10 Wrestlers Who Should Have Won The WWE Royal Rumble
5. Rusev (2015)
Of all the issues surrounding the 2015 Royal Rumble match, one of the most disappointing aspects of the outcome was that there were so many other names who would have been more readily accepted as winners.
Daniel Bryan is the most obvious example – and we’ll have more on him later – but there were a number of other candidates whose wins would have been welcomed. Candidates like Dolph Ziggler, who was just two months removed from an immaculate performance at Survivor Series, or Bray Wyatt, who looked imperious in the match’s earlier stages.
Another potential victor who often gets overlooked, but would have made for a great choice given how the match panned out, is Rusev.
Having entered the match at no. 15, Rusev ended up spending the latter part of his stint underneath the ring. He’d later emerge just seconds before the finish, where he was unceremoniously dumped out by Reigns. But just imagine the reaction if he’d been the one to show up from out of nowhere and take out Reigns to cap off a wholly unexpected Rumble win.