Ranking All 30 WWE Royal Rumble Winners

1. Ric Flair – 1992

steve austin 2001 royal rumble
WWE.com

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 in a career-defining moment, 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.

Flair had shown up in WWF with the WCW title in tow, saying he was the “real world champion,” and this victory proved it. The success of having actual stakes involved – the title being on the line – 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.

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.