Ranking All 31 WWE Royal Rumble Winners

6. Brock Lesnar – 2003

Ric Flair Royal Rumble 1992
WWE

WrestleMania title shot: Defeated Kurt Angle at WrestleMania XIX

When Brock Lesnar won the 2003 Royal Rumble, he had been in WWE for less than a year, debuting the night after WrestleMania X8. Lesnar was dubbed “the Next Big Thing,” and he would prove it during his two-year tenure.

Lesnar had to defeat Big Show to gain entrance into the ’03 Rumble, won and then went on to headline the criminally underrated WrestleMania XIX in a title match that was a perfect cap to the event.

Brock would go on to defend the championship until July, when he would lose the title to Kurt Angle. The two would go on to have a huge rivalry for the next several months, during which Lesnar would turn heel again and add to his reputation as a badass.

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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.