November 15th – On This Day In Wrestling History
Our full On This Day In Wrestling History section can be found here.
1989 – NWA Clash of the Champions IX: New York Knockout is held at Houston Field House, Troy, New York. The main event is a non-title ‘I Quit’ match between the ‘Nature Boy’ Ric Flair and Terry Funk. Flair would win the match by making Funk quit when he locked in the Figure Four. The match would go on to be voted the fourth-best match of the year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. (The top three all featured Flair too, and all against Ricky Steamboat.)
1998 – WWF Survivor Series was held in St. Louis, Missouri but didn’t feature any traditional Survivor Series matches. Instead, the event played host to the Deadly Game tournament to crown the new WWF Champion. Going into the event, the story depicted Mankind as Vince McMahon’s chosen winner as McMahon’s gang of lackeys helped him through the rounds while seeming to attempt to put barriers in the way of The Rock and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.
It transpired that this was an elaborate ruse as The Rock turned out to be McMahon’s chosen champion and he defeated Mankind with the sharpshooter in the main event as McMahon brazenly re-enacted the ‘Montreal Screwjob’ from the year prior. When looking back on the incredibly well-booked tournament, viewers could easily see that it was being set up for The Rock to win, but it was incredibly well hidden in the booking until the reveal at the end of the final match.
2004 – On an episode of Raw, William Regal & Eugene defeated La Resistance and Rhyno & Tajiri to win the WWE Tag Team Championships.
2005 – In Rome, a WWE title changed hands in Italy for the first time as Nunzio defeated Juventud Guerrera to win the Cruiserweight Title.
2006 – TNA Impact moved to primetime on Spike for the first time with a two-hour special main event by Kurt Angle defeating Abyss. On the same card, Christopher Daniels defeated AJ Styles and Chris Sabin to win the X-Division Championship.
2008 – UFC 91 took place in Las Vegas, Nevada and in the second round of their match, Brock Lesnar beat Randy Couture via TKO making Lesnar the first person to win heavyweight championships in the NCAA, WWE, New Japan, and UFC.
2009 – TNA PPV Turning Point was in Orlando, Florida. On the show, all TNA championships were put on the line in various matches and all were retained by the respective champions, with the TNA World Champion AJ Styles keeping hold of his belt in a triple-threat main event against both Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe when Styles pinned Joe following a 450 splash on both his opponents.
2010 – WWE Monday Night Raw presented their first-ever ‘Old School’ special featuring the return of the classic Monday Night Raw. Mae Young, at 77 years of age, challenged both members of LayCool (Michelle McCool and Layla) in a handicap, no disqualification match. Mae picked up the win in less than a minute after interference from most of the women’s roster, making her the oldest person to ever win a match in the WWE. Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) also took on Jack Swagger (Jake Hager) inside the retro ring.
2013 – HOG (House Of Glory) Fight For Gold was held in New York. The main event saw the Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) defeat Latin American Exchange (Hernandez and Homicide) in a tournament final to crown the first-ever HOG Tag Team Champions.
2016 – The Miz defeated Dolph Ziggler in the opening match of the 900th episode of SmackDown to win the Intercontinental Championship.
Notable Wrestling Birthdays:
- ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage (1952)
- Tegan Nox (1994)