Wrestling History

January 22nd – On This Day In Wrestling History

January 22nd - On This Day In Wrestling History

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

1994 – WWE’s Royal Rumble took place at the Civic Centre in Providence, Rhode Island. The main event of the show set Royal Rumble history when, for the first time, two men jointly won the match. Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart and Lex Luger both hit the floor at the same time and were declared co-winners. Earlier on the card, champion Yokozuna defeated The Undertaker in a casket match for the WWE Championship. The victory came after the champion had assistance from around ten other wrestlers. Following the match, Undertaker was made out to have ascended to heaven as a way to cover for The Deadman’s first significant break since he started with the company in late 1990.

1995 – Shawn Michaels was the winner of the Royal Rumble match at the PPV of the same name from the USF Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida. He won after entering at number two, last eliminating the number one entrant, The British Bulldog. Elsewhere on the card, two new champions were crowned. Firstly, Jeff Jarrett defeated Razor Ramon to win the Intercontinental Championship. In the final of a tournament to declare new Tag Team Champions, The 1-2-3 Kid and Marty Jannetty defeated Tatanka and Bam Bam Bigelow. During the match, Bigelow got into a scuffle with NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor which led to the two men clashing in the main event of WrestleMania.

1995 – ‘Crusher’ Jerry Blackwell died in a car crash at the age of 46.

1996 – On an episode of WCW Monday Nitro held in Las Vegas, Nevada, Sting & Lex Luger beat Harlem Heat (Booker T & Stevie Ray) to win the WCW Tag Team Championship.

2001 – The 400th episode of Monday Night Raw took place in Lafayette, Louisiana. On the show, Test took the WWE European Championship from William Regal. Also, Al Snow bested Raven for the Hardcore Championship before promptly losing it back to Raven moments later.

2003 – On a NWA-TNA weekly PPV in Nashville, Triple X (Low Ki & Elix Skipper) won the NWA Tag Team Championships from America’s Most Wanted (James Storm & Chris Harris)

2008 – Chavo Guerrero defeated CM Punk to win the ECW Championship at a TV taping in Charlottesville, Virginia.

2018 – Monday Night Raw celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a unique show taking place over two venues and featuring a plethora of legends from past and present. The main part of the show went down at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York and featured The Miz defeating Roman Reigns for the Intercontinental Championship. The supplementary part of the show took place at The Manhattan Centre in New York City, the original site of Raw back in 1993. That portion of the programme featured a match between Bray Wyatt and ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy.

2021 – On an episode of SmackDown, Bianca Belair defeated Bayley in the ‘ultimate athlete obstacle course challenge’. To close the show, Kevin Owens put Roman Reigns through the announce table with a pop-up powerbomb ahead of their match at the Royal Rumble.

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