Vince McMahon booked himself as the WWE Royal Rumble winner two months before the PPV (Exclusive)

Vince Russo has revealed that Vince McMahon decided two months before the 1999 WWE Royal Rumble that he was going to win the 30-man match.

In WWE, it is not uncommon for the outcome of a match to change at the last minute. At WrestleMania 30, for example, The Undertaker was due to defeat Brock Lesnar until Vince McMahon changed his mind on the day of the show.

Russo, who worked as a WWE writer in the 1990s, appeared on SK Wrestling’s Off the SKript with Dr. Chris Featherstone. He said Vince McMahon was the only person who was considered as the winner of the 1999 Royal Rumble.

“There really wasn’t, bro [any other contenders]. I mean, that was such a big moment. We knew. We probably knew that, bro, I would say at the Survivor Series [November 1998]. 100 percent we knew Vince was going over at the Royal Rumble [January 1999].”

Listen to more of Vince Russo’s thoughts on Vince McMahon’s Royal Rumble win in the video above.

Vince McMahon in the WrestleMania main event?

Although Vince McMahon won the Royal Rumble, he did not challenge for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania XV. Vince Russo explained that the WWE Chairman was never going to compete in a big match at the event. His Royal Rumble victory simply helped further the story between Steve Austin, The Rock, and McMahon.

“We knew Vince isn’t going to be in the main event because Vince isn’t going to deliver that match, but it also gave us great program and great storytelling leading up from January to WrestleMania of exactly how we were gonna get Vince out of that match and what the story was going to be.”

In the end, Austin defeated The Rock in the main event of WrestleMania XV to win the WWE Championship.

Please credit SK Wrestling's Off the SKript and embed the video interview if you use quotes from this article.