10 Best World Title Matches In WWE Royal Rumble History

4. The Rock Vs. Mankind (1999)

Mankind The Rock Royal Rumble 1999
WWE Network

The match immortalised in Beyond The Mat, The Rock vs. Mick Foley looked so realistic, mainly because some of it was.

The Rock and Mick Foley had one of the best feuds of all time in late 1998/early 1999. Starting at Survivor Series, when The Rock turned his back on the people to become The Corporate Champion, Foley scored one of the most uplifting wins of all time when, on a January 1998 episode of Monday Night Raw, he bested Rocky to become the new WWF Champion.

A rematch was scheduled for the Rumble and it was to be an I Quit match. The point of this match is to make your opponent verbally submit and say the words "I Quit", so naturally things can get a little brutal. Except, in this match, nobody told The Rock that wrestling was fake.

Rock brutalised Foley, striking him repeatedly on the head with a steel chair to the extent where Foley was bleeding from his skull. The match was so brutal, that it actually traumatised Foley's children, who were sat at ringside.

Despite these horrific details, the match was still top quality, as all Rock/Foley matches were. The gruesome minutiae of the match only add to its place in wrestling folklore, making it one of the most famous title matches in Rumble history as well as one of the best.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.