8 Times The Wrong Wrestler Won The Royal Rumble

7. Hacksaw Jim Duggan (1988)

Jim Duggan Royal Rumble
WWE.com

Do we still count the first Royal Rumble as a true Royal Rumble? It contained just 20 men and had no real prize on offer, but it still goes down in history as the first in a long line of Royal Rumble matches. The bout was won by Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who outlasted Dino Bravo and One Man Gang at the end in what was then the highest viewed wrestling program on cable TV.

So whilst the winner was somewhat irrelevant, the question of whether Duggan was the right choice lingers. Watching the match back Duggan is far from the most popular combatant in the bout. When Duggan enters at number 13 he does so to a decent reaction, but that reaction is dwarfed by the man who entered at number five.

Jake 'The Snake' Roberts was far and away the most popular individual in the match, and as such a win for Jake would have made the crowd even happier, which was pretty much the entire point back then. Duggan was never going to be anything more than a middle of the card babyface, so a win for Jake would have been a feather in the cap of someone the company had big plans for moving forward.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.