The first half of the 2003 Royal Rumble was as good as, if not better than any Rumble in history. In a lot of ways, it is exactly how to book the first half of a Rumble match. Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho were the first two out, two big names popping the crowd big. Uniquely the match started off with a big angle, Jericho and Christian walloping Michaels into a bloody state and tossing him out early. Michaels looked suitably cheated and Jericho looked like an awful human. Perfect. From there, top level worker after top level worker came out to keep the match quality rumbling along well. Look at some of the names in the first 15 to enter the match; Jericho, Michaels, Edge, Christian, Rey Mysterio, Tajiri, Eddie Guerrero, Rob Van Dam. The glory days of SmackDown this most certainly was. The second half of the match saw all of the big men get involved, bringing the quality down a notch or four, but a number of the big men came with big names, so the crowd are still into it. Our final four was Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker, Kane and Batista, with the then-rookie Beast Incarnate winning the Rumble.
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.
