MARCH 29
1994
The Championship Carnival continued with a show in Toyama that foreshadowed the Carnival final coming in a few weeks, as Steve Williams and Toshiaki Kawada faced off in a ****1/4 match.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVuBsAIkuWs
1998
The Attitude Era kicked into high gear when the WWF presented Wrestlemania XIV from Boston, MA, live on pay-per-view. In the main event, Steve Austin won the WWF World Title for the first time, defeating Shawn Michaels, who had his last match for four years. Mike Tyson was a special ringside enforcer, which garnered the WWF a healthy amount of publicity and helped push the pay-per-view over the top, as the show did 730,000 buys, a record number at the time for a wrestling pay-per-view. Also on the show, the New Age Outlaws faced Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie in a Dumpster Match while The Undertaker and Kane had their first of many matches against each other. The Legion of Doom were repackaged as LOD 2000 with a new look and Sunny as their manager while Sable made her in-ring debut, teaming with Marc Mero against Goldust and Luna Vachon in a match where she was carried to something decent and showed off some impressive moves. The Rock also had one of his first hugely memorable segments when he interviewed Bill Clinton’s former mistress Gennifer Flowers. This show is largely credited for reversing the WWF’s fortunes in the war with WCW, and you can watch it on the WWE Network.
All Japan continued its Championship Carnival with a show in Nagoya, which featured a ***3/4 match between Mitsuharu Misawa and Toshiaki Kawada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mmnhngb2ys
1999
WCW held Monday Nitro in Toronto, Ontario, in front of a sellout 16,195 fans. The show is most remembered for an angle involving Bret Hart and Goldberg, where Bret claimed he could beat Goldberg in five minutes. Goldberg speared him and Bret was wearing a steel plate under his jersey. In “quitting WCW” (in storyline), Bret received a hero’s welcome in Toronto and this was the highlight of his otherwise disappointing WCW run. Also on the show, Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman defeated Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko to win the WCW World Tag Team Titles in a **** match while in the main event, Hulk Hogan and Diamond Dallas Page had a surprisingly good ***3/4 match. Despite delivering a strong show, Nitro was competing with the post-Wrestlemania RAW after a record-setting buyrate the day before, so they scored a 3.5 rating, to that point, their lowest of the year.
In The “To Watch” Queue:
Rey Misterio Jr., Super Calo & Leon Negro vs Juventud Guerrera, Psicosis & Halloween (AAA 03/29/96)
Konnan, La Parka & Octagon vs Juventud Guerrera, Psicosis & Halloween (AAA 03/29/96, Lumberjack Match)
