One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every WWE Royal Rumble

2017 - The Start Of A Terrible Trend

By 2017, the Royal Rumble match was showing its age.

While there’s a timeless magic to the attraction, which will forever work as a means of advancing multiple storylines, cool innovations had withered into tropes all those decades later. The ‘Diesel’ run wasn’t the first step towards a massively committed top guy push; it was just the done thing for a hoss to do. The mystery entrant had lost its charm; the fun was forced, the tone too comedic and silly.

At its very core, the purpose of the match had achieved the opposite effect: you were meant to be excited about WrestleMania season, but this was no longer possible when the main event scene was so uninspiring.

In 1992, Ric Flair’s legendary marathon stamina was conveyed to WWF fans by his epic ‘Iron Man’ stint. He lasted one hour and two seconds in a winning performance, and even though the story dictated that he narrowly survived through his expert grasp of the dark arts, he still registered five eliminations.

WWE grew incredibly lazy with this same idea in the years since. The idea was that it was somehow impressive for a wrestler to stay in the match without doing anything, as if Michael Cole updating you on the timer was going to get them over. This reached a pointless nadir in 2017, when Sami Zayn lasted 47 minutes in the match - without recording a single elimination.

Without even trying to be snarky or negative, the only way to describe this booking is as a complete waste of time.