20 Awesome WWE Royal Rumble Moments
Teased eliminations, surprise returns, tossing multiple wrestlers, going the distance.
While there are plenty of statistics that you can
throw out about longtime annual events like the Royal Rumble, it’s not the
numbers that people recall and talk about (though some of them are pretty impressive).
It’s those crazy moments that have taken place throughout the years, those “I can’t believe that just happened” instances that you had to re-watch over and over to make sure you saw what you thought you saw. When done right, the Royal Rumble really has everything a fan could want: surprise returns, star-making moments, emotional eliminations, humorous encounters, suspenseful teases and multiple storylines colliding, all in the span of about an hour. In the right balance, this makes for a highly entertaining night for wrestling fans, and there are huge stakes with the winner punching his ticket to WrestleMania.
Whether it’s a long-lost superstar returning for one night only, an underdog eliminating a main eventer or a wrestler creatively escaping elimination, the mere mention of the Royal Rumble sparks a flood of memories.
This article will count down 20 huge moments throughout the Rumble’s history. While there are plenty of top 10 lists for eliminations or returns, this list melds some of those best with other awesome moments through the Rumble’s history.
Let’s get to it…
20. Tye At 10 (2017)
Last year’s Royal Rumble produced an uninspired
winner, which led to an abysmal WrestleMania world title match. So if you’re
looking for multiple entries from that event, you’re going to be disappointed.
However, there was one perfect moment that presented itself that even WWE couldn’t screw up. Plucked from NXT, Tye Dilligner would make his main roster debut in the Rumble, but that alone would not have merited placement on this list.
Dubbed “The Perfect 10,” Dilligner really could only debut at one spot during the Rumble. And as it turned out, Tye did indeed enter at #10, and the fans went nuts.
It was exactly the kind of thing WWE should be doing from time to time, giving fans a wink and nod and a little treat for following them. Dillinger’s WWE career has been mostly a downswing since that “10” of a moment, but at least he has last year’s memory.