What Makes A Great Royal Rumble Match?
- Thomas Hall
- Jan 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 16
It’s that time of the year again, as we are freshly into January, meaning the Royal Rumble season is upon us. The show has become arguably the second biggest event on WWE’s calendar and its namesake matches are among the most important of the year. We have seen the Royal Rumble winners move on to some amazing WrestleMania moments and now it is time to run the whole thing back again. That has me thinking about the Royal Rumble itself and today we are going to look at some of the ingredients which make the matches work.
Everyone Can Understand The Royal Rumble Concept
As is so often the case with wrestling, we’ll start with Scott Hall. Over the years, Hall had some incredible insights on wrestling (including allegedly telling Shawn Michaels to drop the teardrop suplex and “just use the superkick” and allegedly telling Sting to (paraphrased) “not be Taker, but be Taker” with the Crow), including one on the Royal Rumble. When asked about the match, Hall described it as the easiest match for non-fans to understand, and he might be on to something.
When you get right down to it, the Royal Rumble is one of the easiest concepts in wrestling. While there are a lot of bells and whistles, it ultimately comes down to “thirty people are in the match, the last one to not get thrown over the top wins a prize”. On top of that, you have a new entrant coming into the match every two minutes (or ninety seconds, or however close they get to it that time). It’s a concept that anyone can get, no matter how much wrestling they have seen, and the numbers getting closer to the eternally important #30 makes it all the better.
That drama is what made the match come together in the first place. When the match was originally being pitched to NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol, the countdown clock was what put the whole thing over the edge, as he felt it would be a great thing for television. The last thirty seven years have proven him to be exactly right, as the clock, especially the buzzer when it reaches zero, has become the show’s signature. That makes all the sense in the world, as it has fans looking to the entrance and wondering who is next. That’s what brings us to the second part, which is how you make the match work well throughout the night.
The Royal Rumble Match Is Unpredictable
One of the most well known aspects of the Royal Rumble is that it contains thirty entrants. While it doesn’t entirely deplete the roster, it certainly puts most of the star power into one match. That’s a problem for the rest of the show, but it means that a lot of the bigger names are involved in the matches. This can help the match in quite an important way, as the Royal Rumble’s success is often based around the amount of realistic winners in the match.
Being realistic, a thirty person Royal Rumble is going to have, at best, a handful of potential winners. You can write off the majority of the participants, but the remaining numbers are among the most important parts of the match. In short, the more potential winners of the match, the more entertaining it is going to become. That has been proven time and again, but there are a few examples which stand out rather well (or poorly, depending on the case).
Looking back throughout history, some of the least interesting Royal Rumbles have been those when there is a grand total of no doubt about who is winning the thing. This can lead to some rather tedious Royal Rumbles, as it leaves fans waiting on one person to come out and then win, with little else that really matters during the course of the match. There are multiple examples of this over the years, but we’ll go with 1998 as our primary example this time.
To put it mildly, there was absolutely zero reason to believe that anyone but Stone Cold Steve Austin was going to win the match and go on to WrestleMania XIV. Look back at the lineup and tell me who else was going to be a potential winner. You had The Rock, who was still a good ways off from becoming the mega star he is remembered as being, Mick Foley appearing as the Three Faces Of Foley (an amazing performance to be sure but not exactly top spot worthy) and… who else? Vader? Maybe Ken Shamrock? They’re talented wrestlers to be sure, but it wasn’t happening in 1998.
So yeah, you have Austin and that’s about it. In other words, you have a lot of waiting around for Austin to come in, the big reaction for him coming out (as always), and then about fifteen minutes of waiting for Austin to survive all of the warm bodies who are being thrown at him. It had some moments, but there was just no drama as to the result and that brings the match down in a hurry.
Now, with that in mind, take a look at the 2025 men’s Royal Rumble. Again, ignoring the unrealistic winners and you have these people as possible options: Roman Reigns, Drew McIntyre, John Cena, CM Punk and Seth Rollins. If you’re being a bit more generous, you could add in Bron Breakker, Jacob Fatu and Logan Paul. That’s not even including the eventual winner of the thing in Jey Uso.
While you can argue about the star power or who you wanted to see pull off the victory, the match was boosted up by a question about who was going to take the whole thing. Rather than just one or two people, you had a large portion of the participants as potential winners. It makes things so much more interesting, as more and more stars could be added to the mix, leaving the questions of not only who was going to be next, but also who was going to survive. The winner of last year’s match came as a surprise, which brings us to the last ingredient.
Fans Never Know When They Will Be Surprised
As we talked about earlier, the Royal Rumble’s big draw is the countdown to who is going to be coming into the match next. That’s simple enough, but it looks at one very important detail: what if you don’t know who to expect? Sometimes the entire thirty person field is announced in advance, but there are times when there are surprise entrants, which can lead to some incredible moments.
These surprise entrants can come in a variety of forms, ranging from a nostalgic wrestler (Jim Duggan was the master of this for a long time) to someone still active who hasn’t been around in a while, or maybe even an outsider, ala Joe Hendry back in 2025. The fans knew who they were getting and it made for an awesome moment, as a stadium full of people got to go nuts with one of the best entrances you’ll ever see.
On top of all of that though, you have the best possible surprise: the big injury return. This can be done after a long time away, with some of them being better than others. You can take your pick with this one, but it’s hard to top Cena back in 2008 (though I won’t argue with Edge’s returns in both 2010 and 2021).
As Jim Ross put it, the roof came off of Madison Square Garden, as Cena returning was an absolute shock in the best possible way. That doesn’t work if you knew it was coming, as instead you get one of the most amazing moments in Royal Rumble history.
The Royal Rumble Is The Most Successful Gimmick Match In WWE History
And that is the case for a reason. While there has been some tweaking to the formula over the years, the details have stayed mostly the same for the majority of the match’s history. There are certain details that make the match work and if they are done correctly, you can almost guarantee one heck of a match when that buzzer sounds.
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