December 23rd – On This Day In Wrestling History
Our full On This Day In Wrestling History section can be found here.
1999 – At a taping for ‘ECW On TNN’ in White Plains, New York, Mike Awesome defeated Masato Tanaka to win his second and final ECW World Heavyweight Championship. The show would air on New Year’s Eve and Awesome would hold the belt until he signed with WCW in April and dropped the belt to Taz in a unique match where a WCW-signed talent faced a WWE-signed talent on an ECW show.
2000 – Just two weeks before the company shut down for good, ECW held ‘Holiday Hell’, their final ever event at the fabled ECW Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the main event, and therefore the last ECW match held in the arena, Steve Corino retained the ECW World Heavyweight Championship against Justin Credible and The Sandman in a three-way dance. In an act of appropriate symbolism, The Sandman laid out Corino after the match and left with the title.
2006 – Ring of Honor’s ‘Final Battle’ event took place at the Manhattan Center in New York City. In the main event, Homicide defeated Bryan Danielson for the ROH World Championship to end the future Daniel Bryan’s 15-month reign.
2010 – Kaval, better known as Low Ki, was released from WWE just six months after making his televised debut. In that time, the first-ever ROH Champion won the second season of NXT (in its original competition format) but then won only one televised match during his main roster run.
2011 – Ring Of Honor ‘Final Battle’ emanated from the Manhattan Center in New York City. The sole title change on the card saw Jay and Mark Briscoe defeat The World’s Greatest Tag Team (Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin) to win the ROH Tag Team Championship. In the main event, Davey Richards defeated his American Wolves partner Eddie Edwards to retain the ROH World Championship.
2020 – On an episode of NXT, Adam Cole defeated a returning Velveteen Dream. This would end up being Dream’s last match for the company before his release in May 2021.
Notable Wrestling Birthdays:
- Rob Terry (1980)
- Jamie Noble (1976)
- The Great Muta (1962)
Notable Wrestling Deaths:
- Mr. Niebla (2019)