WrestleMania title shot: N/A Of course, the one thing that could top this list is actually winning the WWF/E Championship at the Royal Rumble, which is what Ric Flair did in 1992. This also made Flair just the second man to hold both the WWF Championship and the NWA/WCW World Championship (the first being Buddy Rogers). The WWF Championship had been vacated before the Rumble due to controversial circumstances involving Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker. With the title vacant, the fifth edition of the Royal Rumble would decide who was the next champion. Flair entered the match at #3 and improbably went on to win the title the first man to enter in the first half of the Rumble and win. The Rumble match itself was masterful and still holds up today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMgdbjvE1E Flair had shown up in WWF with the WCW title in tow, saying he was the real world champion, and this victory proved it. Never before and never since has the WWF/E title been won in the Rumble match itself, but the success of having actual stakes involved helped lead to the Rumble winner being rewarded with a WrestleMania world title shot. Since then, the Road to WrestleMania that begins at the Royal Rumble has become one of the biggest times of year for wrestling fans.
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 fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.
