As a HUGE fan of the royal rumble match, I watch past rumbles fairly often, when discussing the best royal rumble matches, the same ones always pop up so I’m wondering what everyone’s least favourite royal rumble match is?
For me it’s 2012, everyone thought Jericho would win, and it was an uninspiring surprise when sheamus did, but there’s far too many wrestlers who are just filler, and it’s a really forgettable match.
I recently rewatched the 1995 Rumble, it was was hot trash. Very similar criticism as 2012, too many wrestlers who are just 90’s filler.
My gripe with the 1995 Rumble is that they wasted the first wire-to-wire winner on the shortest 30-man Rumble ever (38:41 per Wikipedia).
Related note: I think, if intentional, it was great foresight in 1992 to have Flair win at #3 instead of #1. The accomplishment at the time was historic enough without also needing to go wire-to-wire for the first time.
1995 has that one memorable spot at the end, but the whole thing is not a good rumble. The one spot puts it ahead of 2012 for me though.
P.s I meant to say the worst royal rumble is the greatest royal rumble. But let’s hust forget about that😂
1995 would be one mostly because of the lack of talent they had that year and the fact that it meant less then nothing because it was the shortest rumble in history.
But for me i have to go with 2 recent one. 2014 and 2016.
2014 for me was a horrible rumble from start to finish, they knew that the fans wanted Daniel Bryan to win the rumble and they didn’t even thought of putting him in. Batista won the rumble which was a awful decision and the fans just took over the whole rumble which ruin the match for me. The fact that Rey mysterio got booed out of the building didn’t help matters for me.
2016 is purely because of the booking decision. The point of that rumble was to make the fans sympathize with roman reigns. It was a simple story to tell especially since they finally where able to get the fans to treat him like a superstar a few week earlier. So all they had to do is have reigns start a number 1 and go through the entire roster only to get screwed by HHH at the end. That’s simple. Instead, they pretty much destroyed reigns with the booking. You had him lay out in the middle of the match so that he could take a break backstage and comeback fresh as a daisy near the end, have HHH look like a big hero by beating up everybody and have him eliminate REigns second to last and clean as well. Then have HHH and Ambrose be the final 2. The booking made no sense the match was horrible and out of every rumble i’ve seen including the greatest royal rumble in saudi arabia, this was the worst one of them all.
Yeah, the 2014 and 2016 Rumbles are the epitome of WWE’s obsession with booking every Attitude Era guy (HHH especially) as the veteran who could still be the top guy if he felt like it.
Also, in 2016 they insisted on acting like everybody was gunning for Roman because he was “defending” the title, even though logic says that the belt is essentially vacant and it doesn’t matter in the slightest who eliminates who.
As you’ve probably figured out, I love the Royal Rumble - it’s my favorite match if the year - so the little details bother me more than they should.
99 was hot garbage…all it was about is Austin/McMahon and everyone else was just there to forearm eachother…oh and Viscera taking forever to get kidnapped.
I swear, I do like a lot of Rumbles, but since we’re talking worst…
Similar to 1999, the 1998 edition doesn’t even make an attempt to pretend anybody other than Steve Austin is going to win. Fair play all around for having a top babyface so hot that it didn’t really matter at the time how obvious it was, but the match doesn’t really hold up in retrospect as a result.
Also, Mick Foley was 10% of the entrants.
I actually think that 2015 was worse than 14 and 16. Eliminating Bryan unceremoniously early on, when he was the only one people cared about, and the crowd booed for the rest of the match.
16, I actually quite like. HHH winning isn’t the best but they were absolutely knocked out by injuries at that point and it sort of made sense. It was genuinely the best main event for WM that they could put together.
14, isn’t bad either, just stupid booking, but if you watch it without having a hope for future storylines, it’s not that bad.
I LOVE the royal rumble by the way.
What about the best Royal Rumble does anything beat 2001? I think that might be my favourite.
STONE COLD! STONE COLD…STONE COLD IS GOING TO WRESTLEMANIA.
2003 is an underrated rumble also i think it’s Brock Undertaker Kane Batista who are the final four.
2004 and 2005 easily.
I like 2008 a lot. Starts off with Shawn/Taker, fun surprises like Piper/Snuka/Foley and of course Cena’s surprise return and win. I thought the way it was shot looked cool with the MSG setup as well.
2015 for sure. After Bryan got eliminated it was shit. I think Goldust was the first wrestler ever to get introduced without the crowd counting down cuz they were so pissed. Then Show and Kane just destroy everybody and kill the crowd even more. Rock couldnt even save that.
1999 though was all around a bad rumble but the story was incredible. Vince’s reactions to Stone Cold are just money.
The very first rumble I can hardly stand because it is straight up babyface vs heel. No heel attacks another heel and no baby faces fight. It is just annoying to me lol.
Cliche for a reason, but I’m going with 1992. Unprecedented performance by Flair, Heenan on fire for 60+ minutes, and one of the first major “anti-Hogan” pops when he gets eliminated.
It’s 95 for me and it’s the same reason as people have mentioned. No names were in it and some were kicked out seconds in (Owen & Backlund) just to build the Bret storyline, which is fine but that talent pool needed them to stay for longer. The blessing is that it was short and the 2 starting being there at the end was a good idea, but the lack of length eliminated how important that was.
I’d also throw 97 in here for a similar reason. The talent pool was so small and they relied on luchadores that the fans didn’t know/care about. Austin winning after being eliminated wasn’t great either, it made the refs look dumb being distracted by 2 guys fighting outside but only Austin’s elimination was missed not the other 4. It had it’s highlights in Austin being by himself at times but overall wasn’t great to me.
As an 11-year-old fan who hated Shawn Michaels and took wrestling way too seriously (some things never change), the 1996 Rumble drove me nuts. After Shawn dumped Vader and Yokozuna at the same time - a dumb spot in its own right - Vader came back in and tossed HBK, but the elimination was deemed illegal despite plenty of examples (past and future) of similar things happening with no repercussions.
So Shawn went on to win like we all expected, and 11-year-old me sulked knowing that he was going to go on to beat Bret at Wrestlemania (where once again, I found myself angry and searching for technicalities… “you expect me to believe that the signed contract didn’t address what happens if there’s a tie?!”)
1992 is the best one by far for me, the worst ones 2017, 1995, 2016 among others. 2005 was memorable thanks the best botch in history. It’s easier to say the best ones cause there have been a lot of average ones.
From a booking standpoint of who won vs. who should have won, 2014 was the worst. In terms of match quality, 1995 and 1999 were both real stinkers.
I have to throw in the 91 Rumble. Just a borefest with no cool spots and mostly just guys hanging on the ropes.
I hve the 2011 Royal Rumble as my worst, I think it was shown afterwords that 40 guys in the rumble is way too many people involved in such a match. Also I’m not a big fan of Del Rio and thought his character at the time with the whole ‘destiny’ gimmick.