The Magnificent Seven: The 7 Worst Royal Rumble Winners

The Royal Rumble is one of the most fun annual events wrestling has to offer. The thirty man format with staggered entries is enjoyable for hardcore and casual fans alike, and the matches tend to be quite re-watchable on account of the variety of aspects to watch for and, especially after a few years, the snap shot this match tends to offer of what the WWE roster looked like in a given year.

All the more so, though, since 1992, the Royal Rumble has given its winner either a WrestleMania title shot, or the world title itself. Sure, those waters have been muddied with controversial finishes or times when world title matches turned into Triple Threats or Fatal Fourways, or when the Rumble winner didn’t make it to ‘Mania at all. But in the overwhelming majority of the match’s thirty iterations, the winner has shored up his status as a top player or launched a meaningful push toward the top of the wrestling world.

The Royal Rumble has had its flops, though. In some cases, it comes down to a winner who didn’t need the push, or who wasn’t able to capitalize on the potential entailed by a Rumble victory. Sometimes it was a winner who doesn’t seem to fit the catalog of all-time greats who have won the match, or other times it’s someone who was just too predictable and undesirable in the winner’s role. In any of these case, these are the Rumble winners whose victories made the Rumble feel, in its immediate moment and/or historical context, like a big letdown.

As always, my personal opinion weighs heavily in this countdown. To rip a couple Band-Aids off early, you won’t see Mr. McMahon on this countdown. Though he surely would have made a top ten, I’m among those applauded his win for shock value at the time, and for the logical enough story that he would contrive a way to his own victory and ultimately find a way to screw Stone Cold. Additionally, I’m among those who doesn’t knock Hulk Hogan for winning in 1990 or 1991, not because he needed the win, and not because the win couldn’t have helped to propel someone else’s career, but because etching his name as a two-time winner early went a long way toward giving the match long-term credibility. It’s akin to if Roman Reigns or John Cena were to enter and win the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. No, the win wouldn’t make a big difference for either of their careers at this point; instead, it’s the kind of win that would be the wrestler making the match, signaling that WWE meant to take the battle royal seriously moving forward.

#7. Jim Duggan, 1988

While I fully recognize the historical context that the first Rumble match was the main event of a stakes-less, throwaway TV special, and while I don’t have anything against Duggan as a rock solid upper mid-carder for his era, when we look back at Royal Rumble history, it’s a bit underwhelming to see his name listed as the first man to ever win the match.

Duggan wasn’t bound for a main event push, much less the opportunity to headline WrestleMania. On the contrary, this was a house show battle royal style outcome, with a popular face winning a meaningless match. While I’d contend that most Royal Rumble winners—like them or not—in some way electrified crowds or set big things in motion, Duggan’s win was the ineffectual outcome that more or less proved WWE didn’t immediately recognize the value of what it had in the Rumble concept.

#6. Randy Orton, 2017

In 2009, Randy Orton won his first Royal Rumble and there was a compelling story to tell. After all, he was getting over in his more sinister heel gimmick of the time, and punted Mr. McMahon in the head on the preceding Raw, which demanded that something special happen to justify him not being fired. Orton’s victory here offered a logical enough kayfabe reason for him to stay with WWE—in a featured role, no less—and set him on a collision course with Triple H as the two entered white hot, personal feud with an unfortunately anticlimactic peak at WrestleMania 25.

On the flip side of all of this, there’s Orton’s 2017 Royal Rumble win. On the positive side, this felt like a step in the right direction after worse outcomes in the preceding years, and Orton winning did feel like a bit of surprise given that he wasn’t exactly groomed to be a world title contender in the months leading up to the match. You can add on top of all of that the satisfaction of Roman Reigns not winning the match, and getting eliminated last.

For all of these redeeming qualities, Randy Orton was still exactly the kind of establishment star who felt lukewarm as a Rumble winner in 2017. Heck, from a credibility standpoint, the guy was four or five years past needing the win back in 2009. This victory also had the unfortunate consequence of making WWE’s larger booking plans all too clear. Some exciting Rumble outcomes set up a main event fans have been dying to see. Others open myriad possibilities for where WWE’s storylines might be headed. In 2017, though Orton was teaming with Bray Wyatt, the writing was on the wall that they’d be feuding by WrestleMania. Orton winning could have set up some intrigue and seemed logical enough if Wyatt were a world champion; instead, Orton winning seemed to foretell that Wyatt would win the WWE Championship on the road to WrestleMania, to set up the match we were all expecting, with the extra dressing of the title. That’s exactly what happened, and it doesn’t help that the result was one of the absolute worst WWE Championship matches WrestleMania has ever seen.

#5. Big John Studd, 1989

Big John Studd is a legend of wrestling who worked his share of main event level matches opposite Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. By 1989, however, his career had shifted. He was playing babyface against heel Andre, and it seemed to be the case that the WWF was aiming to squeeze the last bit of wrestling stardom out of the then forty year old giant.

Booking Studd to win the second Royal Rumble seemed to both mean pushing Studd as a rival for Andre the Giant who was historically the king of battle royals, and seemed to add a little extra luster to the Rumble itself as it was used as a vehicle for a fringe main event guy. Unfortunately, a combination of Studd’s health and limitations due to that point in life, paired with Andre’s body deteriorating meant that the feud stayed at a simmer and never really got a proper blow off. According to The Wrestling Observer, Studd was ultimately unhappy with how little money he was making with WWE and ended up leaving the company before there was any meaningful resolution to the Andre feud at all, largely meaning that Studd’s Royal Rumble victory led to nothing for a talent who had already peaked in the WWF.

#4. Triple H, 2016

Triple H is an all-time wrestling legend, and his 2002 Royal Rumble victory was a feel-good moment to really strap a rocket onto his babyface comeback tour after a quad injury put him out of action for over half of a year. By 2016, Helmesley had settled into a part-time role and mostly only stepping into the ring for WrestleMania season, while focusing his efforts in the WWE office and playing on an on-air authority figure when he did come onto television.

A surprise return by Helmesley to insert himself into the WWE Championship picture heading into WrestleMania, where he’d put over a rising main event star all seemed logical enough. The problem is that as much as WWE would like for us to believe Triple H’s return was a surprise and has retconned history accordingly, The Game returning to win the Rumble wasn’t really a shock. Once Roman Reigns was forced to defend his WWE Championship in the Rumble match, it seemed clear enough the fix was in, and The Authority was conspiring to get the belt off of him. Not only was Triple H himself winning widely theorized by Internet pundits, but the official betting odds actually listed this specific “surprise” entrant as the odds-on favorite.

To be fair to Triple H, he entered this match in phenomenal shape and his WWE Championship reign to follow exceeded expectations, including very good defenses against Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose. The win itself, though, reeked of WWE trying to cash-in on the Mr.-McMahon-style evil mastermind dynamics of the Attitude Era, or the shocking returns of John Cena or Edge in 2008 and 2010, only to hit a false note as fans saw the finish coming, and weren’t exactly thrilled about Reigns-Helmesley at WrestleMania (a lack of excitement that proved fair enough given the resulting ‘Mania main event match was awfully blah).

#3. Lex Luger, 1994

While revisionist history may mitigate Lex Luger’s role in the WWF 1993, make no mistake about it—there was a meaningful effort to get him over as the face of WWF. After Bret Hart didn’t satisfy management’s ambitions, and Hulk Hogan’s return run was a short-lived flop, casting Yokozuna as a heel champ was a stop-gap measure, but the long game pretty clearly seemed to be positioning Luger as the new top guy.

Except that didn’t take either.

Having Luger body slam Yokozuna on the deck of the USS Intrepid on Independence Day was a good enough effort at getting a new all-American hero over, but between the dated and tired story being told, and Luger’s limitations as an in-ring performer, he never got over to the extent WWF would have liked, while Hart still wasn’t necessarily everything the company might have hoped for in terms of drawing power and charisma, still had at least as big of a following as Luger, and consistently delivered far better matches.

The Royal Rumble 1994 marked a turning point, as WWE seemed poised to choose between pushing its original plan, or the more organic choice who’d come up from behind. The company’s indecision was on display as both Luger and Hart eliminated each other in the end to emerge as co-winners. It’s been theorized that gauging fan reactions in the arena was meant as a litmus test as to which guy was more over, and while that hasn’t been substantiated, the WWF seemed to make its choice in the weeks to follow. While Luger would go down in the official record as a Royal Rumble winner, he was just a challenger to Yokozuna at WrestleMania, while The Hitman was the one to actually unseat the big man for the title.

#2. Roman Reigns, 2015

These top (or, maybe better put bottom) two are in many ways interchangeable, and suffer from very similar issues. It was a predictable winner whom the fans largely rejected, going over to cap a largely underwhelming Rumble match itself, and all of that in the face fans wanting nothing more than to see Daniel Bryan prevail.

In 2015, Daniel Bryan had returned from over a half-year on the shelf in time for WrestleMania season, and the man who’d never actually lost his championship had a convincing kayfabe argument to be title contention, not to mention that the fans still loved the organically over underdog. After WWE had made the misstep of not including Bryan in the Rumble at all the year before, in 2015 they seemed to be correcting for that, and while he may not have been the favorite to win, he was on the short list of real contenders (one could argue the entire list consisted of Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan, barring a shocking surprise return).

On the other side of the coin, we had Reigns, the presumptive corporate chosen one. Projections of him becoming the next John Cena were enough to make the Philadelphia crowd reject him, but you can add on top of that the guy legitimately hadn’t really come into his own as a singles performer yet (opinions will vary, but I’d argue that he did, more or less get there within a year’s time).

Daniel Bryan wound up a non-factor in the finish after Bray Wyatt eliminated him early. The final four consisted Reigns, Rusev, Kane, and The Big Show. On one hand, you could argue that booking no real contenders with Reigns cushioned the blow that he was going over, as opposed to the heartbreak of Reigns dumping Bryan himself to win. Unfortunately, Kane and Show, who were featured most prominently, were lumbering and unentertaining in their roles. While Rusev’s surprise return to the match after most viewers had forgotten about him was a fun enough idea, we’d seen it more to more entertaining effect with Santino Marella in 2011, Reigns dumping him, too, didn’t exactly redeem the moment. Heck, The Rock making a surprise return to help Reigns and celebrate with him couldn’t turn the crowd, marking one of the biggest booking miscalculations in WWE history.

#1. Batista, 2014

Here’s the funny thing about a string of middling-to-bad Royal Rumbles over the last four years. For as disappointing as these Rumbles were, each iteration, or at least its winner, has quite arguably been a little better than the one before it. Batista going over in 2014 started this trend of fans rejecting what had been one of the most popular matches of the year, and the moment of Batista going over represented the Rumble at its absolute dirt worst.

As articulated earlier, fans wanted Daniel Bryan to go over in this match, and his failure to appear in the Rumble at all got fans booing over the final minutes of the match. Additionally, there was the matter of how fans saw Batista. While he had been a big star, and it’s understandable for WWE to think he’d come across as a returning hero, the company seemed to underestimate just how over Bryan was and just how badly a large portion of the audience wanted to see him win this match. The fans might have accepted CM Punk as a substitute winner (it’s interesting to note that his iron man performance would end up being his last under the WWE banner), Batista was the antithesis of these guys—a corporate-bred superman relative to the hard working indy guys, a part-timer who had returned at his convenience rather than some who worked his way against the odds to earn a spot in the upper card.

Fans will debate to no end what WWE’s plan was versus what they felt compelled to do based on fan response. In his WWE Network interview with Steve Austin, Triple H alluded to the fan reaction changing the original plans for WrestleMania 30, which at least hints that the powers that be got surprised by how things turned out. Regardless, the end result of Bryan getting added to the WrestleMania main event and not only beating Randy Orton but making Batista himself tap out all worked out in the end. The finish to this Rumble seemed to symbolize, however, just how bad WWE might have been had it stayed the course at one of its most tone deaf moment.

Who would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.