10 Biggest WWE Royal Rumble Falls From Grace

4. From Main Event Momentum, To Just... Nothing - Owen Hart

Taz Royal Rumble
WWE.com

The 1994 Royal Rumble PPV was Owen Hart's coming-out party.

Having forever been presented as nothing more than the plucky babyface brother of Bret Hart on WWE television over the prior years, the Rumble '94 saw Owen viciously attack the Hitman as part of a heel turn that kickstarted a main event run that would ultimately be the highlight of the high-flying Hart brother's career.

With the seeds having been initially sowed at the '93 Survivor Series, the 1994 Royal Rumble put into motion one of the all-time great wrestling stories.

Owen would get a monumental win over the Excellence of Execution in a stunning WrestleMania X opener, and Bret's WWE Championship win later that night put the pair on a further collision course - this time with gold on the line.

A King of the Ring win followed in June '94 as Owen became the King of Harts, and SummerSlam '94 saw the Hart siblings put on a cage match that many refer to as the greatest cage match in company history.

So, as 1994 rolled into 1995, Owen Hart was firmly established as a believable main event star, right? The momentum of '94 was to be perfectly harnessed into a strong Royal Rumble match showing in January '95, right?

Sadly not, for Owen lasted just three seconds in the 1995 Royal Rumble, thrown over the top rope by brother-in-law Davey Boy Smith.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Rocket and his other brother-in-law, Jim Neidhart, weren't even good enough to advance past the first round of a tournament designed to crown new Tag Team Champions at that edition of the Rumble PPV.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.