7 Fascinating Facts About The Royal Rumble Match You May Not Have Known About

With many wrestling fans’ favourite match soon approaching, let’s go over a few interesting pieces of trivia from the Royal Rumble Match

By now, most wrestling fans will be waiting in anticipation for one of WWE’s longest running pay-per-views, the Royal Rumble. Recognised as one of the “Big Four” of WWE PPVs, the Royal Rumble is often the most anticipated and unpredictable night in WWE’s yearly calendar. It’s titular match is often met with levels of hype and excitement rivalling that of even WrestleMania.

Each year, WWE airs a “by the numbers” rundown of the Royal Rumble match and after a while it gets repetitive. Most wrestling fans are already well aware of who won the most Rumbles or who has the most eliminations of all time. With that in mind, here are 7 lesser known, but equally fascinating facts about the Royal Rumble Match

Rated-R Rumble Records

Many highlights of the later parts of Edge’s career can be found in the Royal Rumble match. From his surprise win in 2010 to his emotional return in 2020 and a time turning performance that led to another victory in last year’s match, The Rated-R Superstar has earned quite a few accolades from his time in the Rumble.

With his win last year, Edge has become only the 7th multiple time Royal Rumble winner. He also became just the 3rd person to have won from the Number 1 spot after Shawn Michales in 1995 and Chris Benoit in 2004. Edge is also the first person to have won a Royal Rumble after being inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame.

With his Royal Rumble victories, Edge is the only man in WWE who has won a Royal Rumble, Money in The Bank ladder match, King of The Ring and Elimination Chamber. Less impressively however, is that Edge is the only multiple time Rumble Winner to have lost both his Championship matches at WrestleMania.

The Bare Minimum

While most Royal Rumble winners are often faced with the tall task of eliminating a few of their competitors, two men were able to win the match by scoring a single elimination apiece. This happened with Vince McMahon’s win in 1999 and Randy Orton’s win in 2017.

McMahon, who had entered at number 2 in the 1999 Rumble spent most of his time outside the ring and even did commentary for a fair portion of the match. He only re-entered the ring towards the very end of the match to score his winning elimination by throwing Steve Austin over the top rope with the help of The Rock. This sort of cheap victory was consistent with McMahon’s character and the storyline of the time.

Orton’s single elimination win has admittedly fallen quite under the radar. In 2017 Orton was part of the Wyatt Family and played the part of the loyal underling, softening his foes up and handing them over to his leader Bray Wyatt. When it came time for the final 3, Orton and Wyatt looked to double team Roman Reigns. However, when Reigns eliminated Wyatt, Orton was left to pick up the bones and win the match for himself. Entering at number 23, Orton spent just under 21 minutes before scoring his one winning elimination.

So far, such a feat has yet to be accomplished in the Women’s Royal Rumble Match with the inaugural winner Asuka coming the closest with just 3 eliminations. Who knows, perhaps we will see more single elimination victories in the future.

Champion’s Disadvantage

Throughout it’s nearly 34 years in existence, many champions have set foot in the Rumble. We’ve seen memorable moments such as the Tag Team Champions, Demolition squaring off in the 1989 match, Mid-Card champions like Rusev and Dean Ambrose coming in second place and even World Champions like Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns.

However, it is almost a guarantee that any Royal Rumble entrant who comes in holding a title will not leave as the winner of the match. For the multitude of unsuccessful champions, only one man has walked in and out of the Rumble match as a champion. That man was Hulk Hogan who walked into the 1990 Rumble as World Champion and won the match from the number 25 spot.

In addition to being the only champion to have won a Rumble match, Hogan is also the first multiple time Royal Rumble winner and the first of only 3 men to win back to back Rumbles. With only Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin following suit, it is safe to say that we may never see another back to back winner anytime soon.

Long Time No See

While we often hear the constant reminders of Kane’s record setting 19 appearances (13 of which were consecutive), we often never hear of the Superstars with the longest gaps in between Royal Rumble appearances. This record is surprisingly held by a man who is no stranger to Rumble match accolades himself.

Hacksaw Jim Duggan, the winner of the very first Royal Rumble match in 1988 did not enter another Rumble until 2009, 21 years from his last appearance. Roddy Piper and Jimmy Snuka are tied in second place with a 16 year gap between their last appearance in 1992 and their returns in 2008.

The longest gap between multiple time wins belongs to Triple H whose second victory in 2016 came an impressive 14 years after his first Rumble win in 2002. In addition to this, Triple H is the only man to have won both a Championship match at WrestleMania and the WWE Title from the match itself with his wins in 2002 and 2016 respectively.

Your Own Worst Enemy

While the aim of the Royal Rumble Match is to throw your opponents over the top rope, a few Superstars saved their competition the trouble by doing it themselves. Over the years, 12 people have eliminated themselves from the match. These people are Andre The Giant, Randy Savage, Farooq, Ahmed Johnson, Mil Mascaras, Kane, Drew Carey , Mick Foley, MVP, Matt Hardy and Santina Marella.

Andre, Farooq, Carey and Marella eliminated themselves to escape their opponents wrath. Kane and Johnson purposely exited the match to pursue an outside enemy. Foley, MVP and Hardy eliminated themselves while eliminating another opponent while Mascaras and Savage “accidentally” eliminated themselves from the match.

Among these self eliminations, Marella's was the only one to have taken place in a Women’s Rumble match thus far. Also, the 1997 Royal Rumble match holds the dubious distinction of having the most self eliminations in a single Rumble with 3.

Rumbles With Less Than 30 Entrants

Since 1989, most Royal Rumbles have for the most part, stuck firmly to the rule of 30 entrants. The only big exceptions to this would be the first Rumble which had 20 people, the 2011 Rumble which had 40 and the Greatest Royal Rumble which had 50. Despite this, there have been Rumbles where the total number of entrants still ended up falling below 30.

The biggest example of this would be the 1998 Royal Rumble match which featured only 26 men. Mick Foley who had drawn the number 1, 16 and 28 spots entered the match under each of his different gimmicks while number 22 entrant, Skull did not appear when his turn came after having been attacked earlier in the night.

There have also been 5 Rumble matches which featured 29 competitors. In 1991, Randy Savage no-showed the match to escape from the Ultimate Warrior. The Bastion Booger was removed from the 1994 match after suffering from food poisoning. Spike Dudley and Scotty 2 Hotty were both attacked before officially entering the 2004 and 2005 Rumbles respectively while Finlay was disqualified from the 2008 Rumble for entering the ring before his number was called.

Big Prizes For Second Place

Since 1993, almost every Royal Rumble match (with the exception of 2016 where the WWE Title itself was on the line) would guarantee it’s winner a World Title match of their choice at Wrestlemania. This stipulation has also extended to every Women’s Rumble match to date as well.

However, in the 31 Rumble matches which featured this stipulation, 13 runners-up ended up being featured in World Title matches at Wrestlemania anyway. That makes up for almost 42% for all Rumble runners-up in matches where this stipulation was in place.

Among these 13 people, 7 of them were able to go on to challenge for titles due to the brand split which allowed them to go after the top title of the brand not picked by the Rumble Winner. The Big Show in 2000, Randy Orton in 2006 and Triple H in 2008 were able to insert themselves into the same title match as the Rumble Winner and turn it into a multiple person bout.

Triple H in 2009 and Charlotte Flair in 2019 were able to secure World Title matches at WrestleMania despite being Rumble runners-up by winning World Titles sometime in-between the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania. Both of them defended their titles against that year’s Rumble winner.

John Cena and Triple H are the only Rumble runners-up to have done this twice. Roman Reigns would have been the third person to do so in 2020 had he not pulled himself out of his match at WrestleMania 36 due to Covid-19 concerns. Also, Steve Austin is the only Royal Rumble runner-up to have completely replaced that year’s winner, taking Vince McMahon’s spot and challenging for the title at WrestleMania 15.

That does it for this list. Hopefully, it’s helped you find out something new about WWE’s most exciting match. Perhaps this year’s Rumble matches will also come with it’s share of memorable moments that we could one day put in lists like this. Like you, I eagerly look forward to the start of The Road to WrestleMania.