This Day in Wrestling History (December 23): Final Battle

16 years ago today at an ECW on TNN taping in White Plains, New York, Mike Awesome defeated Masato Tanaka to regain the ECW World Heavyweight Championship.

15 years ago today, ECW held their final event ever at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event, Holiday Hell, came just two weeks before ECW's shutdown.

• Chilly Willy versus The Blue Boy Ended in a no contest.
• Danny Doring and Amish Roadkill defeated Da Baldies (Tony DeVito & Spanish Angel) to retain the ECW World Tag Team Championship.
• Balls Mahoney defeated Bilvis Wesley.
• Jerry Lynn defeated Spike Dudley.
• CW Anderson defeated Super Crazy.
• EZ Money defeated Nova via TKO. The referee stopped the match when Nova was bleeding from the ear.
• EZ Money, Chris Hamrick, and Julio Dinero defeated Tommy Dreamer, Joey Matthews, and Christian York.
• The Unholy Alliance (Mikey Whipwreck & Yoshihiro Tajiri) defeated The FBI (Little Guido & Tony Mamaluke) 2-1 in a best of three falls match.
• Steve Corino defeated The Sandman and Justin Credible in a three-way dance match to retain the ECW World Heavyweight Championship. Near the end of the match, fans threw chairs into the ring. Post-match, Sandman laid Corino out and left with the ECW Championship belt.

9 years ago today, Ring of Honor presented Final Battle from the Manhattan Center in New York City.

• Jimmy Rave defeated Christopher Daniels, Davey Richards, and El Generico in a Four Corner Survival match.
• Adam Pearce defeated Ricky Reyes.
• Jimmy Jacobs & Brent Albright defeated Colt Cabana & BJ Whitmer.
• The Briscoe Brothers (Jay & Mark Briscoe) defeated the Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli).
• Jimmy Rave defeated Nigel McGuinness.
• CIMA, Shingo & Matt Sydal defeated Austin Aries, Roderick Strong & Delirious.
• Homicide defeated Bryan Danielson to win the ROH World Championship. The win ended Danielson's record run of successful title defenses at 38 over 15 months. The number of title defenses would be tied by Nigel McGuiness, who had 38 defenses over an 18-month period.

6 years ago today, THQ and WWE announce they have signed a new eight-year agreement to develop and publish WWE video games effective January 1. This comes just a day after a long-standing lawsuit between THQ, WWE, and Jakks Pacific was settled out of court. THQ would file for bankruptcy just two years later and lose the WWE games license to Take-Two Interactive.

5 years ago today, Brandon Silvestry, best known as Low Ki, but had a brief run in WWE as Kaval, was released from the company just six months after making his television debut for them. Silvestry won the second season of NXT in August, but won just once on television following his NXT win.

4 years ago today, Ring of Honor presented Final Battle from the Manhattan Center in New York City.

• Michael Elgin defeated TJ Perkins.
• Tommaso Ciampa defeated Jimmy Rave.
• Jay Lethal defeated El Generico and Mike Bennettto retain the ROH World Television Championship.
• Kevin Steen defeated Steve Corino in a no disqualification match. Jimmy Jacobs was the special referee. With the win, Steen was reinstated as a member of the roster. Had he lost, he would have been banned from ROH for life.
• The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) defeated Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander and Future Shock (Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly) and The All-Night Express (Kenny King & Rhett Titus) and The Bravado Brothers (Harlem Bravado & Lancelot Bravado) in a ROH World Tag Team Title #1 Contendership Tag Team Gauntlet match.
  • Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander defeated The Bravado Brothers.
  • Future Shock defeated Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander.
  • The Young Bucks defeated Future Shock.
  • The Young Bucks defeated The All-Night Express.
• Roderick Strong defeated Chris Hero.
• The Briscoes defeated Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team (Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin) to win the ROH World Tag Team Championship.
• Davey Richards defeated Eddie Edwards to retain the ROH World Championship.

Chris Benoit vs Eddie Guerrero WCW Nitro 1996... by CripplerAppreciation
BONUS! From 19 years ago today, here's Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero on Nitro in a semifinal match for the vacated WCW United States Championship. If you have WWE Network, here's the entire episode.

It's a happy 53^rd birthday to Keiji Mutoh. Known sometimes under his real name, he's best known as legendary puroresu wrestler The Great Muta.

The former Master Sergeant in the Japanese military is one of three men to hold the NWA, All Japan, and IWGP Heavyweight Championships (the other two are Shinya Hashimoto and Satoshi Kojima). Mutoh is also a five-time AJPW tag team champion and a six-time IWGP tag team champion, the winner of WCW's Battlebowl in 1992, and the G1 Climax in 1995.

He's often credited as being one of the first Japanese wrestlers to achieve a significant fanbase in the United States, and birthed the "Muta scale" following a match against Hiroshi Hase, considered by many to be the bloodiest in wrestling history.

Mutoh was the president and owner of All Japan Pro Wrestling from 2002 to 2013; in June 2013, Mutoh led a second mutiny on All Japan Pro Wrestling (the first was led by Mitsuhara Misawa in 2000) and founded Wrestle-1.

Mutoh is one of the most honored wrestlers in history, winning Tokyo Sports Magazine's Wrestler of the Year award four times, their match of the year twice, and part of tag team of the year twice. Two of his bouts have been rated five stars from Wrestling Observer Newsletter, and won four awards from the publication in 2001 (Wrestler of the Year, Most Improved, Match of the Year, and Best Wrestling Manuever), and is a member of their Hall of Fame class of 1999. Pro Wrestling Illustrated ranked him one of the 25 greatest singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003, and was ranked #3 in the 2002 PWI 500.

Mutoh has been married since 1992 to Hisae Ashida, and have two children with her.