10 Times Long-Term WWE Booking Paid Off

On the face of it, Chris Benoit's 2004 Royal Rumble win - which set up his date with Triple H and Shawn Michaels in WrestleMania XX's Madison Square Garden main event - came out of the blue.

And whilst you can't give WWE all the credit for Benoit's hard-luck every-man image - much of it having taken shape in WCW, where his World Title reign was cruelly cut short before it even began - they planted the seeds long in advance of that famous confetti moment.

In fact, Benoit had received a WWE title match as recently as December, during which he forced then-champion Brock Lesnar to tap out whilst the referee wasn't looking.

In the months prior to that, he had been quietly climbing up the SmackDown food chain, picking up wins over the likes of A-Train and Big Show before earning his Kurt Angle-led face team a huge victory at Survivor Series.