Every Heel WWE Royal Rumble Winner Ranked From Worst To Best
8. Randy Orton (2017)
Not the only case on this list of a heel not exactly being received as such following a Royal Rumble win, Randy Orton's second battle royal victory came at the point he was supposedly under the spell of master manipulator heel Bray Wyatt.
And yet, the response for his win was thunderous.
WWE's babyface problem - as it constantly threatened to do with John Cena years earlier - had somehow managed to envelope the Rumble match itself. Roman Reigns' entering at #30 having lost an undercard Universal Title scrap with Kevin Owens earlier in the night felt like a troll from a company that had chosen this specific show to do just that over the last few years.
Instead, 'The Big Dog' only finished as the evening's runner up, becoming defacto heel in a lesser-of-three-evils argument when the match came down to himself, Wyatt and 'The Viper'.
Orton would eventually turn babyface on the Road To WrestleMania, but even that was badly lacking in virtue. He burned Wyatt's house to the ground and pasted him with an RKO in under 10 minutes at the 'Show Of Shows'. This spoke to the reality of the Reigns problem - audiences were happy to take this over Vince McMahon's flak-jacketed star.