10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 2019 Facts

2. Testing The Waters For Intergender Wrestling

Royal Rumble 2019
WWE.com

While Nia Jax's appearance in the men's Royal Rumble in 2019 saw her become the first person to get eliminations in both the men's and women's Rumble contests, the use of Nia here actually had a little more significance to it.

As reported by the Wrestling Observer at the time, having Jax square off with some of WWE's male talent here was the company's way of testing the waters for intergender wrestling.

Intergender wrestling has long been a mainstay of the independent scene, and IMPACT Wrestling famously crowned Tessa Blanchard as its World Champion in January 2020, and the Royal Rumble 2019 was seemingly WWE's ways of seeing whether there was any interest or value in having the promotion's male and female talent compete against each other.

For WWE, Nia Jax was the perfect person to try this out with, for the sheer presence and stature of the one-time Raw Women's Tag Team Champion makes her look more formidable than a good portion of the men's roster - meaning the image of Jax being hit with moves from her male peers wouldn't be quite as jarring as if those same manoeuvres were being delivered to a smaller superstar such as Sasha Banks or Alexa Bliss.

There were rumblings of WWE looking to do Nia Jax vs. Dean Ambrose at one point in time, although the company has seemingly long since cooled on the possibility of having intergender matches.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

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