUB (AJ Styles & Tama Tonga) & Cody Hall.
reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly) defeated Time Splitters (Alex Shelley & KUSHIDA) to retain the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated Bad Luck Fale to retain his IWGP Heavyweight Championship challenge certificate for Wrestle Kingdom 10.
Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Hirooki Goto to win the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. The win gave Nakamura his fifth IWGP Intercontinental title.
2012: on Impact from Universal Orlando, Samoa Joe defeated Mr. Anderson to win the vacated TNA Television Championship.
The title was vacated after contract negotiations between TNA and then-TV champion Devon broke off, with the assumption that Devon would leave the company. Devon wouldn’t be gone long; he would return at Bound for Glory two weeks later as a member of the Aces and Eights.
2010: on RAW from Indianapolis, Indiana, the new WWE Tag Team Championship belts were introduced.
Known in some circles as "the penny belts", the new belts were to replace the two sets of tag team belts used for RAW and Smackdown. WWE also chose to go with the lineage created in 2002 when the Smackdown tag titles were introduced, ending the original tag title lineage that dated back to 1971.
In the first match with the new belts (taped one week earlier), Cody Rhodes & Drew McIntyre defeated the Hart Dynasty (David Hart Smith & Tyson Kidd) to retain the WWE Tag Team Championship.
On the same show, Chris Jericho is punted into semi-retirement by Randy Orton as he had wrapped up his second run with the company. Jericho would return in January 2012.
Also on the same show, Jillian Hall makes her final appearance with the company in a battle royal to determine the #1 contender for the Divas Championship. Jillian is the second to last to be eliminated in the match, which was eventually won by Natalya.
Though the plan going forward was for her to become a trainer for WWE developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling, Hall gets her walking papers six weeks later when her contract expires and is not renewed. Hall would mostly wrestle on the independent circuit until her retirement in January 2014.
2005: At a Smackdown taping in Laredo, Texas, Cowboy Bob Orton wrestles his first WWE match in 18 years. It's a losing effort, as he is defeated by The Undertaker.
1999: On Nitro from Atlanta, Georgia, Billy Kidman defeated Psychosis in a hair versus mask match. As Psychosis lost, he had to unmask.
1999: WWF presented RAW is WAR from the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The show is best remembered for a segment that closed the first hour and bled well into the second. Mankind attempted to make amends with The Rock six days after the duo lost the WWF Tag Team Championship to the surprisingly reunited New Age Outlaws.
His idea: celebrate The Rock’s birthday. He brought The Rock’s high school girlfriend, home economics teacher, and high school football coach. He topped it off by presenting The Rock with his own version of Mr. Socko, appropriately dubbed Mr. Rocko (which would become a plot device for a few weeks). The segment even ended with Mankind leading the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday”…
…except that The Rock’s birthday was back on May 2. Oops. Soon after, Triple H ran out with a sledgehammer and the impromptu party ended.
Start to finish, the skit went about 25 minutes, making it one of the longest uninterrupted segments in the show’s history. Legend had it that Vince McMahon was so unhappy with it running longer than expected, he had to be physically restrained from pulling the plug on it himself.
Then the ratings came in: 6.8 for the show, with an 8.4 for the bulk of the segment, airing in the 10pm -10:15pm ET quarter-hour. It was their best show rating in two months, and ranks among the most-watched episodes in company history.
The segment, known in wrestling lore as “This is Your Life”, is often cited as the highest-rated segment in RAW history. It’s actually not. That goes to the WWF Championship match from the June 28, 1999 episode of RAW is WAR where Stone Cold Steve Austin defeated The Undertaker for his fourth WWF Championship. The segment got a 9.5 rating, with an audience of 10.72 million viewers. It’s the most-watched wrestling match in cable television history.
Full show results:
The Big Show defeated Chris Jericho by disqualification.
D-Lo Brown defeated Steve Blackman by disqualification to retain the WWF European Championship.
Kane & X-Pac defeated The New Age Outlaws (Mr. Ass & The Road Dogg) by disqualification in a WWF Tag Team Championship match.
Mae Young and The Fabulous Moolah defeated Ivory in a handicap evening gown match.
Chyna and Debra defeated Jeff Jarrett and Tom Prichard in just 71 seconds.
The Rock defeated Triple H by disqualification in a WWF Championship match.
1998: WWF presented Breakdown: In Your House from the Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 17,405 were in attendance, with 315,000 homes watching on PPV. That's more than double for the September 1997 event, Ground Zero: In Your House.
Sunday Night Heat matches:
Golga Defeated Mosh.
The Hardy Boys Matt & Jeff defeated Kaientai (Men's Teioh & Funaki).
8 Ball defeated Billy Gunn & Skull.
PPV matches:
Owen Hart defeated Edge.
Al Snow and Scorpio defeated Too Much (Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor).
Marc Mero defeated Droz.
Bradshaw defeated Vader.
D'Lo Brown defeated Gangrel.
The Rock defeated Ken Shamrock and Mankind in a triple threat steel cage match to become the #1 contender for the WWF Championship.
Val Venis defeated Dustin Runnels.
D-Generation X (Billy Gunn, Road Dogg, and X-Pac) defeated Jeff Jarrett and Southern Justice (Mark Canterbury and Dennis Knight).
The Undertaker & Kane defeated Stone Cold Steve Austin in a WWF Championship match. Per pre-match stipulations, The Undertaker and Kane were prohibited from defeating one another, essentially making this a handicap match. Post-match, Vince McMahon stole Steve Austin's personal Smoking Skull belt and taunted Austin with it in the parking lot before leaving the arena.
1995: at a WCW Saturday Night taping in Atlanta, Georgia, Harlem Heat (Booker T & Stevie Ray) defeated the American Males (Marcus Alexander Bagwell & Scotty Riggs) to win the WCW World Tag Team Championship.
The match was never acknowledged, and WCW retaped the bout two weeks later with the same result. The bout doesn't air until October 28, a full month into their tag title reign.
1994: In Osaka, Japan, Norio Honaga defeated Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit in a mask) in the finals of a one-night tournament to win the vacated IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.
The title was vacated when Jushin "Thunder" Liger suffered a broken ankle. Other participants in the six-man tournament were Gran Hamada, Black Tiger (Eddie Guerrero in a mask), El Samurai, and Shinjiro Otani.
1993: On Monday Night RAW from Hartford, Connecticut, it was announced that Shawn Michaels had been stripped of the WWF Intercontinental Championship.
Michaels had a falling out with management and walked out on the company a few days earlier (the falling out stemmed from Michaels disputing a positive drug test; Shawn walked out in protest).
To cover for the absence, it was announced that Michaels had been suspended by the WWF after repeatedly failing to appear at live events where he was scheduled to defend the Intercontinental Championship.
The vacancy would be filled during the taping, but would play out over the following two episodes.
On the October 4 episode, Rick Martel and Razor Ramon were the last two men in a 20-man over-the-top-rope battle royal to earn a WWF intercontinental Championship match. Other participants were I.R.S., The 1-2-3 Kid, The M.V.P., Mr. Perfect, Diesel, Adam Bomb, Bam Bam Bigelow, Macho Man Randy Savage, Pierre, Jacques, Giant Gonzalez, Marty Jannetty, Bastion Booger, Owen Hart, Tatanka, Mabel, Bob Backlund, and "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka.
On the October 11 episode, Razor Ramon defeated Rick Martel to win the vacated WWF Intercontinental Championship. It would be the first of a then-record four Intercontinental titles for “Da Bad Guy”.
1987: In Marietta, Georgia, The Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty) defeated Boris Zukhov & Soldat Ustinov to win the AWA World Tag Team Championship.
OR DID THEY?
No, actually they didn't. When it was discovered the Rockers pinned the illegal man, the belts were returned to Zukhov & Ustimov.
It wouldn’t be the first time Michaels and Jannetty were screwed out of tag title gold; in October 1990, the duo defeated The Hart Foundation for the WWF Tag Team Championship, but a ring rope broke during the match (allegedly; there are numerous stories as to why the titles didn’t change hands), and the result was essentially nullified and stricken from the record.
1965: Bruno Sammartino's WWWF Championship belt was stolen from a locked car in New York City.
Sammartino at the time the belt was stolen was eating at a restaurant following an event in Madison Square Garden. Though there was speculation the belt was found in an Avon, New York attic back in 2012, the belt Sammartino had was never recovered.