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With the recent news that WWE Day 1 2023 has been canceled, the next major event on the main roster’s calendar is the Royal Rumble event on January 28th at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
The best sports betting apps in Canada often accept bets on WWE, and the oddsmakers there currently have Cody Rhodes projected to win the event in a return from his torn pec that has held him out since his 5-star match against Seth Rollins at Hell in a Cell.
Regardless of who wins this year’s event, there’s no denying that the Royal Rumble match has produced some of the best and most memorable outcomes in company history. By that same token, it’s also produced some of the most disappointing finishes for fans - whether that be because of who won or because of the booking that followed their victory.
Let’s dig into the worst Royal Rumble winners in WWE history.
This one you can’t blame on the performer. Nakamura’s in-ring talent and effortless charisma made him one of the shining stars of New Japan, and a 2-time NXT champion during Triple H’s time running the show on the developmental side.
He was catapulted early on into a Royal Rumble win and then...not so much. A loss to AJ Styles at Wrestlemania and subsequent heel turn extinguished all of the momentum that Nakamura had established.
Since then, he’s had a solid midcard run with a couple of championships but has never reached the heights he really could or should have after this win.
Again, not really the performer’s fault here. “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan had a Hall of Fame career and is a pretty beloved figure in the wrestling community.
It’s more that it’s a bit bizarre that a - more-or-less - comedy character is the first winner in Royal Rumble history. It’s the piece of bar trivia that makes everyone but the smarks scratch their heads.
At the time the bookers had no idea that the Royal Rumble would become what it did - the match was followed by a main event of The Islanders vs. The Young Stallions in a nontitle match - so it’s understandable.
Many might have Vince McMahon booking himself to win the Royal Rumble as the worst winner in history. While it’s bad and the evening probably should have concluded with Stone Cold winning his third Rumble to cleanly set up the huge main event against The Rock at Wrestlemania XV, there are worse options.
It’s worth remembering just how hot of a character Mr. McMahon was at the time, and the fact that he impeded Stone Cold did serve some purpose in the storyline.
Of course, a full and proper build-up to Austin and The Rock’s first main event would have been better, but the thinking behind the decision does make some sense.
After Duggan won the inaugural Rumble match, the powers that be knew that they had something on their hands. So they ran it back and hosted the 30-man gimmick match once again.
However, they didn’t quite know what to do with the winner yet so we have yet another somewhat random winner in Big John Studd. Studd had a solid career with an NWA Heavyweight Championship on his resume, but it’s still weird to see him mentioned among the legendary names in this event and see him as the winner, especially when he doesn’t even have the popularity that Duggan did.
This Rumble match is probably most notable for being one of the breaking points of the Mega Powers which concluded with Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan headlining WrestleMania V. While that’s a notable storyline in WWE history, it doesn’t say much when the winner of the Royal Rumble is overshadowed by other participants in the match.
All logical thinking about how booking is supposed to work when out the window when Batista was decided as the winner of the Royal Rumble. Daniel Bryan was in the middle of an incredible, organic storyline where he had won the crowd over just about as much as any babyface had since Stone Cold.
And yet, the writers decided to ignore this and push a returning Batista instead of Bryan. Bryan was supposed to face Sheamus in a midcard match until fan backlash forced the company’s hand.
The main event of WrestleMania 30, of course, ended up being Daniel Bryan making Batista tap out in a triple threat match to capture the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The outcome ended up as it should have, but the logic of having Batista win the Rumble made no sense then and no sense now.
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