8 Times The Wrong Wrestler Won The Royal Rumble

5. Lex Luger (1994)

Lex Luger Bret Hart Royal Rumble 1994
WWE.com

Having Bret Hart and Lex Luger co-win the 1994 Royal Rumble was bet-hedging at best, and downright lazy at worst. It was dangerous too, devaluing the Rumble match and the idea that only one man will prevail, and also putting a WrestleMania in jeopardy one year after the worst in the history of the event. Some will claim that WWE didn't have many options, but they certainly had better options than a draw.

By January 1994, it was clear that the Lex Luger experiment was failing. By not putting the title on Luger at SummerSlam 1993, the then-WWF was more or less saying that it wasn't convinced by the idea of Lex as the number one guy in the company. All the work made in the summer of 1993 was for nothing.

The WWF was also haunted somewhat by the main event of WrestleMania IX, a main event that saw Yokozuna defeat Bret Hart before Hulk Hogan came out to save the day. That 'Mania was a shambles, and management could be forgiven for wanting to avoid the same main event. Even so, Bret winning was the best option, and the big show itself could have gone ahead much the same with a solo winner.

At least WWE got this sort of call correct in 2005, albeit at the expense of Vince McMahon's quads.

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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.