10 Wrestlers Who Hated WWE Royal Rumble Spots

8. Alex Riley Botches His Big Moment - 2011

WWE Royal Rumble 2005 Vince McMahon
WWE Network

Oh, Alex Riley, you could have been a star! A-Ry has become something of a punchline among wrestling fans, but that is a disservice to the man. Riley was one of the standouts of NXT Season 2 and his partnership with The Miz worked well. Now, the guy was never going to main event WrestleMania, but many expected him to become an integral part of the bigger picture.

Everything started to go wrong from the 2011 Royal Rumble. The Miz and John Cena were building towards a WrestleMania main event, which put Riley right in the firing line of the biggest babyface in pro wrestling. To increase the heat for the ‘Mania match, Riley was going to eliminate Cena from the Rumble. Alas, Riley didn’t survive long enough to complete the spot, somehow managing to get eliminated in inoccuous fashion by, yes, John Cena.

That was pretty much that for A-Ri. The Cena elimination was essentially going to be the main spot of the match, and Riley’s slip-up left everyone scrambling for a way to fix it. Miz (who wasn’t in the match) eventually eliminated Cena, dragging the train back onto the WrestleMania rails and leaving poor Alex Riley back at the station.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.