Warnings and birthdays on This Day in Wrestling History (August 1)

Video!

2 years ago today, Beth Phoenix wins a battle royal to earn a shot at the WWE Divas Championship at Summerslam.  The story, however, is what happened during the match, and chances are, you may not have seen it. At 16 seconds of the above video, Gail Kim eliminates herself from the match by going under the bottom rope. It turned out to be her final appearance in the WWE, as she announced on Twitter days later that she had quit the company. Kim tried to get released, but WWE would not budge, seeing she only had a couple of months left on her contract. Her contract expired September 30, and returned to TNA, where she had her biggest success, less than a month later.

1 year ago today, Tito Ortiz made his return to TNA as the infamous August 1 Warning. This, by the way, came at a time when TNA was in the midst of some serious budget cutting that saw over a dozen wrestlers released from the company. It turned out that the angle was mandated by Spike to promote an upcoming Bellator matchup between Ortiz and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson that would take place at their very first PPV...a fight that never took place because Ortiz got injured the week the fight. In a side note, shortly after Ortiz turned on the Main Event Mafia to join the Aces and 8s, both Ortiz and Jackson were pulled from TNA programming, making the whole #August1Warning...entirely pointless.

A happy 42^nd birthday today to Devon Hughes, aka TNA's Brother Devon, but most famously D-Von Dudley in ECW and WWE. As one half of the Dudley Boyz, Devon won 23 tag team championships. He's also a two-time TNA television champion. Here's one of his two TV title wins, from Victory Road 2012 against Robbie E.

Happy 50^th birthday to Mike Hayner, best known as Prince Iaukea of WCW fame. Hayner was a two-time WCW cruiserweight champion and in 1997 won the WCW World Television Championship. The above video is from that match.