10 Quietly Brilliant WWE PPVs
2. WWF Royal Rumble 1994
The 1994 Royal Rumble event is often remembered as the home of one of the most naff angles the WWF ever promoted - The Undertaker's death - or the night that Bret Hart's eventual coronation as the man was deflated by Vince McMahon's hedged betting.
The opener was nothing special - Tatanka's matches, beyond that gripping tag affair he'd contest one year later, rarely were - but the WWF Tag Team Title match deserves to be remembered beyond Owen Hart's incredible heel turn on his brother Bret, whose own selling was a masterclass. Quebecer Carl "Pierre" Ouellet, as Jean-Pierre Lafitte, is one of the most underrated workers to ever wrestle for the WWF. His work in that match was similarly unappreciated. The Intercontinental Title bout was a drag, a husk of the awesome body of work Messrs. Hart and Shawn Michaels had assembled at the turn of the decade.
The WWF Heavyweight Title match was little better, but the naff angle synonymous with the show has taken on an appropriately posthumous so-bad-it's-good quality.
It's stuffed with comedy, unintentional or otherwise. The sight of Paul Bearer drilling Mr. Fuji with an urn is just something we'll never see again. Even funnier is Diesel's appearance - joining the 58-on-1 heel beatdown, he does the sum total of nothing - as in nothing, not the nothing he was often accused of doing in his matches. Undertaker, buried in a casket, "dies" before he has time to suffocate. He's then electrocuted, or something, before a white graphic ascends up the screen - and a cosplaying Marty Jannetty follows him up the rafters.