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

7. Teased Tosses

Roman Reigns royal Rumble
WWE.com

One of the most dramatic, fun parts of the Royal Rumble are the near-eliminations, the times someone is tossed over the top rope and almost goes all the way out, but manages to stave off elimination to live to fight again.

Shawn Michaels has probably the first famous teased toss, when the British Bulldog tossed HBK over the top and celebrated his apparent win, but Michaels managed to play hot potato with his feet, avoiding having both touch the floor. He re-entered the match and knocked Bulldog out to win his first Rumble.

Nowadays, the teased elimination is a common, expected element of every Royal Rumble match. John Morrison used his parkour skills to escape elimination a couple times. Kofi Kingston rewrote the book on teased tosses, turning it into an annual guessing game of how he’d stave off elimination (walking on his hands, using JBL’s chair as a pogo stick, leaping from the barricade, being caught for Adam Rose’s Rosebuds, etc.). Even Naomi and Katana Chance have used their acrobatic skills to avoid being bounced from the Rumble.

Just keep an eye out for people who go over the top and linger – you might catch the next is a long line of Rumble magicians.

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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.