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44 years ago today in New York City, Ivan Koloff defeated Bruno Sammartino to win the WWWF Championship, ending Sammartino's run at 2,803 days dating back to 1963, a mark that will likely never be broken. When Koloff won, the Garden crowd fell silent, some even were moved to tears. To prevent a riot from escalating, Koloff was never announced over the loudspeaker as the new WWWF Champion.

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17 years ago today, WWF presented Royal Rumble (WWE Network link) from the San Jose Arena in San Jose, California. 18,542 were in attendance, with 351,000 homes watching on PPV. That's up from 244,000 for the 1997 edition. The show is noted for Shawn Michaels taking a backdrop onto the casket early on in the WWF championship casket match, causing him to suffer a back injury that would force him into retirement just two months later.

• Vader defeated Goldust.
• Max Mini, Mosaic & Nova defeated Battalion, El Torito & Tarantula in a Minis tag team match. Sunny was the special referee.
• The Rock defeated Ken Shamrock by disqualification to retain the WWF Intercontinental Championship.
• The Legion Of Doom (Road Warrior Animal & Road Warrior Hawk) defeated The New Age Outlaws (Billy Gunn & Road Dogg) by disqualification in a WWF World Tag Team Championship match.
• Steve Austin last eliminated The Rock to win the Royal Rumble match.
• Shawn Michaels defeated The Undertaker in a Casket Match to retain the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Post-match, Kane, who was thought to be interfering on Undertaker's behalf, but cost him the match instead, burned the casket. Undertaker was not found in the casket once the fire was put out.

Notes:

• Steve Austin became the second back-to-back Royal Rumble winner.
• Mick Foley became the first (and to this day, only) man to enter the Royal Rumble match more than once.
• The Rock's 51-minute performance in the Royal Rumble match was at the time the third longest by a non-winner (behind Rick Martel and Bob Backlund).
• Skull was jumped by Los Boriquas, who mistaken him for Stone Cold Steve Austin, and was not able to compete in the match.

12 years ago today, Edward George Farhat, best known to wrestling fans as The Sheik (or in recent years The Original Sheik) died of a heart attack in Williamston, Michigan. He was 76. Farhat is credited as a pioneer of the hardcore wrestling style and is the uncle of ECW legend Sabu. At the time of his death, Farhat was working on a book at the time of his death, but the drafts have since been sealed despite offers to turn the book into a movie.

5 years ago today, TNA got into hot water with their fans and critics...again...when video of a preshow talk between producer Steve Small and fans at the Impact Zone surfaced. Small, while acknowledging that vulgar chants were not welcome even though it's a TV-14 product, called the fans "cast members". The video would eventually be taken down.

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Happy 46^th birthday to David Michael Bautista, best known to wrestling fans as Dave Batista. Bautista is a six-time world champion, two-time Royal Rumble winner, and three time tag team champion. He has also briefly dabbled in mixed martial arts after leaving the WWE in 2010 and been acting since 2009. His biggest role to date was this past year's mega-hit Guardians of the Galaxy. He will appear in the James Bond film Spectre later this year.

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Happy 61^st birthday to Theodore Marvin Dibiase, Sr., best known to wrestling fans as "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase. He held over thirty championships around the world, but most famously he was the officially unrecognized "Million Dollar Champion" and the 1988 King of the Ring. He also was a three-time WWF Tag Team Champion with Irwin R. Schyster as one-half of Money Inc. He is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2010. DiBiase today is a minister.