12 Best WWE Royal Rumble Performances Ever

5. Ultimate Warrior/Hulk Hogan (1990)

shawn michaels royal rumble 2010
WWE Network

The Royal Rumble was still in its nascent stages in 1990 and hadn’t yet morphed into a Golden Ticket for WrestleMania. It was still a standalone event where winning was all the prestige you needed, and everyone entered it.

And that’s how we got WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and Intercontinental Champion Ultimate Warrior in the ring at the same time, grappling with a bunch of wrestlers. They were clearly outnumbered, but they tossed the deadwood, leaving just the two insanely popular champions, and fans lost their collective minds.

Warrior and Hogan would square off a bit while the crowd screamed for all they were worth, and Vince McMahon likely felt like he had a license to print money. In the end, both men eliminated six men, but Hogan won the Rumble.

However, Warrior would defeat Hulk at WrestleMania VI to capture the WWF Championship in a colossal match-up between two of the biggest stars in the company, and it all ignited at the Rumble.

Contributor
Contributor

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.