12 Wrestlers Who Had ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS Being In WWE Royal Rumble
2. Dory Funk Jr (1996)
Just shy of 55 when he entered the 1996 Royal Rumble, Dory Funk Jr didn't look anywhere near out of place as he probably should have done thanks to fellow men-of-a-different-time Jake Roberts and Bob Backlund sharing the ring with him. But really, what were these three and others like them doing in the second of the three Rumbles to take place in the guts of the company's vaunted and heavily-promoted "New Generation" era?
To rattle off a familiar-for-the-time refrain - WWE didn't have much choice. The company wasn't rich in talent from a quantity point-of-view (even if many of the smaller crew would go on to make bigger impacts after a facelift or two), but Funk had a rich enough history to more than justify a spot. Per Vince McMahon's commentary, Terry Funk would have joined him had he not been filming a movie in Germany with Bruce Willis.
Funk Jr wasn't to stay on the WWE books beyond the cameo, but his stranger-in-a-strange-land appearance oddly foreshadowed much of the year to come. McMahon had no clue Eric Bischoff was about to steal a march in the brand new Monday Night Wars by completely reshaping what it meant for wrestlers to jump ship. With the signings of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall as well as many others, Bischoff highlighted exactly how to find the brand new (and monetisable!) qualities in many. McMahon presumably thought that any and all legends were fairer game for the "Recognised Symbol Of Excellence in Sports Entertainment" than they were down in Atlanta, but it'd take another year before he'd review his business and finally start rebuilding from scratch.