10 Worst WWE Royal Rumble Winners Ever
1. Roman Reigns (2015)
The 2015 Royal Rumble match was a total disaster.
Several moments throughout that wretched decade acted as the catalyst for many fans to finally say “Screw this”.
The Summer of Punk frosting over. The crowning of Jinder Mahal: WWE Champion. The repeated burials of Bray Wyatt.
Roman Reigns winning the most bleak match in WWE history was a major factor, as tracked by the excellent Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics. The backlash to that dismal match informed the worst ratings pattern on the road to WrestleMania since 1996.
The idea - and the fans in Philadelphia understood it all too well, resulting in a noise that can only be described as a collective, relentless groan - was for Roman to rescue you all from the tedium of Kane and the Big Show. Kane and the Big Show, the guys who WWE had plugged into the main event for the preceding decade and a half, were now slow, lumbering, boring monsters in canon. They killed everybody and dumped them out - them being Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, the guys you actually liked at the time - as if they were literal bags of trash.
Roman was meant to embody the youth movement you craved, but the issue is that his push was so forced and unwanted that the fans weren’t reminded of the last decade and a half; they feared the next inevitable decade and a half of Roman Wins LOL.
Roman did win, and the Rock’s surprise endorsement of his cousin didn’t work. Nothing would, except the heel turn everybody not named Vince McMahon knew to be the solution.