This Day In History - April 4th
April 4th
On this day in history in ....
1969 - The Assassins (Jody Hamilton & Tom Renesto) defeats El Mongol & Louie Tillet in Atlanta, Georgia in a tournament final to win the NWA Georgia Tag Team Title.
1984 - Jack & Jerry Brisco defeat Wahoo McDaniel & Mark Youngblood for the NWA World Tag Team Title in Spartanburg, South Carolina, starting their third reign with the belts.
1993 - Wrestlemania IX took place. Mike Johnson penned the following:
WRESTLEMANIA IX
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Venue: Cesar's Palace
Announced Attendance: 16,891
RESULTS
*Tatanka with Sherri Martel defeated WWF Intercontinental champion Shawn Michaels with Luna Vachon via DQ when Shawn struck referee Joey Marella. Vachon made her WWF debut here. Tatanka had been chasing Michaels for several weeks on Monday Night Raw.
*The Steiner Brothers, in their Wrestlemania debut, defeat The Headshrinkers when Scott Steiner hit Samu with a Frankensteiner.
*Doink the Clown (Matt Borne) pinned Crush (Bryan Adams in his second WWF guise as Crush, the first being a member of Demolition) after a second Doink (Steve Keirn) came out from under the ring and his Crush with a prosthetic arm. The original Doink had clobbered Crush with one on TV several weeks earlier to set up this match. The two Doinks mimmick each other's moves in a bit stolen from the Marx Brothers.
*Razor Ramon (later known as Scott Hall) pinned Bob Backlund with a cradle. This was a Wrestlemania debut for both men. Backlund looked like he stepped back in and returned from the chasm his disappeared into in the mid-1980s .
*WWF Tag Team champions Money, Inc. defeated "The Mega-Maniacs" Hulk Hogan and Brutus Beefcake by DQ. Beefcake returned to the ring against DiBiase on Monday Night Raw for the first time since his parasailing accident several years earlier and was laid out and hit with Money Inc.'s metal briefcase. The attack was so evil that Money Inc.'s own manager Jimmy Hart saw the light and abandoned them, starting his long running associated with Hogan which continues to this day. Beefcake wore a special mask to protect his face in the ring. Hogan worked the show with a bad black eye, which was attributed to a jet skiing accident. Hogan looks way smaller than he did a year prior.
*The Narcissist Lex Luger pinned Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig after hitting him with a forearm with a metal plate planted inside it from a motorcycle accident that prevented Luger from posing during the WBF championships the prior year. Luger enters the ring with several women who all hold mirrors with sparklers blowing out of them for him to pose. Once Hennig is revived after the match, he goes looking for Luger, and ends up in a brawl with Shawn Michaels to start their program.
*The Undertaker defeated Giant Gonzales via DQ in one of the worst Wrestlemania matches ever. Undertaker came out in grand style with a vulture perched next to him on a cart he rode in. Just a bad match.
*Yokozuna, with Mr. Fuji pinned Bret Hart to win the WWF championship after throwing salt in Bret's eyes. Hart had been on a tear as the new WWF champion for the last several months while Yokozuna was undefeated. Hulk Hogan came out to check on his friend Bret Hart (so close they were never seen teaming or on camera together before this) and ended up challenged by Fuji to challenge for the belt right there. Hart tells him to go for it. 90 seconds and a legdrop later, Hogan ended a Wrestlemania as champion when he wasn't even advertised for the main event.
Celebrities: Um, None. Todd Pettingill interviewed singer Natalie Cole in the crowd, but that was about it.
Notes: What more can be said about the debuting Jim Ross, in his first WWF appearance, being dressed in a toga?....The actual theme of the show was to have the biggest toga party in the history of modern times but there are some things that not even wrestling fans were willing to do.....This show is memorable as the only Wrestlemania to be held in an outdoor venue, which was actually a tennis court dressed up as a recreation of the Roman Coliseum, complete with King Cesar and Cleopatra characters...They did grand entrances to open the show with Randy Savage on an elephant and Bobby Heenan backwards on a camel to play up Heenan's comedic character. Savage, Ross, and Heenan hosted the PPV....Yokozuna became the first man in the history of Wrestlemania to main event the show and win the WWF championship at the same time at this show....There were actual Wrestlemania-themed slot machines at Cesar's Palace, promoting the show with photos of Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart and Money, Inc...This was the first Wrestlemania of the "Raw era", taking place just four months after the debut of Monday Night Raw on the USA Network....In a dark match before they went on the air, Tito Santana pinned Papa Shango, who went from a run-in during the main event last year to dark matches this year....If you watch the crowd during the scene at ringside with The Undertaker and Giant Gonzales, you'll see future Men on A Mission manager Oscar sitting there. Folklore has it that he followed several WWF officials into an elevator that weekend and with a captive audience began rapping for them and ended up with a job. A year later, he was managing the challengers for the tag straps at Wrestlemania X.
Mike Johnson: This was a show that didn't seem to click at all, and if you were a fan who was into the big push (and great matches) Bret Hart was having at the time, by the end of the show you were wanting to strangle Hulk Hogan. Shawn Michaels had an OK match with Tatanka and The Steiners looked good but nothing really clicked on this show. This was during a major downturn in WWF business and they were struggling to recreate what they were using smaller, more athletic performers. It showed.
Jess McGrath: As Mike said, not a high point for the Mania series. It started off great, actually, as Shawn Michaels-Tatanka was really good, and the Steiners had a good match with the Shrinkers. But it went downhill from there. I was so disappointed when they moved the belt off Bret and onto Hogan of all people. It was one of those deals, much like when Michaels beat HHH for the title in the elimination chamber, where it sounded like a good idea on paper, and that night it got a great reaction, but the next day you had a hangover-like feeling as you wondered to yourself, "Did they really do that?" They set up an incredibly boring post-Mania feud between Bret Hart and Lex Luger with an angle, aired on the syndicated shows the week afterward, where Luger attacked Bret with the metal plate in his forearm (remember that whole deal?) during some Wrestlemania brunch. Yes, it was actually a feud built around "You attacked me during brunch, dammit!"
Dave Scherer: This show started out with two good matches and went way downhill from there. Jim Ross' debut in a toga is probably the biggest memory that I have of the show, and that says it all. The wrestling business in the US was in the toilet at this time, no doubt about it. When we complain about the product today, we should keep that in mind! On the bright side, we were just a few months away from ECW's first super show!
Buck Woodward: I remember being bummed that Tito Santana was given a dark match on this show, as he was neck and neck with Hogan for consecutive Wrestlemania appearances. If this match had aired, and he made it to the tenth, he would have had a ten year streak. ... I also thought it was ridiculous that they killed Bob Backlund's comeback streak with a four minute loss to Razor Ramon. Little did we know how far he was about to be pushed in the company. ... The Steiners-Headshrinkers and Tatanka-Michaels matches were the only real wrestling highlights of the event. ... The toga motif for the event looked ridiculous. ... I remember joking with a friend about how "Hogan can't hog the glory this year" and then he went and did it. ... This show just didn't impress me as being anything special.
1994 - Tatsumi Fujinami defeats Shinya Hashimoto for the IWGP Heavyweight Title in Hiroshima, Japan, the fifth of his record six reigns with the title.
1998 - Rob Van Dam defeats Bam Bam Bigelow for the ECW World Television Title in Buffalo, New York, beginning the longest ECW Title reign of any kind ever (one year, eleven months).
1998 - Tatsumi Fujinami defeats Kensuke Sasaki for the IWGP Heavyweight Title in Tokyo, Japan, for his record sixth reign (and to date, final reign) with the title.
2000 - Shawn Michaels comes out of retirement to defeat Texas Wrestling Alliance Champion Venom in a streetfight, the culmination of a long storyline between the two. Michaels would immediately vacate the belt and go back into retirement.
2001 - Nick Gage & Nate Hatred defeat Wife Beater & Justice Pain for the Combat Zone Wrestling Tag Team Titles.
PWI
