7. Historical Royal Rumble Surprises
From @DizTrain: What things have surprised you as you re-watched the Royal Rumbles? Fan reactions, individual performances, etc.
Great question. Since I've been reviewing every Royal Rumble for WhatCulture (admittedly I need to pick up the pace in the next week!) there have been a lot of noticeable changes in the matches. The format of the Rumbles are interesting. They started out with the two minute intervals. Then it went to 90 seconds. Then it went back to two minutes. In 1995 it was only 60 minute intervals and felt rushed. In the past decade or so they settled on 90 seconds, which is right. As the years went on, they got rid of some basic eliminations. In the more recent Rumble matches, almost all eliminations are done after a nice set up. In the older Rumbles, you might just see two guys going at it in a turnbuckle, then a guy get flipped out and that's it. They are planned out better as the years go on. The talent level is very noticeable. There was a good roster from around 1989 to 1992 with 1992 having the most loaded roster during that decade, but from 1993 to 1997 it's pretty weak. They started bringing in a lot of new people around 1995-96 like Steve Austin, Triple H, The Rock, Mick Foley, Vader and some others that really helped a lot. When it gets to the early 2000s, that's when the roster really becomes loaded. Then there are things like how much it helped when they added entrance music for guys in the mid 1990s. It really helped the crowd reactions. Those are just some observations. Check out
my archive to read all the reviews.