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Happy New Year! Hopefully 2016 treats you as good as or better than 2015.
41 years ago today, Harley Race is awarded the NWA Mid-Atlantic United States Championship. The championship. The championship would become the primary United States Championship for the NWA in 1981, with the lineage continuing through WCW, and save for a brief interruption from late 2001 to mid-2003 when the title was inactive, the lineage continues today as the WWE United States Championship.
34 years ago today, a special event was held in the Checkerdome in St. Louis. The event was Sam Muchnick's final wrestling card he promoted. Muchnick promoted events since 1932 (and on his own since 1942). The event was a part of Sam Muchnick Day in St. Louis, as declared by then-Mayor Vincent Schoemhl.
- Dewey Robertson defeated Baron Von Raschke.
- Jerry Brown and Bob Brown went to a draw.
- Joyce Grable & Wendi Richter defeated Sandy Partlow & Early Dawn 2-1 in a best of three falls match to retain the NWA Womens World Tag Team Championship.
- Pat O'Connor defeated Bob Sweetan via submission.
- Jerry Blackwell beat Ox Baker & Bruce Reed in a handicap match.
- David Von Erich & Rufus R. Jones and Harley Race & Greg Valentine fought to a double disqualification.
- Dick the Bruiser beat Ken Patera to win the NWA Missouri Heavyweight Championship.
- Ric Flair defeated Dusty Rhodes 2-1 in a best of three falls match to retain the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
8 years ago today on RAW from Miami, Florida, Kevin Federline, best known for being married to pop singer Britney Spears, defeated John Cena in a no disqualification match.
Many New Year's babies today! Many of them! So profiles are gonna be short.
It's a happy 31st birthday for Lindsey Kerecz, best known to wrestling fans as Veda Scott.
The lawyer-in-a-past-life Scott is a graduate of the Ring of Honor Dojo (and Drexel Law School), and was once upon a time ROH's sideline reporter. She transitioned into managing, most notably managing Barrister R.D. Evans, Moose, and most recently Cedric Alexander.
That's not to say Scott knows what she's doing in the ring: she's the current Family Wrestling Entertainment Women's Champion, and was an Absolute Intense Wrestling tag team and women's champion. Most recently, Scott ranked 33rd in the PWI Female 50.
It's a happy 38th birthday for Robert, or if you prefer, Bobby Roode.
Roode's best known for his work in TNA, where he's a seven-time tag team champion (four of them came with James Storm as one-half of Beer Money Inc., two as a part of Team Canada with Eric Young, the other with Austin Aries) and a two-time TNA world champion. Roode holds the company record for being the longest reigning world champion ever (256 days) and longest tag team champion (212 days).
Roode, currently theTNA King of the Mountain Champion, is a two-time Pro Wrestling Illustrated tag team of the year winner (2008 and 2011, both with James Storm) and was ranked the #2 singles wrestler in the world by the publication in 2012.
It's a happy 45th birthday for Kimberly Lynn Bacon, but wrestling fans best know her as Kimberly Page.
Bacon gained national exposure as a valet for her then-husband Diamond Dallas Page. She would also valet for Johnny B. Badd and The Booty Man before rejoining Page in 1997. That year, she formed the Nitro Girls, a dance troupe that performed during commercial breaks to entertain the fans. Kimberly departed from the group in 1999, then turned heel on Page in 2000 to align with the New Blood briefly before departing the company altogether. Kimberly and DDP divorced in 2005.
Post-retirement, she briefly turned to acting, appearing in Rat Race, an episode of CSI: Miami, and The 40-Year Old Virgin. Today, Bacon is an interior designer and works in marketing.
It's a happy 71st birthday for James Ray Hart, but wrestling fans know him best as "The Mouth of the South" Jimmy Hart.
The one-time AWA Southern Heavyweight Champion and 1960's rock singer (no, seriously, he was a member of The Gentrys, who had a top five hit, "Keep on Dancing") is best known for his time as a manager, managing over fifty singles wrestlers, most notably Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler, The Giant, King Kong Bundy, Earthquake, and The Honky Tonk Man, and sixteen tag teams, including the First Family, the Nasty Boys, and the Hart Foundation.
Hart also composed many theme songs for WWF and WCW, most notably The Honky Tonk Man, Hulk Hogan, the Fabulous Rougeaus, the nWo Wolfpac, and Shawn Michaels. He also composed the themes for the first Summerslam in 1988 and Wrestlemania VI (which would be reused over the next few years).
He also founded two short-lived promotions in the 2000s, the Xcitment Wrestling Federation and Wrestilicious. Most recently, after an eight-year off-and-on stint in TNA, Hart returned to WWE in 2011, working primarily on Wrestlemania-related projects. Hart is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2005.