50 Things You Learn Binge-Watching Every WWE Royal Rumble
14. 2011’s 40-Man Experiment Flopped
The mid-80s "sports entertainment" boom cemented the WWF as an organisation that stood for production excellence, mass excitement and a boatload of hype/exaggerated claims. Bigger was always better. Liked WrestleMania I? Well, have 'Mania 2 beamed from three different cities. Enjoyed the first televised Rumble in 1988? Here it is in '89, albeit with 30 superstars instead of 20. Going big was always the aim.
What worked mid-Hulkamania didn't fly decades later. Come 2011, WWE tried to pitch that year's Royal Rumble as the biggest and best ever. The famous match would have 40 entrants instead of the now-standard 30, but something didn't sit right with fans. Sure, WWE went bigger, but they defo didn't go better. It turns out that 30 is the ideal number for any Rumble, and there's no getting away from the fact that some innovations just flat out suck.
Beefing up the count by 10 did nothing for the match at all, and 2011 is actually one of the flattest Rumbles to revisit today. No wonder bosses shrugged their shoulders after seeing it in execution and quietly ditched the idea until 2018's Greatest Royal Rumble came along to make things worse by exacerbating everything that was wrong with 2011.
That took some doing, but they did it.
Nostalgic comebacks from the likes of Diesel and Booker T mattered more to fans after the event than Alberto Del Rio's win too. The same goes for John Cena eliminating CM Punk before Del Rio had his moment in the sun. Those were all bigger talking points post-PPV than the 40-man tryout or who remained standing at the end.