Today in Wrestling History - October 30th

1978 - Ric Flair and Big John Studd win the NWA Mid Atlantic Tag Team Titles by beating Ricky Steamboat and Paul Jones in Greenville, SC.   They would not be champs long as they lost the rematch on November 5th 1978 in Greensboro, NC.

1999 - Big Van Vader defeats Mitsuharu Misawa in Tokyo, Japan to win the AJPW Triple Crown Unified Heavyweight Championship.

2001 - Test and Booker T defeat The Rock and Chris Jericho for the WWF World Tag Team Titles in Cincinnati, OH during a SMACKDOWN! show.

WWWF Tag Team Champions (The Executioners)

The Executioners were a masked tag team consisting of Killer Kowalski and Big John Studd.   They won the World Wide Wrestling Federation Tag Team Titles on May 11th 1976 in Philadelphia by defeating the champions Louis Cerdan and Tony Parisi (below,who had held the belts 185 days).

The Executioners would hold the belts for 168 days, until November 26th 1976 when they were stripped by the WWWF for using a 3rd Executioner in a match.  This Execution #3 was later unmasked as Nikolai Volkoff.

The Executioners

WWWF Tag Team Champions

vs

Dominic Denucci and Jose Gonzalez

Madison Square Garden

The Royal Rumble 1989

Today in 1989 the WWF held its second Royal Rumble and the first to be a PPV event.
The first Royal Rumble aired on the USA Network in 1988. From the Summit Arena in Houston Texas here is the Royal Rumble match.

Match of the Day

Today not really a match so much as an event.
The Big John Studd Bodyslam challenge was going strong in May of 1983 when Chief Jay Strongbow was supposed to be the next challenger but he stepped aside to let another friend have a shot.