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The Royal Rumble match comes once a year and grants a superstar a world championship match at WrestleMania. Over the years, winning the match has been a great way to elevate a superstar to main event status, or to continue or create a feud with another top talent.
Usually, the Royal Rumble winner makes sense to WWE, for their WrestleMania plans. However, sometimes even they can be wrong. Throughout the three decades of the Rumble event, we have seen some Rumble winners who's creative plans just fell through or didn't make sense, to begin with.
For every popular Rumble victor comes an unpopular one to follow, and that brings me to these top six superstars who should never have won the Royal Rumble match.
#6 Big John Studd - 1989
The late Big John Studd obtained main event status pretty early on in his WWE career thanks to his height and presence. He came off as a true superstar in his feuds with then WWE Champion Bob Backlund and André the Giant.
So really, it is no surprise that he would go onto win the second ever Royal Rumble match (and first 30 man version), in 1989. And while Studd has all the attributes to a rightful winner of the match, it just seems like it was wasted on him.
This is because, following his big win, Studd would only wrestle sporadically for WWE over the next six or so months, before he left WWE due to what were described as Studd having what he felt were unfair paydays.
And so because of this, I think the Rumble victory should have been given to one of the other incredible performers in the match, who could have benefited from the win more, such as the best performer of the 1989 Rumble Mr. Perfect or maybe even André the Giant, who was supposed to be someone who was indestructible in this type of environment.
#5 Triple H - 2016
WWE COO Triple H returned from a near career ending injury in 2001 to win the 2002 Royal Rumble match, and it was well deserved and storyline wise, made complete sense. Now fast forward 14 years later, and The Game has won the Royal Rumble once more, and his 14th WWE Heavyweight Championship too.
The part-time wrestler and full-time executive should not have won because he was only wrestling part-time and did most of his work behind the scenes. The big main reason why Triple H won the match and WWE Championship was to get Roman Reigns over, which didn't work.
As much of a talented performer and main event worth performer that Reigns is, his push to the top was just too forced and every part of his feud with The Authority was incredibly predictable.
Triple H felt that he was that big of a heel, that fans would cheer for Roman but once again, WWE was wrong on this one. Whether Roman was in the main event or not, the Royal Rumble victory should have been saved for someone else, maybe another top rising star at the time such as Dean Ambrose.
#4 Randy Orton - 2017
WWE attempted a big swerve with this one. In the weeks leading up to the event, for the first time in about 5 years, the winner of the Royal Rumble match had not been leaked out. And with Roman Reigns in a WWE Universal Championship match that night, it seemed like anybody's game (although he would enter as a surprise at 30).
Alas, this speculation stopped dead in its tracks just one week before the Royal Rumble when plans for Randy Orton to win his second Rumble match came into light, and this was after Triple H publicly said that he felt the winner of the match would surprise everyone. While it was a shame that the Royal Rumble match winner was leaked out for the 5th year in a row, what was a bigger shame is that the winner was to be Randy Orton.
Now that is not a dig at Orton, in fact, him winning the 2009 Royal Rumble made complete sense, but not this time. Orton should not have won the Royal Rumble match simply because his feud with partner Bray Wyatt at the time, who Orton would face for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania, was the worst feud of 2017. In fact, it was probably the worst feud of 2016 too.
Everything about it was horrendous, from the acting to the predictability, to the matches themselves. And to make matters worse, Orton's reign as Champion was forgettable and he lost it after an uneventful 6 weeks. At the time, there were WWE Universal Championship plans for WrestleMania of Champion Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho, and while those plans changed just a few weeks later, I think they should have remained the same and Jericho should have won the Rumble match.
#3 John Cena - 2013
John Cena made an incredible comeback at the 2008 Royal Rumble. Cena suffered a legitimate torn pectoral muscle while executing a hip toss on Mr. Kennedy. The injury should have required Cena to miss anywhere between six months to one full year of rehabilitation, but instead, Cena made his incredible comeback after just under four months and returned to win the Royal Rumble match.
It is quite possibly the best return from an injury of all-time and after becoming arguably WWE's best superstar of 2007, he deserved the 2008 Rumble win. What he didn't deserve or need, was winning the match again 5 years later. WWE gave us what was supposed to be a 'Once In A Lifetime' match of John Cena vs. The Rock at WrestleMania XXVIII in 2012 and that's the way it should have stayed.
With The Rock as WWE Champion, everyone knew Cena would win the match and challenge The Great One for round 2, but nobody wanted to see it. The first one was special and could have gone either way, but WrestleMania 29 was just WWE returning the favor to Cena for having The Rock go over the year before, and everyone knew it.
The Royal Rumble victory should have been given to someone from the SmackDown side, and Cena and Rock never should have come close to a second match.
#2 Roman Reigns - 2015
As much as I have always liked Roman Reigns, I wouldn't argue with those who felt that his push to the top was being forced, and that is because it was.
As talented as he is and as much as he deserved to be the main event player, it should have happened a lot slower than it did. A big problem for everyone with the Reigns push is that it happened as quickly as it did, and was going straight to the top before he was ready.
This is a major reason why the 2015 Royal Rumble has been critically panned by critics and fans alike, and to why Reigns was booed as if he was the biggest heel ever.
Not even an appearance and endorsement from The Rock could sway the fans over, and the look on the Brama Bull's face as he raised Roman's arm, really said it all. Much like the year before, the Rumble victory should have gone to someone along the lines of a Daniel Bryan.
#1 Batista - 2014
Batista had arguably the worst big return in the history of WWE. It doesn't actually sound like that when you read it on paper as he won the 2014 Royal Rumble, main evented WrestleMania XXX and had at least three of the year's best matches. When it actually played out on TV though, it didn't go down so well.
Batista should have had a welcome return to WWE. The former WWE Champion has not been seen in the company in almost four years and had always been a fan favourite. The biggest problem for The Animal's return was it was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Batista was returning to WWE during the 'YES Movement', spearheaded by WWE's most popular superstar, Daniel Bryan.
As he had a great feud with The Authority in 2013 and was the underdog who was unfairly screwed out of the WWE Championship, Daniel Bryan winning the Royal Rumble match and headlining WrestleMania for the WWE Championship really did seem tailor-made. However, WWE apparently did really see him as just a 'B + Player' at the time, and thus chose the returning Batista over him. To make matters worse, Batista's return and Rumble victory plans leaked online at least 3 weeks before it happened, which left a very bad taste in the fans mouths.
Batista and WWE's booking of the 2014 Royal Rumble match was booed so much, that the only way to resolve the issue was to turn Batista heel and add Bryan to the main event of WrestleMania and give him the big win. Batista was probably the rightful winner of the 2005 Royal Rumble, but not on this night, that belonged to Daniel Bryan.
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