1. Triple H vs. Scott Steiner - 2003
This is the worst Royal Rumble match ever without a doubt in my mind. Considering the two guys in the match (plus Ric Flair in Hunter's corner), I expected it to be a lot better. Of course Steiner was really huge at the time of the match and wasn't the worker he was in the early 1990s (look it up if you weren't watching), but he had a lot of charisma. He also came into the company hot in late 2002, so they put him in a program with Triple H, who was the World Champion on Raw at the time. A lot of words can be used to describe how bad this match, but not only that - the whole feud was awful. From the posedown challenges to the arm wrestling, it was straight from 1988 and done at a time when fans are much smarter than that. The problem with the feud is that Steiner wasn't a very good babyface. What made him successful in WCW was his heel work, yet WWE brought him in as a face and it wasn't the right move. The crowd wasn't that interested in him as a good guy, so they were off on the wrong track right from the get go. The match went nearly 20 minutes with awful chemistry. Steiner's offense consisted of a lot of suplexes, which were fine, but they lost their appeal after a while. When Hunter was in control and Steiner made his comebacks the crowd didn't care much. Steiner didn't play to the fans. He just went after Triple H. As the babyface, you need to play to the fans a bit more. The finish of the match happened after Triple H did everything he could to get out of the match. He tried to lose by countout, but that didn't work. They were outside the ring for so long, yet ref Earl Hebner didn't really count them out. Steiner kept throwing overhead belly to belly suplexes. Hunter kept walking away. I kept hoping for it to end. There was a "boring" chant from the crowd. Then Hunter threw the ref out of the ring. He was about to DQ him, but then he didn't do it. After Hunter used the Sledgehammer, the ref called for the DQ ending. It would have been nice if he did it 15 minutes earlier to save us from the misery. This should have been the end of Steiner's title shots. Instead, he got his heat back in a post match attack and he got another title shot at No Way Out a month later. That match wasn't as bad as this one, but shouldn't they have known that the experiment wasn't working? You can change plans. It's okay.