The 1997 Royal Rumble was one of the few examples in history of a major match having an extremely screwy finish that was the right call. Despite being the 26th man eliminated from the contest, StoneCold Steve Austin was declared the winner after the referees failed to clock him being thrown out due to a brawl between Mankind and Terry Funk. Austin would crawl back in, throw Vader, Undertaker and finally Bret Hart out to win the match. Controversy reigned supreme, and a four-way match was booked between the four to decide who would go on to main event WrestleMania. Taker won that match, but the beef between Hart and Austin was where it was at. The match itself was a lot of fun and represented the first in a run of Rumbles with stacked fields. 12 men involved would be World Champions at some point in their career, with Owen Hart, Jake Roberts and Goldust among the names that wouldn't. That means at least 50% of the field was top drawer performers. A really fun Rumble with a memorable ending. You can't ask for more really.
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.
