10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 2007 Facts
Cena strangles Umaga, while The Dead Man sets a course for Detroit.
Add this to the list of "really good Big Four pay-per-views that don't get enough love." The 2007 Royal Rumble came along at an interesting time, when WWE was finding a balance between copious amounts of nostalgic integration, and letting the stars of tomorrow have a platform for which to shine. The 2007 Rumble struck a nice balance between the two concepts, as evidenced by the final two matches.
The WWE Championship match is one that is woefully underappreciated. John Cena, early in his year-plus reign with the gold, has to vanquish the beastly Umaga in a Last Man Standing match. It's almost unarguably Umaga's greatest match ever, as he and Cena brutalize each other over the course of 23 bloody minutes. Cena has to do what no man has done to date, and that's convincingly and soundly beat the monster into oblivion.
While those latter-day stars worked to steal the show, the Rumble match came down to two classics: The Undertaker, and Shawn Michaels. It was the longest segment between a Rumble's final two, one that could've gone either way, and had the fans watching breathlessly.
On the strength of the last two matches, the 2007 Royal Rumble was a winner, and deserves a little more love than it currently gets.
Here are ten facts about the 2007 Royal Rumble you may not have known.
10. The Lashley/Test Match Was The Second Of Three Matches Between Them In Seven Days
The 2007 Royal Rumble wasn't perfect, and the consensus would be that Bobby Lashley and Test's ECW Championship bout was the worst of the night. The ECW brand had been all but stripped of its alternative feel, and having an overly-jacked up Test challenge for the belt didn't seem appetizing. That sentiment was confirmed when Test took an intentional countout loss after seven minutes, for reasons that weren't exactly clear.
If that weren't enough, the match was the second between them in a week's stretch. Lashley had already beaten Test clean in a ten-minute match on ECW five nights earlier, thus rendering a PPV match between them kinda moot. Two nights after the Rumble, Lashley beat Test again, clean as a sheet after seven minutes.
That means the only unconvincing finish was the one that fans paid to see, while two clean finishes were given away on free TV. Go figure.