The April 13 edition of ‘This day...’ looks back at those days when TNA was still fun. The highest earner in the WWE for the past year, Kurt Angle would join TNA in 2006 for want of a lighter schedule and this created the opportunity for the promotion to pit him against Samoa Joe.
Joe would see his long unbeaten streak ended by Angle before proceeding to force the former WWE Champion to submit. Their matches put TNA on the map again after the initial buzz of the X-Division had died down.
On April 13, 2008, Angle and Joe fought over the TNA World title.
Also on this date, Taz and Terry Funk created ECW history.
#1 Samoa Joe vs Kurt Angle – Lockdown, 13th April 2008
Samoa Joe had been TNA Wrestling’s version of Goldberg. TNA Creative built Joe up with an eighteen-month unbeaten streak which was broken after a match for the ages against Kurt Angle in 2006.
Angle and Joe would exchange victories in their feud, with Angle winning their deciding match on Ironman rules 3-2 while being saved from tapping out by the clock timing out.
Joe and Angle would rekindle their rivalry in 2008 and they would clash for Angle’s TNA World Championship at the 13th April Lockdown PPV. Joe would pick up the victory and the title after another critically favoured match.
While Joe vs Angle really put TNA on the map, the booking failed to capitalise on Joe’s ascent. Joe would have a lengthy title reign of six months, successfully defending his title against the likes of Angle, Scott Steiner, Frankie Kazarian and Booker T, before losing it to Sting.
Surprisingly, the TNA original would never be chosen as the World Champion again.
#2 Taz wins the ECW World title while being in the WWE – 13th April 2000
When ECW Champion Mike Awesome signed a contract with WCW, Paul Heyman’s company was in a fix. Heyman did not want to risk Awesome taking the ECW title to WCW and convinced him to lose the title the same week.
Heyman picked ECW legend Taz to win the belt. Only one problem – Taz was a WWE wrestler at the time. But the WWE granted Taz permission to wrestle in ECW, hoping to further weaken their main rivals WCW.
So on the 13th March 2000 episode of ECW, a WWE wrestler beat a WCW wrestler in an ECW ring to claim the ECW Championship.
Taz would wear the belt on a number of WWE house shows including a SmackDown match against Triple H, before dropping it to ECW’s Tommy Dreamer ten days later.
#3 Terry Funk wins the ECW title – Barely Legal, April 13th, 1997
Terry Funk was already a wrestling legend when he promised to help the fledgeling Eastern Championship Wrestling (which later became ECW) by appearing on shows.
Besides being the main foreign attraction in Japan, he had also had stints in the two major American promotions (WWF and WCW) – wrestling the mainstays of those two promotions in Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair respectively.
Paul Heyman banked on Funk’s credibility to push ECW to the mainstream and Funk returned Heyman’s call when he decided to take part in ECW’s first ever PPV – Barely Legal in 1997.
Funk headlined the card, first beating Steven Richards and the Sandman in a Triple threat match to become the No. 1 contender for Raven’s ECW World title, before beating the master of the Flock for the title later that night.
Funk would later lose the title to Sabu in an insane barbed wired match where the ring ropes were replaced with barbed wires. Funk would have further stints in the WWE and WCW and continued to wrestle till 2015 at the age of 71.
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