This Day in Wrestling History (January 26)

28 years ago today at a WWF TV taping in Tampa, Florida, The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart) defeated The British Bulldogs to win the WWF Tag Team Championship. Both Hart Foundation manager Jimmy Hart and referee Danny Davis had a hand in the victory.

WWF Superstars 1987 - Piper's Pit With Hulk Hogan by Bluthor

During the same taping, three important editions of Piper's Pit were taped. Two of the three ultimately set up the main event of Wrestlemania III (one involving Andre the Giant introducing his new manager Bobby Heenan and ripping the shirt and crucifix from Hogan after he did not accept the challenge for a WWF title match; the second being Hogan accepting the challenge), with the third being Piper announcing his Wrestlemania III bout with Adrian Adonis would be his last before retiring.

15 years ago today, WWF taped their infamous Halftime Heat match at the Tucson Civic Center in Tucson, Arizona. The bout, the WWF's first and only Empty Arena match in company history, saw Mankind defeat The Rock using a wooden palette on a forklift to win the WWF Championship. The match aired five days later during halftime of Super Bowl XXXIII.

10 years ago today, Chris Benoit returns to RAW for the first time in about a year and a half. He used a loophole to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania XX after winning the Royal Rumble match. The loophole would be closed the next year, enabling whoever won the Royal Rumble match the freedom to choose which championship to go after.

6 years ago today, Ring of Honor announced via press release that they would broadcast a weekly television show on HDNet. This was the first major weekly television deal for the Philadelphia promotion. The show would run for two years before the company was bought by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, who has since handled the TV rights to the show.

1 year ago today, WWE presented Royal Rumble from the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 15,715 were in attendance, with 467,000 homes watching on PPV. That's down from 512,000 for the 2013 event. Of note, this was the final appearance of CM Punk. He would leave WWE in the hours following the match and subsequently announce his retirement from professional wrestling. The event may be considered one of the great PR disasters in recent memory in wrestling, with many taking to social media following the event expressing their displeasure of the event.

• In a preshow match, The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg & Billy Gunn) defeated The Brotherhood (Cody Rhodes & Goldust) to win the WWE Tag Team Championship.
• Bray Wyatt defeated Daniel Bryan.
• Brock Lesnar defeated The Big Show.
• Randy Orton defeated John Cena to retain the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
• Batista last eliminated Roman Reigns to win the Royal Rumble match.

Notes:

• Kane was not in the Royal Rumble match when he eliminated Punk.
• This was Batista's first match since leaving the WWE in May 2010.
• Roman Reigns broke the single Rumble record for eliminations with 12.