Ask 411 Wrestling: Is Miz the Least Successful Wrestler in Royal Rumble History?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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EZ is taking things, well, easy . . .

Longtime reader of the column. Asked a question ages ago. Even wrote for the site a number of years back.

Anyway, saw a tweet that said The Miz has spent 2 hours and 12 minutes in Royal Rumble matches (over 15 matches). In that time, he’s only eliminated 2 men.

Assuming that is accurate, who is the wrestler that has spent the most amount of time in Royal Rumble matches and done the least? Who else is in the conversation?

First off, I thought that answering this question was going to be a huge time suck, but then I discovered the website All Rumble Stats, which compiles a scary amount of statistics about every Royal Rumble match and participant ever. Go check them out and support their Patreon if you’re so willing.

(Wait a minute, you can set up a Patreon for putting wrestling trivia on the internet? Why didn’t I do this ten years ago?)

Anyway, the information that you have presented regarding Mike the Miz is 100% accurate. 15 matches, 2 hours and 12 minutes, and only two eliminations, both of which happened in the 2012 Rumble match.

However, that’s not enough to make him the least productive wrestler in the history of the Royal Rumble match.

There are actually two wrestlers who have spent over an hour in Royal Rumble matches and, in that time, have failed to eliminate anybody at all. Who are they?

Up first, we’ve got Ember Moon, also known as reigning Ring of Honor Women’s Champion Athena. She appeared in three Rumbles when she was with WWE, accumulating 1 hour and 30 seconds of ring time. Despite this, she eliminated nobody.

Our other flop is somebody who loves to fight but apparently isn’t that great when it comes to doing it in a Royal Rumble match. Yes, I’m talking about Fit Finlay. Like Athena, Finlay entered three Rumble matches during his career, though he had a slightly longer time between the ropes with a cumulative 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 33 seconds. Again, in that time, he secured no eliminations.

Zach from Pittsburgh has noticed that there’s no Hulkamaniacs here:

What happened in 1993 with Hulk Hogan after he dropped the WWF Championship to Yokozuna at King Of The Ring?  He seemingly vanished until he showed up in WCW a year later.

First off, it’s worth noting that Hogan’s King of the Ring appearance was not his last WWF appearance in 1993. KOTR was on June 13 that year, and, throughout the rest of June, Hulk worked four WWF matches, two of which were on house shows and two of which were dark matches following television tapings. All of those matches were rematches from Wrestlemania IX pitting Hogan and Brutus Beefcake against Money, Inc. Three of those bouts featured Sgt. Slaughter as a guest referee for some reason, while the fourth did not have Sarge but was a lumberjack match.

In late July and early August, the WWF went on a European tour, including shows in Austria, Germany, and the UK. Hulk Hogan was on that tour, wrestling Yokozuna in a WWF Title match on every show and losing by disqualification on every show. Hogan’s true final match in the WWF before heading out the door was on August 6, 1993 in Sheffield in the UK.

After that, Hogan was largely on a hiatus from the ring. He was working on projects in Hollywood, which would have included his television series Thunder in Paradise. He did also have three matches for New Japan Pro Wrestling between his run with the WWF and WCW. Those consisted of: a tag team win with the Great Muta against Road Warrior Hawk and Kensuke Sasaki on September 23, 1993; a singles win over Keiji Muto (Muta’s alter ego) on September 26, 1993; and a singles win over Tatsumi Fujinami on January 4, 1994 – the third-ever January 4 show that NJPW promoted in the Tokyo Dome, which evolved into what we now know as Wrestle Kingdom.

Through something or other and something or other, it’s Ignacio:

Lately, I have seen a lot of Kanes. First, Blue Kane (now Blue Pain), then Candy Kane, Co-Kane, Gayne. I know Wrestling Memes is the man behind Blue Kane. Who are the others?

It’s not particularly hard to figure out Ignacio’s question if you don’t have the background, but for those of you who are bad at using context clues, I’ll spell it out. Lately, there as been an epidemic of indy wrestlers parodying Kane in various ways.

The one that kicked off the trend was Blue Kane, who is UK indy wrestler Tom Anstey. As Ignacio notes, he runs the Wrestling Memes Twitter account and as a result usually wrestles his indy matches under the name “Memes.” Anstey has been wrestling since 2017 on small shows in his native country and started to get some attention online when he started began in a blue-tinted Kane suit in 2021. He got so popular, in fact, that he was flown to the U.S. for Wrestlemania weekend on in 2024, facing Matt Cardona on Joey Janela’s Spring Break. However, by that point in time he had received a cease and desist letter from WWE, which caused him to change the name of his character from “Blue Kane” to “Blue Pain.”

Moving on to Candy Kane and Co-Kane, I can knock those two out in one shot, and this caused me to take a deep dive into a subgenre of wrestling that I did not even know existed. This all starts with a gentleman named Dave Hitchens who in the early 2000s trained under Iron Mike Sharpe and became a professional wrestler, competing on small indy shows in New Jersey, mostly under the name Dave Michaels.

Many years later, Hitchens adopted the name “Grim” and started a YouTube channel called Grim’s Toy Show, which initially featured videos of him reviewing wrestling dolls and then expanded to more general skits. Eventually, he used that platform to get back into wrestling in a way, purchasing his own ring and starting to film videos based around his own “promotion,” called GTS Wrestling – with the GTS standing for “Grim’s Toy Show.” I also put “promotion” in quotation marks there because if you watch these shows they’ve got all the production value and live attendance of your average backyard wrestling group.

With all that said, both Candy Kane and Co-Kane are creations of GTS Wrestling. According to the GTS Wrestling Wiki, which I’m amazed to say is a real thing that really exists, Co-Kane is portrayed by Jimmy Controversy. Controversy is a New Jersey-based indy wrestler who has been active since 2017. Meanwhile, Candy Kane is Grim’s wife Tina, who as near as I can tell is otherwise not a pro wrestler.

BUT WAIT! In researching this question I learned that there has actually somehow been more than one group that came up with the Co-Kane joke. Juggalo Championship Wrestling, the promotion owned by the Insane Clown Posse, actually had their own version of Co-Kane, sometimes spelled “Coke Kane.” The same wrestler also appeared for JCW as a Pink Kane and a Yellow Kane, the latter of which has derisively been referred to as “Piss Kane.” All of the JCW Kanes appear to have been played by indy wrestler Quinn Whittock.

That brings us to Gayne, who enters the ring to the creepy organ intro of Kane’s ring music followed by “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross. To my knowledge, Gayne has only made one appearance, on September 28 of last year in Merseyside, England for a show called the “Rainbow Rumble” hosted by TNT Extreme Wrestling. I have not seen any information come out, so to speak, on who may have been behind Gayne’s mask.

And those are all the Kane variants that I could find, though I’m sure somebody in the comments will dig up more.

(Side note: There also appears to have been a female wrestler named “Candy Kane” active in the 1970s, but obviously she has no connection to any of our Kanes profiled here.)

Tyler from Winnipeg is a real American Canadian hero:

I’m sure Sgt. Slaughter is in many halls of fame, but is he in yours?

Long-time readers will probably recall that I have high standards for who should go into a hall of fame. In my mind, that’s an honor for truly only the biggest names in the history of the sport, not just people who were good performers and not just people who had long careers without reaching its upper echelons. For example, I’ve ruffled some feathers by saying that I wouldn’t vote for a Curt Henning or an Eddy Guerrero to be in a pro wrestling hall of fame. I loved both of them as performers but taking into account the whole history of the sport across the world, I think they’re a notch below the true biggest names that belong in a HOF.

Sergeant Slaughter is honestly one that I went back and forth on, but ultimately I come down on the side of saying he should go into a wrestling hall of fame. Obviously he had a long career as top guy on several territories. However, what really puts him over the top and makes him a worthy hall of famer in my mind is the fact that he managed to gain a level of mainstream fame that very few wrestlers ever have when he signed on with the GI Joe franchise, a deal that he landed on his own without the support of any wrestling promotion. (In fact, he left the WWF because they didn’t want him to do the GI Joe deal.) That made him one of the most nationally known wrestlers of the 80s without the backing of the Fed’s machine, which is quite impressive.

I think FKACMJFTRKO sent this in just so I would have to type his inscrutable username:

I appreciate the effort that went into the Lincoln to Turbo line.

I imagine a “Magnum TA to Truth Magnum” line would be a little easier, and a little bit more fun?

For those who are missing the context for this one, I received a question a couple of weeks ago from Richard U. – who often contributes some of our more offbeat and interesting questions – asking me if I could link Abraham Lincoln to Turbo Floyd through their respective in-ring opponents.

This question now asks me to do the same for Magnum TA and Truth Magnum, which is significantly, significantly easier.

Truth Magnum has had at least two matches against Chris Jericho, including a July 17, 2024 match in North Little Rock, Arkansas aired on AEW Rampage that pitted Jericho and Big Bill against the Outrunners.

Chris Jericho had had several matches with Ric Flair over the years, including their first ever singles match which happened on the first ever episode of WCW Thunder on January 8, 1998 in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Ric Flair had numerous matches against Magnum TA, including their first on December 2, 1984 in Tulsa, Oklahoma for Mid-South, which was a successful NWA World Title defense for Flair.

And there you have it. Magnum to Magnum.

Too many rings around Patrick will never get Patrick a ring:

I have a question about the sizes of wrestling rings and boxing rings.

Which ring is the right size for the people to move around in in order for them to do their stuff? a WWE ring, an AEW ring or a boxing ring?

I answer this with the caveat that I have never wrestled a match, so I don’t have direct experience here. However, as near as I can tell, it’s really just a matter of personal preference. Different wrestlers will tell you that different rings are better. Generally, smaller rings favor smaller, faster wrestlers while larger rings favor larger wrestlers.

I’ve never heard a wrestler say that they would rather have a match in a boxing ring, though. Those things are MASSIVE compared even to WWE rings, and every time I see a match in one it feels as though the canvas is just swallowing the wrestlers whole.

Jonfw2 is embarrassing his nieces and nephews at Thanksgiving dinner:

When Vince first dabbled with “Attitude” around late 1995, into ‘96, a whole lot of the angles were either racially motivated or homophobic.

Goldust had THREE feuds based entirely around his opponents (Razor, Warrior, Ahmed) being angry that he hit on them- and THEY were the faces!

Savio Vega was called “burrito breath” by Lawler and almost forced to be Ted DiBiase’s chauffeur. Oh. And Barry Horowitz’s entrance music was “Hava Nagila”. Because ya know…Jew.

And there are plenty more of the above.

Was this just a case of “well, it was a different time” or should Vince get even more criticism for these types of storylines?

I think the answer to the direct question here is, “Well, both.”

On one hand, the reason the WWF got away with it at the time was that it was a different era and these sorts of angles and comments were not viewed with the same level of scrutiny that they are now, thirty years later.

On the other hand, just because mainstream society accepted it at the time doesn’t mean that it was right or a good idea. Wrestling – not just Vince McMahon or the WWF but wrestling as a whole – has a long history of reinforcing harmful stereotypes about historically marginalized groups. We as fans and those in the industry can’t do anything to change what happened historically, but hopefully we can all do better going forward. Promotions can do better by not booking these sorts of things in the first place, and fans can do better by turning off the product when it happens.

Keith is taking a principled stand:

I know I can Google this, but what was the reasoning behind Bruno not wanting to have anything to do with the WWF/E until him and Trips spoke?

Fun fact: Some weeks, I’ve toyed with the idea of changing the name of this column to “I Know I Can Google This, But . . .”

I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I love all your questions, and I will continue to do so until ChatGPT evolves to the point that Ask 411 is totally irrelevant.

Anyway, the answer to the question is basically drugs. Sammartino was heavily involved in bodybuilding and physical culture in his day and did it 100% clean, having a strong opposition to any performance enhancing drugs and, by extension, recreational drugs. His falling out was largely over the drug culture that he saw developing in the WWF.

He also had issues with what he believed were vulgar storylines that were not family friendly and was outspoken about things like the ring boy scandal as well.

When Bruno spoke with Triple H, HHH was able to convince him that WWE was a different company and that it had cleaned up its act with its PG television ratings and its Wellness Policy. It was also reported at the time that Sammartino was particularly helped along by the fact that the doctor overseeing the Wellness Program at the time was Dr. Joseph Maroon, who Sammartino knew on a personal level because they were both prominent citizens in Pittsburgh.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.