10 Incredible WWE Royal Rumble Facts & Figures You Need To Know

9. Eye On The Prize

Roman Reigns royal Rumble
WWE

Winning a Royal Rumble is considered one of the crowning achievements of a WWE superstar. It’s something that gets referenced whenever they run down their Wikipedia page list of accomplishments or when fans talk about someone’s Hall of Fame credentials.

But it’s not just winning the Rumble that is significant; it’s the added opportunity that comes from winning, with the victorious superstar being able to face the world champion of their choice at WrestleMania that year. This has led to some incredible moments with wrestlers winning, pointing at the sign and starting their journey to win a world title at the biggest show of the year.

However, that wasn’t always the case.

Prior to 1992, the Rumble winner just had the distinction of being listed as such. They weren’t awarded a title shot or anything like that. In 1992, the WWF Championship was vacant, so the Rumble that year was actually contested for the world title, with Ric Flair memorably entering at #3 and winning the championship.

Since 1993, the Rumble (for both men and women) has almost always been competed with a shot at the champ of their choosing on the line. Only in 2016 did WWE tinker with this format, when they had WWE World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns defend his title in the Rumble, entering at #1 and having to last until the end. He would be tossed second-to-last, with Triple H (who entered at #30) winning the match and the title.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.