Ranking EVERY WWE Royal Rumble Pay-Per-View From Worst To Best

2. 2000

Royal Rumble
WWE.com

The Good: Taz' debut and victory over Kurt Angle in the opener is electrifying, setting the tone for the evening and event as a whole. Though painfully predictable, The Rock's Royal Rumble win is amazing because he's wildly over to the Madison Square Garden crowd like virtually everybody else in the match. Triple H and Cactus Jack's WWE Championship street fight is comfortably one of the best matches in the history of the pay-per-view. The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boyz just stop short of killing each other in a breathless and brutal tag team tables match.

The Bad: The New Age Outlaws and The Acolytes are bygone teams from a bygone era by the year 2000, but at least it was kept short. On other shows, Chris Jericho and Chyna's Intercontinental Title defence against Hardcore Holly wasn't great, but only because it was surrounded by greatness.

The Ugly: Booking Mae Young to expose prosthetic breasts was both extremely off and on-brand for a white hot product at the time. WWE lost live UK terrestrial coverage for the stunt, and never went as far (nudity-wise, at least) with Young again.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett