10 Most Gloriously Overbooked Matches In Wrestling History
9. The 1999 Royal Rumble Turns Into An Elaborate Tease
Royal Rumble matches are inherently overbooked affairs. After all, anytime you have 30+ competitors in a match all working towards a single finish a little bit of chicanery is to be expected. When you throw the overbooking king Vince Russo (at the height of his car crash style booking game) into the equation, though, the results are simply magical. The premise to the 1999 Royal Rumble was simple: Vince McMahon put a bounty on the head of Stone Cold Steve Austin to ensure that every other competitor would be especially motivated to put aside their differences and eliminate him. Instead, what transpired was essentially a one-hour recap of nearly every bizarre storyline occurring at the time. This format was even made complete by strange commercial break style segments in the match when a wrestler would approach the completely empty Rumble ring and just wait there for 90 seconds for someone else to enter. A new storyline was put into focus every few minutes and, unfortunately, very few of them were worthy of the screen time they received. The worst part about this whole affair was that not one single plotline during this time was actually resolved. Right down to the Vince McMahon wins the Royal Rumble ending, nearly everything on display during this match was designed as an elaborate ruse to have you tune into Raw the next night. Whenever you feel like putting the Attitude Era on a pedestal, do yourself a favor and watch this match.
