One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every WWE Royal Rumble
Your jaw must touch the floor: a huge deep-dive featuring Sabu, Abyss, and MORE.
The WWE Royal Rumble endures as the best gimmick match ever.
This isn’t an objective statement, but that is the consensus - and it is an inarguable fact, from a purely commercial perspective. If you stacked everything up, there’s a strong chance you’d list just as many disasters as epics. The PLE, historically, is wildly uneven. It is meant to be the catalyst for the most important wrestling event of the year - nay, all-time - and it often was.
Steve Austin winning in 1998 to formalise his ascent as the main man in all of wrestling; Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels interacting in 2003, teasing the promise of an inter-generational dream match once thought lost to time; WWE improving on that premise by booking SmackDown’s Kurt Angle to eliminate Raw’s Shawn in 2005, leading to the one time WWE grasped the surreal brilliance of inter-promotional conflict; John Cena's shocking return from the WWE injury list in 2008: all were incredible moments informed by the Rumble and its in-built mechanisms to initiate and progress multiple storylines.
Then there was the backlash that greeted Batista’s win in 2014; the infamous Roman Reigns business a year later, when an entire arena rejected WWE en masse; the utterly, laughably idealess decision to go with Brock Lesnar in 2022.
Other times, it was simply uninspiring (Randy Orton as the safe choice in 2017, Seth Rollins emerging triumphant in 2019.)
But it’s the promise, the mystery, that never dies. Who’s going to win? Which two upper midcarders will set-up their breakthrough match at WrestleMania? Which much-missed star from yesteryear will make a cameo appearance? Who will make their grand full-time return? Who might debut?!
It’s the secretive element to the Royal Rumble that generates an enduring, fervent interest - and, since you’re into that sort of thing…