Wrestling History

December 28th – On This Day In Wrestling History

December 28th - On This Day In Wrestling History

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

1992 – WCW Starrcade ’92: Battlebowl took place at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia. For the second year in a row, the hook of the show was the Lethal Lottery which saw ‘random’ tag teams drawn together with the winners of each match heading to the Battlebowl battle royal to determine the overall individual winner. In the Lottery, Barry Windham and The Great Muta defeated Brian Pillman and 2 Cold Scorpio. The same two eventually remained as the final pair in the battle royal with Muta eliminating Windham for the win.

1997 – WCW presented their most commercially successful PPV of all time, Starrcade from the MCI Center in Washington D.C. The event was built around a blockbuster main event with Hulk Hogan defending the WCW World Heavyweight Championship against Sting in a story that had been building for almost 18 months with Sting not appearing in a single match in that time. The actual match was a farce.

With the story calling for a decisive Sting victory, Hogan instead took the pinfall initially due to a fast count from heel referee, Nick Patrick. The only problem was, it wasn’t a slow count at all! Bret Hart, who had made his WCW debut earlier that night as a special referee in a match between Eric Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko, came to the ring to ensure no other wrestler suffered the injustice he himself had suffered the month prior with the ‘Montreal Screwjob’. The match was restarted and Sting did win eventually but the angle will go down as one of the biggest letdowns in wrestling history.

1998 – In a rematch from the previous night’s Starrcade, Ric Flair defeated Eric Bischoff to win the (storyline) presidency of WCW. On the same night, Scott Steiner defeated Konnan to win the Television Championship.

1999 – In a match for Chyna’s Intercontinental Championship on SmackDown, the ‘Ninth Wonder Of The World’ and Chris Jericho wrestled to a double pinfall draw and were declared co-holders of the title. This situation was resolved at the Royal Rumble the following month when Jericho won a triple-threat match that also included Hardcore Holly to take sole possession of the belt. The WWE no longer recognises this reign. Instead, they list the title as vacant from this date until the Rumble.

2002 – Ring Of Honor presented their first ‘Final Battle’ event from the Murphy Recreational Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the main event, Bryan Danielson, Steve Corino, Low Ki and Samoa Joe wrestled to a 45-minute time limit draw in a match to determine the number one contender for the ROH World Championship.

2009 – Vince McMahon appeared on Monday Night Raw to announce that Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart would guest host the 4th January 2010 episode of Raw, opposite TNA’s announced debut of Hulk Hogan. This would be the first time that Hart would appear in a WWE ring since the ‘Montreal Screwjob’ at Survivor Series in November 1997.

2020 – On an episode of Monday Night Raw, Keith Lee defeated Sheamus to become the number one contender to the WWE Championship.

Notable Wrestling Birthdays:

Notable Wrestling Deaths: