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42 years ago today, Tony Garea & Haystacks Calhoun defeated Professor Tanaka & Mr. Fuji to win the WWWF Tag Team Championship.
34 years ago today, Ron Bass defeated Greg Valentine to win the NWA World Television Championship.
29 years ago today in Houston, Texas, Terry Gordy defeated Hacksaw Jim Duggan in the finals of a one-night tournament to become the first ever Universal Wrestling Federation Champion.
19 years ago today in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Sean Morley defeated El Bronco to win the WWC Television Championship. Morley would go on to hold the championship for nearly three years before finally vacating it in March 1999. Morley spent the last year of his title reign working in the WWF as Val Venis.
15 years ago today at a Thunder taping in Boise, Idaho, Chuck Palumbo & Shawn Stasiak defeated Kronik (Bryan Clark & Brian Adams) to win the WCW World Tag Team Championship.
7 years ago today, WWE.com airs the final edition of Heat. The show resided on WWE's website since it was dropped following their programming's move back to USA in the fall of 2005. The series, originally called Sunday Night Heat but changed to just Heat when the show was moved to WWE.com airing on Fridays, ends just two months shy of its 10th anniversary and 513 total episodes. For the curious, the final episode, taped four days earlier from the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, saw Snitsky defeat Super Crazy, Santino Marella defeat "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan (in Duggan's final match as a full-time roster member), and Lance Cade defeat Jeff McAllister.
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4 years ago today, Kia Stevens, best known to wrestling fans as Amazing Kong (or Awesome Kong), but most recently as Kharma in WWE, announces she is pregnant and is forced to take a leave of absence. Stevens announced she gave birth on New Year's Eve that year, but later recanted that announcement when she revealed she miscarried. She would make just one more appearance for the company, taking part in the 2012 Royal Rumble match, which was her only official bout in WWE. Stevens would be released from the company in July 2012. She remained largely on the independent circuit following her release, even saying she would in a November 2012 interview she would never again work for TNA—which of course she does when she returns this past January.
3 years ago today, Randy Orton is suspended sixty days following his second violation of the WWE's Wellness Policy. Mexican wrestling website Superluchas.net report that oral steroid methandrostenolone, aka Dianabol, was found in his system, as well as marijuana. A conflicting report from Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter said that it was a high level of testosterone that contributed to his suspension.
2 years ago today, both Ring of Honor and TNA announce major signings. TNA signs MMA fighter Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. Jackson would would debut a week later and would be done with the company by the end of the summer when MMA promotion Bellator pulls him and Tito Ortiz from all TNA programming due to an upcoming fight the two were scheduled to have (a fight that ultimately never took place).
Ring of Honor signs Adam Cole a new contract, ending (at least for now) speculation that he was WWE-bound. Cole would win the ROH World Championship just under four months later.
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It's a happy 60th birthday to Aurelian Smith, Jr., best known to wrestling fans as Jake "The Snake" Roberts. The son of famed 1960's wrestler Grizzly Smith, Roberts had two runs in the WWF, his more famous coming in the 1980s and early 1990s, with a second one in 1996-97. He also wrestled for AAA, WCW, and ECW in the 1990s and made appearances for TNA in the 2000s. Roberts is known for his intense, cerebral, and charismatic promos, and is credited as the inventor of the DDT. Roberts was one of the featured subjects in the 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat, which chronicled his continuing struggles with alcohol and drug abuse. He sought help from fellow wrestler Diamond Dallas Page in 2012. Two years later, it was Page that inducted Roberts into the WWE Hall of Fame.