February 24th – On This Day In Wrestling History
Our full On This Day In Wrestling History section can be found here.
1991 – WCW ‘WrestleWar ’91’ took place at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona. The main event was a War Games match that saw the team of Larry Zbyszko and The Four Horsemen (Well, three of them – Ric Flair, Barry Windham and Sid Vicious) gain the victory over Sting, The Steiner Brothers and Flyin’ Brian. Also on the show, The Fabulous Freebirds (Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin) defeated Doom (Ron Simmons and Butch Reed) to win the WCW Tag Team Championship.
1995 – Dan Severn defeated Chris Candido in Erlanger, Kentucky to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. He would retain the title for over four years.
1997 – WWE taped a full episode of Raw at The Manhattan Centre in New York City for the very last time to that point. The show wound up as one of the most historic Raw shows of all time. The Legion Of Doom made their surprise return to the WWF for the first time since SummerSlam 1992 with a win over The Headbangers.
In addition, ECW ‘invaded’ the show to further the ECW vs. Jerry Lawler angle and to promoted their first PPV, ‘Barely Legal’. The show featured three ECW matches (Tommy Dreamer defeated D-Von Dudley, Taz beat Mikey Whipwreck and Stevie Richards beat Little Guido) as well as appearances from Paul Heyman, The Eliminators (Perry Saturn and John Kronus), Sabu, The Blue Meanie, Nova, Buh Buh Ray Dudley, The Sandman, New Jack and Bill Alfonso.
Also of note, Ken Shamrock made his first on camera WWE appearance as he was shown as a supposed invited guest to Raw. In a twist of irony, the next show WWE would promote in this venue would be ‘ECW: One Night Stand’ in 2005. Their ‘one night only’ revival of the brand they purchased out of bankruptcy in 2001.
2002 – World Wrestling All-Stars presented their first ever PPV, titled ‘The Revolution’ from The Aladdin Casino Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The main event saw Jeff Jarrett retain the WWA Championship against Brian Christopher. Also on the show, Eddie Guerrero beat Psicosis and Juventud Guerrera to win the WWA International Cruiserweight Championship.
2003 – On Raw from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Booker T eliminated The Rock in a 20-man battle royal to win the opportunity to face Triple H for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XIX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZiRQnmNmA
2011 – By way of a press release, WWE announce they have signed arguably the biggest non-American wrestling star in the world – Sin Cara. His spell with WWE was an unmitigated disaster and he was released three years later to sign with AAA.
2014 – The wrestling media landscape was changed forever when the WWE Network was launched. Initially only available in the USA, the on-demand service (which famously cost $9.99 per month), featured the biggest and best wrestling programming archive in history including every single WWE, WCW and ECW PPV, all episodes of Raw, SmackDown and Nitro and thousands of other shows. It also showed every new WWE live and soon became home to an incredible amount of original, exclusive content.
Notable Wrestling Birthdays:
- Corey Graves (1984)