July 12th – On This Day In Wrestling History
1986 – Wrestling legend Bruno Sammartino wrestled his final match in Madison Square Garden, an arena synonymous with his name and ability to sell it out during his fabled WWWF Championship reign. The match itself saw Sammartino team with WWF Intercontinental Champion Tito Santana to defeat ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and Adrian Adonis in a steel cage match.
1992 – WCW’s Great American Bash took place in the Gray Civic Center in Albany, Georgia. The big talking point of the event saw Big Van Vader defeat Sting to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. In addition, new NWA World Tag Team Champions were crowned in a one night tournament. They had been vacated after the launch of WCW led to the new company launching their own tag team titles. The belts were eventually won by the reigning WCW World Tag Team Champions Terry Gordy and Steve Williams when they beat Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham in the tournament final. The two sets of titles were defended together until WCW resigned from the NWA in September 1993.
1995 – Jack Tunney, the long time on screen president of the WWF was released from the company. He had served as the company’s on screen authority figure since 1984 and had long been instrumental behind the scenes in the WWF’s Canadian operations.
1998 – WCW Bash At The Beach took place on PPV from the Cox Arena in San Diego, California. The heavily hyped main event saw ‘Hollywood’ Hogan team with the ‘controversial’ Chicago Bulls player, Dennis Rodman to defeat Diamond Dallas Page and NBA superstar Karl Malone. Also on the card, Rey Mysterio defeated Chris Jericho to win the WCW Cruiserweight Championship. The title was returned to Jericho the next night on WCW Monday Nitro because of Dean Malenko’s inteference in this bout.
1999 – It is announced that wrestler, actor and then reigning Governor of Minnesota Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura will return to WWE as special referee in the main event of the upcoming SummerSlam PPV.
2000 – On an episode of Monday Nitro from Jacksonville, Florida, Hulk Hogan defeated ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship just one night after Savage himself won the belt.
2007 – At a WWE SmackDown taping in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Finlay defeated Bobby Lashley to win the WWE United States Championship.
2011 – At a taping of Impact! at the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida, Miss Tessmacher and Tara defeated Rosita and Sarita to win the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship.
2020 – EVIL became only the second man to hold both the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships when he defeated Tetsuya Naito to win both belts at NJPW Dominion in Osaka, Japan. Also on the card Taichi and Zack Sabre Jr. won the IWGP World Tag Team Championship from Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi.
Notable Wrestling Birthdays:
- Shane ‘Hurricane’ Helms (1974)
- Akira Katayama (1964)