This Week in 90’s Wrestling: March 15th – 21st

MARCH 20

1992

AJW held a card at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall where Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada faced Aja Kong and Bison Kimura in a **** match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYq1SwX2Rew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=homAqjz-0H4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kAT9YrI9qE

All Japan Pro Wrestling held a card at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall, which featured a ***3/4 Championship Carnival match between Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUqwe7m5xjM

PWFG held a card in Miami, FL, billed as shootfighting with matches that were actually worked. Yoshiaki Fujiwara faced Bart Vale in a ***1/2 match with incredible atmosphere that has to be seen to be believed.

1993

SMW aired one of the most memorable matches in their history on television, as Kevin Sullivan absolutely brutalized a young W*ING Kanemura in a match so bloody that it had to be censored. This did a spectacular job getting Sullivan over as an uncontrollable madman and the angle was strong enough for Sullivan to work some W*ING shows against Kanemura later in the year as well.

1994

The WWF aired Wrestlemania X live on pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden in New York City, in front of a live crowd of a sellout 18,065 fans, with an additional 4,200 fans at the Paramount next door. The show is widely considered one of the best pay-per-views of all time. In the opener, Bret Hart lost to Owen Hart in a ****3/4 match before going on to win the WWF World Title from Yokozuna in the main event of the show. Yokozuna defended the title against Lex Luger earlier in the card. Bret’s title victory signaled the beginning of the “New Generation” era for the WWF where they attempted to rebuild around new stars since Hulk Hogan departed the company and Vince McMahon saw no additional value in Randy Savage. Also on the show, Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon had the first ever ladder match on a WWF pay-per-view and in the process created a ****1/2 match and the hottest gimmick match of the mid-1990s. The show did approximately 483,000 buys, and you can watch it on the WWE Network.

1996

AJW held a card in Hakata in front of 2,450 fans. In the main event, Manami Toyota successfully defended the WWWA title against Sakie Hasegawa in one of her better title defenses at ****.

New Japan held a card at the Aliichi Gym in Nagoya in front of a sellout 11,000 fans. Shinjiro Otani defeated Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit) in a *** match on the show to become the first-ever WCW Cruiserweight Champion.

1999

Kurt Angle made his debut in Memphis Power Pro Wrestling, which was one of the WWF’s developmental territories at the time.

WCW Worldwide featured a short but insane Raven-Kaz Hayashi match.

In The “To Watch” Queue:

Bull Nakano vs Kyoko Inoue (AJW 03/20/92) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

Mitsuharu Misawa & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW 03/20/92)

Etsuko Mita & Toshiyo Yamada vs Yumiko Hotta & Bat Yoshinaga (AJW 03/20/93)

Manami Toyota vs Takako Inoue (AJW 03/20/93)

Paul Orndorff vs Dustin Rhodes (WCW Worldwide 03/20/93)

Masa Chono vs Kazuo Yamazaki (NJPW 03/20/96)