He helped eliminate two Superstars before being ousted by One Man Gang. Somebody, somehow, decided to have a Cage Match. Where that started, I have no idea, but somebody came up with the idea. I started thinking about the Battle Royal, but I had it in mind to simply start with two guys and then every two minutes a new guy comes out.
And I knew it was going to work. I could visualize it, I could see it. There was no question. COM: Is it true the match was inspired specifically by the annual Battle Royals that used to take place in the San Francisco territory? Once a year, he had the Battle Royal and you could bet on it: Somebody was going to be carried out on a stretcher, somebody was going to get hurt and it was exciting.
Bringing in stars like that made it very, very special, but it was just a Battle Royal. COM: How did the concept get from the page to the ring?
What brought it to fruition? I described what the concept would be and Dick Ebersol went crazy. He loved it. It sounded good in my head, but to put it together was another story. Actually, I produced the first Royal Rumble the morning of. The morning of. Then he hit his ceiling in the form of being booked against John Cena. After that, he bounced back and found new success as part of an edgy heel tag-team.
WWE still wanted to treat Miz like he was important enough, but they were definitely going to cool it with the main-event push. Having him enter at 1 and last for 45 minutes was good enough in that department. At least he fared better than the Miz-adjacent crew. For a couple weeks, he really had the fans behind him. Then that died down once people realized the simple truth about Riley: the only thing he brought to the table was that he was anti-Miz.
Outside of that, he had no charisma or much in skill to make anyone care. Not only did he lose within the opening moments of the Rumble, but he has the record for earliest elimination in a Royal Rumble. Although he lasted longer than Riley, Truth still lost to Miz and fell into the abyss of being a comedy mid-carder for the rest of his career.
He wanted to prove how damn good he really was. He was here to show the world, here to show the world, come on, bring it on.
This was notable due to how months earlier, Ziggler defeated Jericho in a match where the loser had to quit. Jericho was allowed back because…I got nothing. Very late into the match, after nearly fifty minutes, Ziggler finally got the best of Jericho and sent him to the outside. The behind-the-curtain situations going on in the lead-up to WrestleMania XXX are still mind-blowing. That was changed when Batista came back with the new plan to have Batista win the Royal Rumble and challenge Orton.
Punk was then set to face Triple H somewhere in the middle of the show instead. He was not thrilled. That meant being shoved into the 1 spot to hold him down, then making it into the final four before having Corporate Kane unfairly drag him out of the ring to eliminate him and slam him through a table.
Seth Rollins was given the 2 spot and his tenacity made him increasingly dangerous to Punk and anyone else in his way, just because the longer he lasted, the more Shield members showed up to join him. This was an exercise in making the Shield look dangerous while building to the inevitable break-up. As for Punk, he received a concussion early on and had to keep going on for the next plus minutes.
He got fed up with the company and walked out a day later. The Rumble was a complete mess and it needed the ring to be cleared early on for the sake of a situation with the Wyatt Family that would never get any payoff.
Starting things off with Miz and R-Truth would work if it was about playing off of their unappreciated time as a tag team, but no. Miz was in the middle of a comedy act with Damien Sandow as Damien Mizdow, which was one of those stories that was white hot despite the company handling it so, so badly. WWE was finally getting people to like Roman Reigns and then, of course, they had to ruin it.
They put him in a title storyline where he got screwed over, hospitalized Triple H out of anger, got his rematch, punched out Vince McMahon, and won the title in a match that made him so likeable that the crowd that booed him mercilessly at Royal Rumble were behind his new title reign. So what did WWE do? They pushed too hard and decided to make the Rumble about Roman by having him put the WWE World Heavyweight Championship on the line against his 29 other opponents.
With Roman having won the previous Rumble, his first opponent here was his fellow finalist from in Rusev. Once an unstoppable monster heel, Rusev was little more than an easily-beaten henchman for Roman to overcome with ease by He was a level 1 boss. Although, his elimination was immediately overshadowed by the debut of AJ Styles, which made things suddenly more interesting.
But really, the reason he had such an early draw was because his entrance was so over and they had an excuse for Enzo to do his spiel. During this match, he actually broke the record for career Royal Rumble longevity, which gave him a new talking point before his face turn.
Two guys loved by fans, but held back by the people in charge. Balor for daring to get injured during his big moment and Rusev for daring to get married during a storyline about him not being married. Balor at least got more love from the company, as shown here, where he got to partake in the eventful final four.
With his 2 entry, it could even be the kayfabe explanation for why he failed while his smark hero counterpart Nakamura was able to overcome Cena and Roman.
It meant that they had to fill in spots with retired wrestlers and women from NXT. A good thing, too, because it allowed them to get something of a spotlight when they were being overshadowed by the returning names, eventual winner, and post-match appearance of Ronda Rousey. It was WWE paying lip service to the idea of Becky Lynch being important in the grand scheme of things before realizing, oh shit, Becky Lynch is actually important in the grand scheme of things.
Outside of its controversy and the way it was used to break a couple key Royal Rumble records, the Greatest Royal Rumble was a bit on the pointless side.
Nothing was on the line and there was barely any drama around the match itself. With 50 entrants, only a few seemed to actually matter in any way. The only real options for a winner were Braun Strowman on fire as a top face and Daniel Bryan fresh from his return after being cleared and since they went with Braun, that meant that they had to give Bryan something of a consolation prize.
And so, Bryan got to enter at 1 and last long enough to hit third place. As for Dolph Ziggler at 2? It was rare to ever see him do an actual entrance. That made it awkward for the Royal Rumble, where 29 people had to have a visual journey to the ring.
Who better to be 1, then? For 2, they went with what was both a fitting comedy opponent and also kind of a big deal in the wrestling business. Jeff Jarrett was remembered for leaving the company in in a way that got one over on Vince McMahon. Vince held onto the grudge when it came time to buy WCW and refused to acquire Jarrett as part of the deal.
After washing his hands of both and leaving messes in his wake see also: his stint in AAA , Jarrett finally returned to WWE and made sure to dress like a doofus. Elias beat up Jarrett with a guitar and eliminated him.
Shinsuke Nakamura was 3, which is when the match truly began. Accomplished wrestlers from developmental would graduate to the main roster and things suddenly felt fresh. It was going to be a three-hour live show, but it needed something to take it to the level of a WrestleMania or Survivor Series. In desperation, Vince threw my idea out there. Ebersol loved the concept right away. Vince told me to start putting it together, and I programmed the first Rumble all by myself.
The final touches were completed at the arena on the morning of the show because I kept expecting Vince to give me some direction on where he wanted things to go. But he never did. We had people at the office who came up with names and they submitted something like fifty of them to us. The talent was freaking out on the morning of the show because of all of my detailed instructions. None of them had ever done a match quite like this before.
When it was all said and done, I think they loved it. I was happy, too. The winner could celebrate by drinking champagne from it. Unfortunately, Patterson passed away in December last year. Although he might not be there in person today, he will always be deemed as the creator of the greatest Battle Royale in history. Home Wrestling. By Angana Roy. She is currently pursuing higher studies in English language and literature from the University of Calcutta and has over three years of experience in journalism.
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