Every WWE Royal Rumble's Best Performer

2004 €“ Chris Benoit

Whilst the WWE would have you believe that there was no winner of the 2004 Royal Rumble match, let me tell you a little story about a man called Chris Benoit. Benoit, a tough-as-nails Canadian known affectionately as The Crippler, was a grappler who had always come up short when it came to winning the big one in the WWE. After falling out of favour with Smackdown€™s Paul Heyman, Benoit was forced to enter the Royal Rumble at #1. He€™d go on to win the match and then take Triple H€™s World Championship at WrestleMania XX before floating around the midcard for the next few years and quietly retiring to a life of golf and long summer walks. Wait a minute, something doesn€™t sound quite right there€ Regardless of the horrors that were his last few days and his final acts, Chris Benoit was a hell of a worker, one of the very best in-ring talents the wrestling business has ever seen, and his 2004 Royal Rumble performance was a fine example of this. As the underdog that you finally wanted to see given a shot at being a true main event player, Benoit and his 2004 Rumble antics were brilliantly effective. With his hour-long Rumble win, Chris Benoit was hugely elevated to another level, as highlighted by his eventual World Title win later that year.
Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.