Royal Rumble By The Numbers WWE DON'T Want You To Know
3. 11
How were we to know, they say. How were we to know that repeatedly smashing something full force would result in its damage?
Wrestled before CTE formally made us aware of the obvious, the I Quit Match between The Rock and Mankind was a true video nasty that, while disturbing in the extreme, elevated its challenger to a Champion beyond the mere storyline result. An entertainment machine who serenaded the crowd while splitting his opponent's head open, this was Rock, future hero of cinema, in arch super-villain mode.
The sheer aural horror of those shots never lose their impact - and ghoulish appeal, frankly - two decades later. Equally unsettling in retrospect is the sheer, near-giddy extent to which Foley's concussion issues were used as a dramatic driver. "He's really busted open now, haha!" Jerry Lawler even says at one point. He also says "Goodbye, brain cells!" before the second shot, so they were to know.
WWE in 2018 lost a proxy court case in defence of its medical staff, and Punk Vs. Amann centred on complaints made after the company supposedly began taking better care of its independent contractors. All attempts to rumble WWE for this sort of negligence have failed thus far - but this scene is the smoking gun for any successful suit in the future.
10 is the number of chair shots thrown by Rock in that infamous sequence - but he also used a chair to assist a Corporate Elbow beforehand, which makes 11.