Best Of The Royal Rumble

The Rumble of The Royal Rumble 1990

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s amazing that as we continue this trip down memory lane looking back at all of the past Royal Rumble events to see how the Royal Rumble transformed and continued to evolve throughout the years.  Let’s get right into the results of the show and what I remember most when looking back at the event.

Royal Rumble 1990- Orlando Arena in Orlando, Florida- January 21, 1990

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Results

The Bushwhackers (Butch and Luke) defeated The Fabulous Rougeaus (Jacques and Raymond)

Brutus Beefcake fought The Genius to a double disqualification

Ronnie Garvin defeated Greg Valentine

Jim Duggan defeated Big Boss Man (with Slick) by disqualification

Hulk Hogan won by last eliminating Mr. Perfect in the Royal Rumble match

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It’s important to remember with these early Royal Rumble events that there was nothing on the line for the winner of the Royal Rumble.  What this meant basically was that the main selling point of the Rumble show was the Royal Rumble match and so everything went into the promotion of the Rumble match and building that match up with as much star power as possible.  Thus, when you go back and watch this Rumble match, it just flies right by because it’s a really loaded Rumble.  In this match alone you had Hogan, Warrior, Savage, Perfect, Rude, Dusty, Andre, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Piper, Jake Roberts and Jimmy Snuka.  That’s a dozen all time great WWE hall of famers off the top of my head.  It begins really quick too as 8 of the first 11 participants are all hall of famers and so this Rumble really holds your interest from start to finish.

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The hype for the Rumble throughout the show was also at a premium as I counted pre Royal Rumble promos from 18 of the participants.  Of course, there were also interviews with the Rumble participants before they got to the match.  The two highlights for me were Ted Dibiase and Mr. Perfect.  There was a good amount of intrigue around Dibiase leading into the event due to him buying number 30 the year prior but this year he revealed that Virgil had drawn number 1 for him.  Mr. Perfect, on the other hand, was really coming into his own as a top level heel.  He was still technically undefeated in WWE and revealed before the match that he had drawn the “Perfect number” basically letting everyone know that he was number 30.  It took a little bit of the mystique away from the Rumble that we knew numbers 1 and 30 since those two spots were always given a good amount of hype since it was built that number 30 held the greatest advantage and number 1 the greatest disadvantage (even though honestly number 2 starts off at the exact same moment that number 1 does but that’s neither here nor there).

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One of the things I really liked about the show overall was that there were a number of Wrestlemania matches that were teased throughout the night and eventually came to fruition.  Mr. Perfect would eventually go on to face Brutus Beefcake at Wrestlemania 6 after his post-match beatdown of Beefcake after his match with the Genious.  Dusty Rhodes and Randy Savage as well as Bad News Brown and Roddy Piper would also set up their respective Wrestlemania matches during the Royal Rumble match.  Of course though, the biggest showdown would come when both The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan cleared house of everyone else in the ring until it came down to the two of them alone in the ring.  This was one of the first faceoffs between the two and the crowd just went bananas (quoting the late great Gorilla Monsoon).  It was the top babyface in the company and world champion, in Hulk Hogan, going face to face with the fastest rising arguably hottest babyface in the Ultimate Warrior.  Their faceoff was the moment of the match for me.  Eventually Warrior would get double teamed by the two next guys who entered the match, Rick Rude and The Barbarian, are double teaming the Ultimate Warrior when Hogan runs back in and hits everyone with a clothesline inadvertedly eliminated the Warrior. Just like that you had your Wrestlemania 6 main event.  Thus, while the rumble winner didn’t get a title shot at Wrestlemania just yet, a good amount of the top matches at Wrestlemania were foreshadowed during this show.

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The one thing that, looking back, I would have changed about this Rumble match was that I really wouldn’t have had Hulk Hogan win the match.  It made no sense to have Hogan, the champion, who’s popularity at this point was waning, win the Royal Rumble.  For one this match was all about Ted Dibiase who lasted over 45 minutes from number 1 and I thought he would have been an interesting winner in that he couldn’t win the Rumble at number 30 in 1989 but came back to win the 1990 Rumble all the way from number 1.  Regardless, his long run in the Rumble match would kickoff a three year stretch in where a heel would last the longest in the Rumble match culminating in 1992, which we’ll get to on Thursday.  Mr. Perfect also would have made all the sense in the world to win the Royal Rumble this year.  He was still undefeated and debuted as this arrogant SOB who continued to prove that he was better than everyone at everything.  A Rumble win here really would have gotten him over as that next top heel and had him come across as completely legitimate. (The Rumor I’ve heard for years was that Perfect was actually supposed to win the Rumble but the plan was changed to Hogan, seems to be strictly rumor though at this point)  Of course, at the end of the day, the no brainer choice for the Rumble win this year was the Ultimate Warrior.  He had all the momentum in the world going into this match and him getting the Rumble win over Hogan, to me, would have added even more intrigue to the mega match between the two at Wrestlemania 6.

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Aside from the Rumble, the one thing I always remember enjoying as a kid was the Rugged Ronny Garvin Vs. Greg Valentine match.  This was more hokeyness but it’s the only thing I remember from Garvin’s entire WWF run.  The story here was actually pretty unique in that Greg Valentine had defeated Garvin in a retirement match forcing Garvin to retire.  When Garvin did retire, he ended up getting all of these odd jobs in WWE like referee and announcer trying to screw with Valentine.until eventually Valentine begged for Garvin to get his job back so that Valentine could get his hands on him.  This led to a match between the two on this show in which Garvin won but what I remember most about this match was the Hammer Jammer.  The Hammer Jammer was a guard that Garvin wore that allowed him to block the figure four leg lock.  This lead to a spot in the match where Valentine locked on the figure four leg lock only for Garvin to make a bunch of funny faces as the move didn’t effect him because of the hammer jammer.  Funny faces aside, this was a pretty underrated match between two veterans.

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That’s going to do it for today but what were some of your favorite memories of the Royal Rumble 1990?  Let us know in the comment section below or over on twitter @Daily_Spotlight

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The Rumble of The Royal Rumble- 1989

Tom Lynch Uncategorized, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s probably important before we move on that I point out that the first Royal Rumble event I ever saw live was the Royal Rumble 1991.  That said, the Royal Rumble 1989 and Royal Rumble 1990 were two shows that I saw about a million times growing up.  Since these shows were some of the few available at my local Blockbuster and some of the few events I didn’t own, I went out of my way to rent these tapes every time I had the chance to do so.  My parents were smart and knew that if we didn’t record the pay per views when we ordered them, I would want to buy the tapes as soon as they came out.  Thus, I owned pretty much every WWF pay per view on VHS cassette from 1991-2005 or until Digital TVs came out and made it tough to record on video cassette.  Thus, every other show that was available at Blockbuster made it’s way to my house every Friday when my father would go down to get us a movie.  It seemed like the videos at Blockbuster only went back to 1989 so in many ways this 1989 Royal Rumble was the beginning of my wrestling fandom, at least wrestling that I could remember.  With that out of the way let’s get into my thoughts of the Royal Rumble 1989.

Royal Rumble 1989- The Summit in Houston, Texas- January 15th, 1989

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Match Results

The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart) and Jim Duggan defeated The Fabulous Rougeaus (Jacques and Raymond) and Dino Bravo (with Frenchy Martin and Jimmy Hart) in a Two out of three falls match

Rockin’ Robin (c) defeated Judy Martin for the WWF Women’s Championship

King Haku (with Bobby Heenan) defeated Harley Race

Big John Studd won by last eliminating Ted DiBiase in the Royal Rumble match

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This was the first Royal Rumble to be presented on pay per view and also the first Royal Rumble to feature the, now famous, 30 participants.  Unlike the first Rumble event that we went over last night, the Royal Rumble is the complete focus of this show from start to finish.  There are only three other matches and other than a really fun six man tag opener, the other two matches were largely forgettable.  If you’re in the mood for Royal Rumble nostalgia then this is the show for you.  Right off the bat we’re greeted with the video montage of all of the Royal Rumble participants as Vince McMahon runs down all of the participants before proudly proclaiming “ITS THE ROYYYYYAAAALLLLL RRRUMMMBBBBLLLLLEEEEEE!!!!!”  in classic Vince McMahon announcer voice.  They only continued this for the first few Rumble pay per views but damn I loved these videos.  They got you so excited for the rest of the show and made everyone mean something by having their video features pop up on the screen.  Also, if you weren’t following along at the time, it introduced you to all of the participants.

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From here throughout the night there was a variety of vignettes that ran with a number of the participants choosing there spot in the rumble at random.  These were a lot of fun and got you ready for the match later on that night as they would set up good teasers as to the numbers each guy got based on their reactions to the numbers picked.  The big one I remember here was that The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase went ahead and purchased a more favorable number from Slick, who at the time was managing the Twin Towers.  Then from there this was the debut of the classic Royal Rumble promos that would run throughout then night and feature some of the bigger names standing in front of their logos via green screen.  These always did a lot for me because they set up a number of potential winners for the Rumble.  It was obvious to me that with all of these different pieces that WWE wanted to build up the Rumble as just as important as the other big three pay per views, which had already debuted as annual pay per view traditions.

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As for the Rumble match itself, believe it or not, this one ranks up there as one of the most unpredictable Rumbles of all time to this day.  Remember, at the time, the Royal Rumble was not for the main event spot at Wrestlemania.  Therefore, with no clear reward for the winner, WWE was allowed to take a chance with the winner.  If you look at some of the Royal Rumble participants, it reads like a late 1980s who’s who of talent.  Huge stars like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Curt Hennig, Andre The Giant, Jake Roberts, and The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase, to name a few, were all in the Rumble this year and you know what? None of them went on to win this match.  Instead, the winner of the match was Big John Studd who had just returned from a 2 year retirement a few months prior, turning face in the process.  The Studd win came out of nowhere as he didn’t even have a match at Wrestlemania 5 and would be gone from the WWF just six months after this.  While it was really cool to see someone win out of nowhere, looking back it would have been nice to see Ted Dibiase get the win.  He was such a hot heel and always seemed to be right there to get that tip top spot (Wrestlemania 4, 1988 Main Event, the Royal Rumble 1989) but never quite seemed to get over the top for a variety of reasons.

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There were also a couple of Rumble themes that debuted with this show. The first theme of course was that there were no friends and only enemies in the Royal Rumble.  This was no truer than Ax of Demolition drawing number 1 and Smash of Demolition drawing number 2 and then actually wrestling each other until teaming back up when Andre The Giant entered at Number 3.  Speaking of Andre he introduced us to our next theme of everyone in the ring coming together to try and eliminate the big guy in the match.  This always made for a nice visual and never quite worked with Andre who eliminated himself due his fear of snakes after Jake Roberts threw his snake back into the ring.  As stated earlier, there wasn’t anything on the line in the Rumble but that didn’t mean that this Rumble didn’t have major implications on Wrestlemania later that year.  The aforementioned Andre The Giant and Jake The Snake Roberts would go on to have at match at Wrestlemania but we would also see a bit of hype for that year’s Wrestlemania main event.  This was still during the year long build for the Hulk Hogan/ Randy Savage match at Wrestlemania 5 when the two were still teaming as the Mega Powers.  The tension between the two would continue to build throughout the year and nearly reached a climax here as Hogan would accidentally eliminate Savage.  Looking back, why was Savage the heel in this feud?  Hogan was always being the one to screw Savage over!

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Aside from the Rumble, the one thing that I remember most from this show was actually the posedown between Rick Rude and The Ultimate Warrior.  This was one of the silliest segments I can remember, even more hokey than the Dino Bravo bench press from the year prior, but as a kid I watched this segment almost everytime I rented this tape.  This was during the time period where the WWF was at its peak with the larger than life bodybuilder types on the top of the card.  This was still over a year before Vince McMahon would launch the World Bodybuilding Federation but you could tell how passionate he was about Bodybuilding with segments like these.  Jesse Ventura was classic again in this segment really putting over each pose.  Unlike the year before, the Ultimate Warrior was now on the rise in WWE and was likely held out of the Rumble match so that he could be protected and given his own segment.  While it may have been hokey, it was cool to see WWE doing something different and the result of this posedown would be the start of the Ultimate Warrior/ Rick Rude feud that would last over a year and give the Ultimate Warrior some of the best matches of his career.

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Well that’s going to do it for the Royal Rumble 1989, tomorrow we will look back at the Royal Rumble 1990 as Hulkamania runs wild, the Rumble theme song debuts, A familiar voice calls the action  and the Hammer Jammer? Until then, what were some of your favorite memories of the Royal Rumble 1989?!

The Spotlight On The History of the Royal Rumble- 1996-1999

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As we continue down the path on the history of the Royal rumble we’re going to take a look at the last Royal Rumbles of the 1990s.  At this point in my life I was just about to  enter  my teenage years.  In October of 1996 I turned 10 years old and then by the time Rumble 1999 rolled around I was 12 years old.  It’s amazing to look back at these shows and not only see how I was changing as a wrestling fan but also how much the landscape of the WWF was changing at the same time.  Let’s get right into it…

1996–  For whatever reason this Royal Rumble is a bit of a blur for me.  If there’s one thing that they did that year was they had a match on the Free-For-All in which Triple H took on Duke The Dumpster Droese and the winner of the match got the number 30 entry in the Rumble while the loser got number 1.  Duke ended up winning the match (Hunter’s come a long way, eh?) but I liked the concept of having something on the pre show that impacted the Rumble later that night.  In many ways it’s similar to the four way tag matches two spots in the Rumble that they’re doing on sunday.  As for the show itself, the two things I remember most about this Rumble was that this was the first Royal Rumble that had entrance music between entrances which I thought really added to the show and overall kept the tempo up throughout the night.  From there, it was also the first Royal Rumble that didn’t close the pay per view, which I thought was weird especially because the world title match ended in a disqualification.

1997-  Are you enjoying the posters for each Rumble as much as I am?  In any event one thing that really stuck out in my mind immediately was remembering how awkward the promo that Terry Funk cut on Shotgun Saturday Night the night before the Rumble.  I had slept over my friends house and just like we did every time we had a sleepover we stayed up late to watch Shotgun (This show was so unique and really fun for its time, I wish it was on the Network) and ECW (which aired at 2:05AM in New York).  I’ve attached a link to the promo below and remember just how uncomfortable everyone looked with Funk going off the rails on the show, even Austin who literally looked like he was trying to get Funk to stop.  Of course, Funk would be gone from the WWF immediately following the Rumble due to the incident.

As for the Rumble 1997, this was one of my favorite Rumbles in that Austin winning came out of nowhere to me.  I remember being stunned but liking the twist as I was sure Bret Hart would win the match and take on Shawn at Wrestlemania 13.  I also remember Shawn getting a hero’s welcome this time around as the Royal Rumble took place in his hometown, at the AlamoDome in San Antonio, as opposed to Survivor Series 1996 where the Garden crown turned on Shawn completely.

1998-  I don’t know why exactly but I remember how cool it was that they continued to show Mike Tyson watching the Royal Rumble with Shane McMahon in a private suite throughout the entire night.  This was before Shane was really much of a character on WWE television and the two looked to be having a great time.  This was the night before Tyson was officially announced as being the enforcer for WrestleMania 14.  As for the Royal Rumble, the winner here was never really in any doubt as this was Steve Austin’s time.  This was actually the one time where the Rumble being on before the title match seemed ok to me as Shawn and Undertaker in the Casket match seemed to mean a lot more.  This was the second Rumble, by the way, that the Undertaker seemed to have died in a casket as Kane set the casket on fire to end the show.  The difference being that now the WWF had changed from the wholeso

1999-  I can’t lie this was one of my favorite Rumbles because Mr. McMahon won.  I don’t think anyone saw that coming and it made for a great twist, in my opinion.  The whole build to that match really was a lot of fun with all of the Shane and Vince training vignettes and the win was great for the characters.    I actually remember this was at the time when WWF would go live on the Home Shopping Network immediately after the pay per views and I watched the entire special just to hear the post match comments from the McMahons.  This was also the show where the Rock nearly killed Mick Foley with like 12 chair shots in their title match that’s heavily featured on the Beyond The Mat documentary.

That’s gonna do it for my look back at the first decade plus of the Royal Rumble.  I’d love to hear your Royal rumble feedback and memories! Tomorrow I’ll start to break down the Royal Rumbles in my area or that I attended live, by first looking at the Royal Rumble 2000!

The Spotlight on The History of The Royal Rumble 1992-1995

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I’ll tell you Royal Rumble Season is the one time when everyone who I know who used to follow wrestling gets in touch with me to see what I’m doing for the show.  It’s just a fun show as it’s unpredictable and a great time to start watching if you haven’t in a long while.  Let’s continue with our look back at Royal Rumbles Past

1992- This was the first event I remember actually writing down all of my favorites to win it.  Looking back, this was probably the best Royal Rumble and as a fan today I can really appreciate it.  The amount of talent involved in the match from Undertaker to Ric Flair to Hulk Hogan to Roddy Piper, this rumble match is beyond stacked and it makes sense as this was the only rumble (until this year) that was for the WWE title.  I was actually really shocked when Flair won the title as back in the day heels rarely won to finish a WWF pay per view.  When Flair came out, we were so sure he’d be quickly tossed as he was the third entrant and back then Rumble marathon performances wouldn’t go all the way.  Being a straight up WWF fan (I was raised on WWF, we ordered one WCW show in 1991 and my family hated it), we all hated Flair and so him winning was just so out of left field as we didn’t take him seriously as a main eventer.  As a final aside, To this day, Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon’s commentary in this match is the best I’ve heard. 

1993- Royal Rumble 1993 was the first time that the classic Wrestlemania stipulation was added on for the Rumble winner.  Rumble 93 featured my favorite, non Rumble, Royal Rumble pay per view match as Shawn Michaels took on Marty Jannetty.  I was always a huge Jannetty fan and thought those two had great in ring chemistry.  In a case of when hokey 90’s stuff works for nostalgia purposes, I actually thought Caeser and Cleopatra arriving to read the scroll was great.  That was very “theme” Wrestlemania with all of the togas and it was WWF’s unofficial kickoff of WrestleMania.
Funny personal story here, I remember as a six year old being absolutely petrified when the Giant Gonzalez debuted in this match to attack the Undertaker.  I thought Taker was the guy in this match and would have won so it was shocking to me that he was beat down by the legitimate Giant.  My fear ran so far, mind you, that I actually ran upstairs and had my parents call me down when Gonzalez was gone.  On the tape, my dad even wrote “Royal Rumble 1993- Yoko Wins, Big Scary Guy, DO NOT WATCH” due to how afraid of Giant Gonzalez I was.  Looking back he looked a lot more silly then scary.

1994- This was the year in which both Lex and Bret won the match and I remember as a kid being so happy because they were my two favorite wrestlers.  I also remember my father being pretty upset that they didn’t restart the match as he paid for a pay per view to see one winner.  Looking back though, the two winners really set wrestlemania 10 up nicely.  This was also the Rumble that you could call a 900 hotline and find out who was going to be next.  I remember we called and it was Diesel saying he was ready to make his mark.  That cost us $1.49 and was the last call we made.

This was also the second straight Rumble in which I have a personal “scaredy cat” story and it occurred right before the Royal Rumble match itself, during the Casket match between the Undertaker and Yokozuna for the World title.  The idea of a casket match always made me a little uncomfortable as a kid but I was now seven and feeling a little better.  I was finally understanding that the person put in the casket would be back just a few weeks later.  but then Rumble 1994 and I was scarred for months!  See in this match undertaker was put in the casket and then suddenly a casket cam lit up and display live footage of the undertaker in the casket, looking eerily similar to any person you’ve seen at any wake.  I mean jeez look at him in that picture above and tell me you’re not a little spooked even today, 22 years later! But it got worse, Undertaker then turned completely holographic on the titan tron and began to raise to the heavens and literally fly around the arena.  That’s it I was done!  At seven years old, it was the scariest thing I had ever seen!  As an interesting footnote, it wasn’t actually the Undertaker flying around, but one Marty Jannetty!

1995-  This was the first show in which someone came over to watch other than my immediate family as my Uncle joined us. My Uncle wasn’t a fan at all but he was into it and got a kick out of the Rumble concept. I remember being really annoyed at the time between entrants in the rumble being cut down to one minute as it made the match fly by.  As an 8 year old, I also remember Pamela Anderson being my first crush and I thought for years that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  This was also the match that made me a huge Shawn Michaels fan as he put on quite a show nearly being eliminated throughout the match but finding a way to get back in the ring.  The finish here is still one of my favorites with only one of Shawn’s feet touching the floor and him getting the win, such an iconic image in Royal Rumble history!

 Alright another side story and I have to come clean about something.  I’m petrified of mice.  I know this is quite the segue way but I hate everything about mice, they are the worse and I believe the reason for that was because of a scarring experience following the Royal Rumble 1995.  I went to bed that night and suddenly I nice a mouse come scampering across my bedroom floor and run under my bed.  I screamed as loud as my 8 year old self would allow me.  What was that?  How could it get in here?  My parents came running in to see what was wrong and my father convinced me that it was likely a dream.  We looked under my bed and saw nothing.  Still my mom agreed to run and buy mouse traps.  We set one under my bed and I went to sleep on the couch to get the heck out of my room. Well the next morning my dad call me up to my room and there it was fighting for its life stuck to the mouse trap!  Awful stuff!
Well that’s going to do it for now but I’ll be back later tonight as we finish off the 1990’s. We’ll look at the rise of Stone cold Steve Austin and the WWF in general!

The Spotlight On The History of The Royal Rumble- 1989-1991

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello everyone we’re continuing our trip down memory lane looking at te different Royal Rumbles from years past as we get you set for the big show this Sunday night!  In this edition, we’re going to pick up where we left off and take a look at the Royal Rumble from 1989-1991

1989– Andre The Giant! The Immortal Hulk Hogan! WWF World Champion, The Macho Man Randy Savage! The list of the 1989 Royal Rumble is a literal who’s who of Wrestlemania main eventers.  If you’re a casual fan you probably assumed that Hulk Hogan won the first Royal Rumble match on pay per view, but you’d be wrong…it was actually Big John Studd.  Don’t get me wrong, Studd is a WWE Hall Of Famer and had an accomplished career in his own right.  That said, this was pretty random to me as Studd had just returned to the company as a babyface after being retired for two years and wasn’t really being pushed as a big star.  I’m not sure if it was for injuries or what but he was actually relegated to a referee for the Andre- Jake Roberts match in that year’s Wrestlemania so this was clearly before the winner of the Rumble won the shot at the champion.

As for the rest of that Royal Rumble, I remember renting this tape a million times from Blockbuster and actually enjoying the Rumble a lot.  I’ve always been a fan of the backstage vignettes showing the superstars choosing their numbers or even talking about how they were going to win the Rumble.  This show had a lot of that as it followed a story that the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase was buying number 30 from Slick.  From there, Ax and Smash being 1 and 2, the mega powers exploding prior to their Wrestlemania showdown and Marty Jannetty hanging on by his toes made this rumble match a lot of fun. Aside from the Rumble, I can’t mention this show without mentioning the posedown between Rick Rude and the Ultimate Warrior.  Although it was a little hokey, this was 1980’s WWF and I remember that fondly.  I also liked that all signs led to Wrestlemania and this show was designed as this showdown was designed to do and the two would be held off until Wrestlemania 5.

1990-  This match to me is really remembered for the great showdown between the Ultimate warrior and Hulk Hogan in the middle of the match.  I remember thinking it was pretty silly that Hogan was in the match considering he was the world champion!  Hogan would go on to win the Rumble and, to me, the Rumble really wasn’t a big deal yet for the company as opposed to just a fun gimmick match and reason to have a pay per view, similar to the old Survivor Series format.  That said, this was the first of two years (that I can remember) where Vince McMahon kicked off the show by reading out the list of all of the competitors.  Vince had so much excitement that could be matched and I just love that old school Rumble music.  I love a good surprise as much as the next guy but something can be said for knowing all 30 participants prior to the Rumble match.

This was still prior to having cable and so I would continue to rent this tape from Blockbuster.  A couple other things about the show that I remember thinking as a child was why the WCW guy was doing commentary for WWF.  For those that don’t know, Tony Schiavone worked very briefly for WWF and this is one of the shows that he called.  Speaking of brief stints in the WWF, Rugged Ronnie Garvin (Of all people) had a singles match on this show against Greg Valentine.

1991-  No matter how many times you see it, how great is the Rumble poster above?  This was the first pay per view in which my family ordered live and it was crazy to see the event as it happened.  Leading up to that year’s Royal Rumble, I was told by my parents that my dad’s friend was going to be ordering the show and was going to record the show for me.  My dad’s friend had been doing this a lot as my family didn’t have cable.  Anyway the day of the rumble there were people in our house the whole day and everytime I asked who they were and what they were doing, my parents told me it was a surprise.  As it turned out they were installing cable and my parents were putting on a full court press to get cable installed so we’d be able to get the rumble.  I was absolutely ecstatic to be able to watch the show live and to stay up late doing so (WWF pay per views would become my one time a month to stay up late on a school night).  To this day I still have the tape that my dad recorded on pay per view for me.

This was the first show that made the Rumble seem really big time.  There was a title change on the show (Slaughter over Warrior), a big angle (Virgil turns on Ted Dibiase) and even though it wasn’t announced prior, the winner of the Rumble (Hulk Hogan) went on to face the champion at Wrestlemania.  As a huge Hulkamaniac (at age 4) Hogan winning to go on to defend the USA against Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter was as good as it got.

That’s going to do it for right now but tomorrow we’ll take a look at what some people consider to be the greatest Royal Rumble of all time, the only rumble that ended with 2 winners and my favorite non rumble match to take place at the Royal Rumble, until then, take care!