Ranking EVERY WWE Royal Rumble Match - From Worst To Best

Looking back at every single Royal Rumble match from over the decades.

by Andrew Pollard
Shawn Michaels Ranked
WWE

While WrestleMania may be WWE's biggest event of the year, for some wrestling fans, even more anticipated than the Showcase of the Immortals is the Royal Rumble.

Created by Pat Patterson, the first 'proper' Royal Rumble took place in 1988, with the match concept itself trialled at a non-televised live event the prior year. That '88 Rumble aired as a TV special, before the Royal Rumble became its own pay-per-view the following year and joined 'Mania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series as the then-WWF's Big Four.

In the decades since, the Royal Rumble has gone from strength to strength and has long been cemented as the start of the patented Road to WrestleMania. A win in the over-the-top-rope Rumble match can propel careers, can cement legacies, and has set in motion some of the biggest matches in WrestleMania history. But with a mammoth 45 Royal Rumbles in the books, how do each of these Rumble contests stack up? Of course, that's a subjective matter, but we've done our best here to rank every single Royal Rumble match from worst to best.

Also, for clarification, that means every Royal Rumble match to take place at the eponymous event - and that initial TV special - and does not include those rare Rumbles that happened on standard weekly television, such as the 2011 Raw Rumble or 2008's Mini Royal Rumble.

Article written by Jamie Kennedy and Andrew Pollard.

45. 1988

Shawn Michaels Ranked
WWE.com

The first televised Royal Rumble is a curious but understandably tough watch today. WWE was still ironing out the kinks and finding out what worked and what didn't in the match, and the commentators clearly didn't address the elephant in the room: that nothing was actually on the line. That kinda stomps all over the 1988 Rumble's importance when looking back.

Jim Duggan shouldn't be dismissed as a naff winner (he was a star on the rise at the time), but it says everything for the '88 version that it's only 20 wrestlers deep but still trundles along for 33 minutes. That duration feels like 1 hour and 33 minutes when revisiting. Sorry, but it does. Again though, the company was experimenting here and would refine the formula within a couple of years.

The first Rumble is rather underwhelming overall.

Highlights include Bret Hart's workmanlike 25-minute performance and Duggan ousting One Man Gang for the victory. Lowlights include the general atmosphere - some fans seemed bored out of their skulls around ringside after the first flurry of excitement, and that wasn't a promising look for Pat Patterson's bold new match type.

Oh well, better brawls were ahead!

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.