Royal Rumble By The Numbers WWE DON'T Want You To Know

6. 2

Jericho Rumble Numbers
WWE.com

Two - two - is the paltry number of wrestlers Chris Jericho eliminated en route to fashioning himself as the Royal Rumble's Ultimate Aggregated Iron Man.

'4:58:12' was the headline, but two is the story.

This empty statistic paints a picture of Jericho as a legend while also painting WWE as a deeply superficial entity determined at all costs to tell a story. At the, ahem, cost of telling a real story. Jericho, who absolutely killed it at the Tokyo Dome on January 4, 2019 did little at the Alamodome on January 29, 2017 beyond crawl underneath the ropes.

Those two wrestlers were Sheamus and Cesaro...who were squabbling amongst themselves when Jericho eliminated them. Jericho did well, off his own back, to engineer crowd support - but he wasn't supported by the booking. This number was one more elimination than Vince McMahon managed in 1999, a match designed to portray him as an undeserving pissant. Jericho's stint in 2017 was designed in part to convince an audience to slowly get behind him.

What's worrying is that WWE is as fond of malice as it is of breaking meaningless records - and since Jericho is now ALL IN on AEW, expect runner-up Kane to go an hour on January 27, just to spite that ungrateful f*cking turncoat.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!