10 WWE Royal Rumble Statistics You Need To Know
1. Translating To WrestleMania Success
![WWE Royal Rumble Cody Rhodes CM Punk](https://d2thvodm3xyo6j.cloudfront.net/media/2023/11/b6f270ca6737d333-600x338.jpg)
Winning the Royal Rumble is rightly bills as a tremendous honor and opportunity. Since 1993, the victor has the opportunity to challenge whichever world champion they would like at WrestleMania that year, allowing them to essentially call their shot. (The only main exception to this rule is 2016, when Roman Reigns was forced to defend his WWE Championship in the Rumble.)
Threading two of WWE’s “Big Four” PLEs has led to an extended build to WrestleMania each year and made for some interesting storylines along the way. During those 31 Rumbles, there have been 30 championship matches (the 1997 (Steve Austin) and 1999 (Mr. McMahon) winners never challenged for the title, while 1994 co-winners Bret Hart and Lex Luger both wrestled for the title at WrestleMania X).
Amazingly, men’s Rumble winners have won a WrestleMania world championship match only 17 times, a ridiculously low 56.6 percent success rate. Roman Reigns helped tank the average under 60 percent, defeating three consecutive Rumble winners in 2021-23 before losing to Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania XL. In fact, six of the previous 10 (and 10 of the past 16) men’s Rumble winners who challenged for a world title have lost at WrestleMania. Maybe it’s not the Golden Ticket everyone says it is…
On the women’s side, Rumble winners have faired a good bit better, successfully winning a world title at WrestleMania five of the seven times they’ve competed for a championship. The only two Rumble winners who lost at Mania? Asuka in 2018 and Ronda Rousey in 2022, both of whom lost to Charlotte Flair. (To be fair, Charlotte did lose a title at WrestleManias 35 and 39.)
Perhaps WWE needs to take this into consideration when booking the Rumble and Mania – winning the Rumble is a big deal, but it feels more and more like a coin flip once they get to April.