10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 2010 Facts
The surprise return of "The Rated-R Superstar"
The more Royal Rumbles you see, the more they tend to run together. Without distinct features, it can sometimes be hard to tell the differences between, say, the 2012 and 2013 Rumble matches, outside of who won and who the guest entrants were.
The 2010 Rumble garners a lot of love, even eight years later, and for good reason: it was easily one of the more memorable Rumble matches of the last decade-and-a-half. From CM Punk's extended in-match sermon, to Edge's unexpected comeback in the finale, the snapshots from the 2010 match are a bit more vivid than in the Rumbles surrounding it.
But what makes the 2010 Rumble a more enjoyable match is the complete lack of down time. Not since 1995 had bodies come and gone with the whipping fury of the 2010 edition. Nobody was laying around selling a beating for five minutes while the ring slowly filled up with combatant after combatant. Instead, for the most part, the maws of ADD viewership were fed with a conveyor belt of hyperactivity. It was truly a Rumble that kept you alert.
Many recent Rumbles have earned the, "Well that sucked" label (some justified, some not), but 2010 always seems to be free and clear of that critique. There's a reason for that.
Here are ten facts about the 2010 Royal Rumble you may not have known.
10. It Marked The Last ECW Championship Match On PPV
As of February 16, little more than two weeks after the pay-per-view, ECW would be no more. It would soon be replaced by the "game show" version of NXT that would bring Daniel Bryan into the WWE scope.
Seeing as Tommy Dreamer had exited the company at the start of the year, there was little point in keeping the home of "The Innovator of Violence' around. Besides, ECW had been in its death throes for quite some time anyway, and the plug was due to be pulled.
That meant that the Rumble was the final pay-per-view to feature an ECW Championship bout, as Christian defeated Ezekiel Jackson (later Lucha Underground's Big Ryck). Jackson would later capture the belt on ECW's final show, ending Christian's six month-plus reign. Soon after, the ECW roster would be divied up among Raw and SmackDown.