7 Things You Should Know About WWE Royal Rumble 1989

4. The Debut Of 30 Rumble Entrants And Two Minute Intervals

The format of the Royal Rumble was officially set at this show. A year earlier at the 1988 Rumble event that wasn't on PPV, they had only 20 entrants and the intervals were at about 90 seconds instead of two minutes (120 seconds). Regarding the time, that's something that has changed a number of times in the history of the Rumble match. The reason for it likely is that WWE felt like two minutes was the perfect time at the start, but then when you do a match that long that is guaranteed to go nearly an hour it can get boring at times. For a lot of the Rumbles, there was no set time and it would just be based on how much show time was left. In the last decade or so, they've settled on the 90 second time more often. There have been other changes with the Rumble format over the years, but every Rumble that followed this had 30 competitors except for the experiment in 2011 that had 40 men. A few months ago there were discussions that WWE would have 40 men in the 2015 Rumble as well, but they changed it back to the standard 30 for this year. It was also cool how Axe and Smash - tag team partners that formed Demolition - were the two guys that "randomly" started the match. This show was historic just because this is the one that really set the standard for what future Rumble matches would be.