Since 1993, the winner of the Royal Rumble has received a world title match at WrestleMania that year. Its been a great hook for fans, tying the two events together and helping to create the Road to WrestleMania that WWE has pushed through the years to build to the big event. In that time, 24 men have won the 23 Rumbles (counting co-winners Lex Luger and Bret Hart in 1994). Two, Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1997 and Vince McMahon in 1999, never got their world title match at Mania due to different circumstances. But winning the Rumble and having momentum behind you has not been enough for some. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5HwVrePdA Of the 22 men who have fought for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania, only 13 have won the title a surprisingly low average of 59%. Recent winners have had far less luck, with six of the last eight Rumble winners losing their title match at Mania. Thats a pretty bad run of luck.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
