This Day in Wrestling History (Jan. 14): Sid Breaks A Leg

25 years ago today at a WCW Worldwide taping in Marietta, Georgia, Arn Anderson defeated The Z-Man to win the WCW World Television Championship.

15 years ago today, WCW presented Sin (WWE Network link) from the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. 6,617 were in attendance, with 80,000 homes watching on PPV.

It was to be the first PPV of Eric Bischoff as WCW President and owner as part of Fusient Media Venture's purchase of the company. The sale, which was never finalized, ultimately fell apart when WCW's television programming was pulled from the Turner family of networks about two months later in a cost-cutting measure.

As for the show, it's the most-bought WCW event since Bash at the Beach the previous summer. It's also down 35,000 homes from the event that it replaced, Souled Out in 2000.

• Chavo Guerrero, Jr. defeated Shane Helms to retain the WCW Cruiserweight Championship.
• Reno defeated Big Vito.
• The Jung Dragons (Yun Yang and Kaz Hayashi) defeated Evan Karagias and Jamie Noble.
• Ernest Miller defeated Mike Sanders.
• Team Canada (Lance Storm, Mike Awesome and Elix Skipper) defeated The Filthy Animals (Konnan, Rey Mysterio, Jr. and Billy Kidman) in a Six-Man Penalty Box match. Hacksaw Jim Duggan was the special referee.
• Meng defeated Terry Funk and Crowbar in a three-way match to win the WCW Hardcore Championship.
• The Natural Born Thrillers (Sean O'Haire and Chuck Palumbo) defeated The Insiders (Kevin Nash and Diamond Dallas Page) to win the WCW World Tag Team Championship.
• Shane Douglas defeated General Rection in a First Blood Chain match to win the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship.
• Totally Buffed (Lex Luger and Buff Bagwell) defeated Goldberg and DeWayne Bruce in a no disqualification match. The loss forced Goldberg to leave WCW.
• Scott Steiner defeated Jeff Jarrett, Sid Vicious, and Animal in a four corners match to retain the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The bout went to a quick finish when Sid went off the second rope and broke his leg in two places. The injury was not shown live, as they were cut to a backstage segment where the mystery man entered the bout (that man being Animal). It was one of the most gruesome injures ever seen in a pro wrestling event, and the video as you can probably imagine, is not suitable for all viewers.

10 years ago today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bryan Danielson defeated Homicide and Roderick Strong in a three-way match to win the FIP Championship. The same night, he defeated Chris Hero to retain the Ring of Honor World Championship.

9 years ago today, TNA presented Final Resolution from the Impact Zone at Universal Orlando.

• In a preshow dark match, Jason Riggs and Johnny Riggs defeated Serotonin (Kazarian and Havok).
• In a preshow dark match, Lance Hoyt defeated Chase Stevens.
• Rhino defeated AJ Styles in a last man standing match.
• Chris Sabin defeated Christopher Daniels and Jerry Lynn in a three-way match to win the NWA X Division Championship.
• Alex Shelley defeated Austin Starr to win the Paparazzi Championship Series.
• James Storm defeated Petey Williams.
• The Latin American Exchange (Homicide & Hernandez) defeated Team 3D (Brother Ray & Brother Devon) by disqualification to retain the NWA World Tag Team Championship.
• Kurt Angle defeated Samoa Joe 3-2 in a 30-minute Ironman match. The first three falls all came by submission, with Samoa Joe getting the lead, then Angle scoring consecutive falls. Joe tied it up with 7:41 left, then Angle took the lead again with 5:19 and held on for the win.
• Christian Cage defeated Abyss and Sting in a three-way elimination match to win the NWA Heavyweight Championship. Cage would be the last NWA world champion under the TNA banner as the NWA cut ties with TNA that summer.

7 years ago today, WWE releases a few notable names including referee Mickie Henson, Tough Enough III winner Matt Cappotelli, and Hade Vansen.

Cappotelli was diagnosed with a Grade 2/3 astrocytoma (brain cancer) less than a month after he won the OVW Heavyweight Championship. Cappotelli was among those on deck to be called to the main roster at the time. The tumor was fully removed in 2007. Cappotelli is now a trainer for Ohio Valley Wrestling.

Hade Vansen made a single appearance for the WWE, cutting a vignette promo on the Undertaker. The angle was abruptly ended when Vince McMahon decided to not trust a new talent with such a major angle. Kevin Fertig, who was Mordecai and Kevin Thorn, was to be associated with the angle. He was released a few days earlier.

4 years ago today, the ECW Arena in South Philadelphia holds what was originally its final wrestling event after it was taken over by new management. A boxing card was to be the final event held in the building. Originally pegged for renovations, the venue would reopen in 2013 when the proposed renovations never happened. The 2300 Arena, as it is known now, is still running to this day, with six different wrestling companies running events there last year.

3 years ago today, RAW presented its 20^th Anniversary Special from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. Surprisingly, this episode is not available for viewing on WWE Network.

• Wade Barrett defeated Randy Orton.
• Kane defeated Damien Sandow.
• Kaitlyn defeated Eve to win the WWE Divas Championship. The bout would be the last for the 2007 Diva Search winner. Eve Torres cited burnout and wanting to spend more time with her fiancée and work on her own self-defense program.
• CM Punk defeated Brodus Clay.
• 3MB (Heath Slater, Drew McIntyre, and Jinder Mahal) defeated Sheamus in a Handicap Over the Top Rope Challenge.
• Daniel Bryan defeated Cody Rhodes.
• John Cena defeated Dolph Ziggler in a Steel Cage match.

2 years ago today, Johnnie Mae Young dies of natural causes in her home in Columbia, South Carolina just days after her death was initially erroneously reported. She was 90 years old.

Born March 12, 1923 in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, Johnnie Mae was the youngest of eight children in a single-mother household (her mother Lilly Mae's partner left to find work and never returned). In high school, with the help from teaching of her brothers, she wrestled for the high school's boys wrestling team. While still in high school, Young went to a professional wrestling show in Tulsa, Oklahoma and challenged then champion Mildred Burke. As she was told by promoters she couldn't wrestle the champion, she challenged Mildred's opponent for the evening, Gladys Gilliem, to a shoot fight. Mae quickly won. That got Mae in the door of promoter Billy Wolfe, and Mae would leave home two years later to become a pro wrestler.

When Mae Young began wrestling professionally depends on who's telling the story. Mae claimed at different points in her life to began wrestling in 1939 and 1940; Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Dave Meltzer believes her career began in 1941, as there are no written records of Mae wrestling prior to that year. That year, Young and Mildred Burke wrestled for famed Canadian promoter Stu Hart. On December 7, the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing, Mae was wrestling in Memphis. With many men off to fight during World War II, Mae used this as an opportunity to expand women's wrestling.

Fighting occasionally as "The Queen" and "The Great" Mae Young (but usually under her real name), Young would find success all over the world, becoming the NWA's first Florida Women's Champion in 1951, and the first NWA United States Women's Champion in 1968. In 1956, Young was a part of a battle royal to determine the new NWA World Women's Champion; the battle royal would be won by her friend and future protégé The Fabulous Moolah.

In 1991, the 68-year old Young quit the wrestling business and moved to California to care for her ailing mother. After briefly taking on a lifestyle as a Christian evangelist, she moved in with the Fabulous Moolah and fellow women's wrestler Katie Glass in Columbia, South Carolina. The arrangement lasted until Moolah's death in November 2007.

In September 1999, Young made her WWF debut at the ripe age of 76 when she was seated with the Fabulous Moolah. Jarrett invited Moolah to the ring and smashed a guitar over her head. When Mae tried to come to Moolah's aid, she wound up in the figure four. Young and Moolah would become regulars on WWF programming, occasionally competing in tag team bouts.

Her most notable moments in the WWF came in 2000. First, at the Royal Rumble, she removed her top during a bikini contest. Though it was thought that she got naked, she was wearing a prosthesis. Around that time, she began a May-December romance with Mark Henry. In March, Young would be powerbombed by Bubba Ray Dudley on consecutive episodes of RAW is WAR; the second one, where Young was bound to a wheelchair before being powerbombed off a stage, is often described as the most famous—or infamous—powerbomb in WWE history. She gave birth prematurely... to a rubber hand.

Young would make occasional appearances, usually with the Fabulous Moolah, over the next few years, like in 2002 where she helped Moolah promote her autobiography The Fabulous Moolah: First Goddess of the Squared Circle, in 2003 where she performed a Bronco Buster on Eric Bischoff, and in a backstage segment at Summerslam 2007 just before Moolah's death.

In 2008, Mae was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by Pat Patterson (four years earlier, she would join the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame).

In November 2010 on an "old school" edition of RAW, Young defeated LayCool in a falls count anywhere handicap match, making Young the first person ever to wrestle past her eightieth birthday and the first person to wrestle in nine different decades.

In a rare bit of continuity, Young in 2012 showed up with a man dressed in a giant hand costume; the man claimed to be Mark Henry's son born from the infamous 2000 storyline. Mae continued to make occasional appearances until March 4, 2013 on another "old school" RAW where fellow wrestlers celebrated her 90^th birthday. Backstage, Young was presented with a personalized WWE Divas Championship belt.

On New Year's Eve 2013, Young was reported to have been hospitalized and in poor health. The Charleston Post & Courier erroneously reported her death on January 9, 2014, but she would die five days later of natural causes in her home in Columbia, South Carolina. She was 90 years old. Her cremated remains were scattered at Greenlawn Memorial Park, the same cemetery her longtime friend The Fabulous Moolah was buried.

1 year ago today, charges against Kevin Nash for assaulting his 18-year old son Tristen in their Volusia County, Florida home were dropped. The assault occurred back on Christmas Eve when a verbal altercation between the two over Tristen's relationship turned violent. Police say that alcohol may have been a factor in the altercation. Tristen was also arrested and charged with battery.

The charges led Kevin to be indefinitely suspended by the WWE for violating the domestic abuse policy, the first high-profile suspension by the company since the guidelines were updated in the wake of the NFL's Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson scandals. Kevin's suspension would be lifted two days later.

1 year ago today, NorthJersey.com reports that the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey would likely close at the end of the month. The building hosted three Summerslam events (1989, 1997, and 2007) and was set to host a fourth, but the closure forced the event to move; the WWE settled on Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.