Jim Ross Recalls Botched Finish to 2005 Royal Rumble, Vince McMahon Tearing Both Quads After Coming Out To the Ring

– On the latest Grilling JR, Jim Ross recalled the infamous botched finish to the 2005 Royal Rumble and Vince McMahon tearing both his quads after he came out to fix it. The Rumble match that year was supposed to end with Batista winning, and ultimately did. However, that was after Batista and John Cena, the final two men in the match, accidentally eliminated each at the same time. McMahon then came out to restart the match, which led to Batista getting the win. However, when Vince slid into the ring, he tore one of his quads and was forced to a sitting position.
To make matters worse, his other quad tore as he was coming back through the curtain.

Highlights from the discussion, and the full podcast, are below:

On the whole ending being a planned storyline: “No. No, of course not. It wasn’t. But here’s the thing. The referees are getting their instructions in their ear. So it wasn’t like it was a finish, that all of them agreed using telepathy to have this finish to raise their hands and all. The Smackdown refs were gonna raise Cena’s hand, and the Raw ref’s gonna raise Batista’s hand. And then here comes Vince at the end to — because there was nowhere that those participants that I had just named could go. They couldn’t make the final, final. And of course, you’ve got a Smackdown guy and a Raw guy, so you can’t say ‘Well, the General Managers should have gotten together.’ That would have been a pissing contest that would have gone nowhere. Because Teddy Long’s gonna vote for Batista or vice versa. Long was a Smackdown guy and Eric [Bischoff] was a Raw guy. So the only guy that could settle this dispute was Judge Judy. Judge Judy McMahon.”

On Vince tearing his quad: “And he comes walking out there like Conor McGregor tries to emulate Vince, which I think is hilarious. And somewhere along the way as he was getting in the ring, everything — the physics were all in place, unfortunately for the Chairman … It’s uncomfortable to watch. [It was] disturbing to watch back for me, because I had that great view right there at ringside. For folks that don’t know, the thigh muscle’s called the quadracep fomoris. Which means — that’s Latin, it means ‘four-headed thigh muscle.’ And any time a ball player gets a torn quad, it is career-threatening without a doubt. So the four-headed thigh muscle rolled up his leg. He had to be in amazing pain.”

On if Vince was overzealous trying to slide into the ring: “I don’t think he was overzealous whatsoever. Because as it rolled down, as the story unfolded, and you’re doing a live feed, you’ve got to call an audible. That was the only call we had. This is a finish of a major, major PPV leading us into WrestleMania. There had to be some finality there. And the only person who could rule and judge on finality was the Chairman. That was Mr. McMahon. I just think that it was a freak thing, man. Because here’s the deal. He tore the other one walking through the curtain!”

On Vince’s reaction to his injuries backstage: “I walked through the curtain, unaware that he had torn the other one. We did our hype going off the air, and ‘WrestleMania, Batista, The Animal, blah blah blah,’ and all that stuff. Trying to sell and create awareness as always. So I don’t have any clue, you know. I just thought — Tazz and I did our first call together in that arena. Everything seemed to be okay, other than I didn’t know what was wrong with Vince to be sure. But we got the finish in, we got our business done. We got the guy’s hand raised that we wanted their hand raised. I walk through the curtain on the way through the Gorilla area, and there Vince is sitting on the f**king floor.

“And somebody said, ‘He tore the other one.’ I said, ‘WHAT?!?’ ‘Yeah, he tore the other one.’ So I go over to him, and he says, ‘God dammit JR, don’t say nothing!’ I was giving him a little empathy. He said, ‘Just take care of the goddamn boys.’ ‘All right, you got it, chief.’ ‘And get everybody out of here!’ So everybody got away from him expect family. It was a traumatic, stressful — I’m sure his goddamn anxiety level was up [through] the roof. Why wouldn’t it be? So it was a hell of an experience.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Grilling JR with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.