15 Best Matches To Ever Take Place At Royal Rumble
6. The Rock Vs. Chris Jericho (Royal Rumble '02)
If Bryan vs. Wyatt is to overtake any of the top 6 matches in the near future, then surely it will be this one. Yet, do not count out this match for the Undisputed Championship. Jericho and Rock had amazing chemistry and put together arguably their finest match against each other at the '02 Rumble. If you have read Jericho's books, then you know how proud he was of this effort...and for good reason. It was fantastic. There were a lot of matches back then that were off-the-charts in the athleticism department, but it was difficult to top the level of pacing and stamina that Rock and Jericho executed when facing off. How do you tell a thirty minute story in less than twenty minutes? Ask those guys... The Rock was at his athletic peak in 2002. Jericho has always been able to shift quickly into fifth gear. There was just a short time where you could expect that from Rock. As we will look at an entry or two later, early career Rock as a headliner relied heavily on his unmatched charisma to tell his stories. When he put it all together from 2000-2002, he became one of the most unique workers of all-time because there just was nothing that he could not do. Jericho challenged him to pick up the pace in a way that only Kurt Angle was ever able to do in quite the same way. The early moments of this match might remind some of the Rock-Austin classic at WM17, during which the blistering pace of the first few minutes made it so that you could not ease your way into engaging the performance; if you did, you missed something important. Rock made that a hallmark of his matches and his matches benefited greatly from it. From there, it was an exercise in reminding the audience that Jericho was a little turd of a heel, but he was a very, very good little turd of a heel, capable of conniving his way to victory by any means available. This was by no means a cookie-cutter match. If anything, they made a new cutter for future batches of cookies.
"The Doc" Chad Matthews has written wrestling columns for over a decade. A physician by trade, Matthews began writing about wrestling as a hobby, but it became a passion. After 30 years as a wrestling fan, "The Doc" gives an unmatched analytical perspective on pro wrestling in the modern era. He is a long-time columnist for Lordsofpain.net and hosts a weekly podcast on the LOP Radio Network called "The Doc Says." His first book - The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment - ranks the Top 90 wrestlers from 1983 to present day, was originally published in December 2013, and is now in its third edition.
Matthews lives in North Carolina with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.
