Ranking All 19 WWE King Of The Ring Winners

9. Randy Savage (1987)

King Of The Ring Winners Bret Hart Brock Lesnar Kurt Angle
WWE.com

Before you hop up and down that Randy Savage enjoyed a great heel run as the Macho King from 1989-91, let’s chart this out.

Savage won the 1987 King of the Ring tournament. That didn’t really translate into much, as he was only the third winner, and it was still just a New England house show gimmick at the time. However, Savage would subsequently turn face and win the WWF World Championship the following spring, holding it for a full year.

But the Macho King persona would come indirectly due to Harley Race. Handsome Harley won the second KOTR tournament in 1986 and would fully adopt the king persona permanently… until he was injured. At that point, Haku (who was also part of the Heenan Family) would take on the king moniker. Hacksaw Jim Duggan would defeat Haku for the king title, and Savage would beat Duggan for that king title in September 1989, leading to the Macho King.

Yes, that is really the chain of events. So while Savage was excellent as the Macho King, it’s tough to rate him too high on this list because it wasn’t due to the tournament that he actually won.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.