10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 2007 Facts
7. It Was The First "Split" Rumble With A Raw/SmackDown Imbalance
From 2003 through 2006 (the first four Royal Rumbles of the brand extension era), each Royal Rumble match featured exactly 15 Raw wrestlers and 15 SmackDown wrestlers. Made sense to promote evenness and equality for the two branches of WWE.
Once ECW came around, you knew they weren't going to have as many entrants in a Rumble as Raw or SmackDown. However, for the 2007 Rumble, Raw benefited most from the three-party arrangement. The red-tinted show boasted 13 Rumble entrants to SmackDown's ten and ECW's seven.
It had been abundantly clear since about 2004 that WWE viewed SmackDown firmly as the "B" show, as if saddling ECW with them for house shows wasn't evidence enough. Going forward in split-era Rumbles, Raw would always come out with superior numbers.