Wrestling History

April 23rd – On This Day In Wrestling History

Our full On This Day In Wrestling History section can be found here.

1979 – Ricky Steamboat and Paul Jones snared the NWA Tag Team Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina with a win over The Masked Superstar and Ken Patera.

1988 – The Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup tag team tournament was held for the last time until its revival in 2019. In the final, Sting and Lex Luger defeated Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson.

1990 – When The Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan to win the WWF Championship at WrestleMania VI he was immediately forced to vacate the Intercontinental Championship with a tournament set to crown a new champion. The first three quarter-final matches were taped on April 23rd for WWF Superstars in Austin, Texas. WWF also taped the final of the tournament with Mr. Perfect emerging as the winner and new IC Champion which was aired on May 19th. However, WWF didn’t tape the fourth and final quarter-final match until the next night on April 24th in San Antonio, Texas which was a match between Rick Martel and Roddy Piper which ended in a double DQ which aired on May 13th. This meant Perfect and Santana automatically got a bye to the final and that the tournament had already ended before all the quarter-final matches had actually taken place.

2006 – TNA Lockdown was held at The Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida. The main event was a Lethal Lockdown match that saw Sting’s Warriors (Sting, AJ Styles, Rhino and Ron ‘The Truth’ Killings) defeated Jarrett’s Army (Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner, Chris Harris and James Storm).

2007 – WWE Raw was taped from Earls Court in London, England. The main event saw Shawn Michaels defeat WWE Champion John Cena in a one-fall bout that lasted just short of one hour.

2012 – On an episode of Raw from Detroit, Michigan, Nikki Bella won the WWE Divas Championship in a Lumberjill match against Beth Phoenix.

Notable Wrestling Birthdays: