About John Laurinaitis
John Hodger Laurinaitis (born July 31, 1962), also known by his former ring name Johnny Ace, is an American retired professional wrestler and business executive. He has wrestled for such promotions as World Championship Wrestling (WCW), All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and WWE. He is the brother of Joe (Road Warrior Animal; one half of the former wrestling tag team The Road Warriors) and Marcus, and is also the uncle of former National Football League player James Laurinaitis. In WWE, Laurinaitis worked in the talent relations office for eight years, and as occasional professional wrestler from 2011 until 2012. After his on screen firing, he stepped down from his corporate backstage role to being a producer. He was promoted again to Head of Talent Relations in 2021 until his release in 2022. Prior to joining WWE, Laurinaitis worked as an executive for WCW. Laurinaitis was responsible for booking the highly acclaimed one-night single elimination tournament held for the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship that was won by the debuting Lance Storm. On that week's edition of SmackDown, Laurinaitis wrestled his first match in eleven years (as well as his first for WWE), losing to Theodore Long in a singles match. Two of his matches received 5 Stars from Dave Meltzer, he won the "Match of the Year" award from the Wrestling Observer, and was ranked #77 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated's (PWI) top 500 wrestlers for 1997.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.