2025 Royal Rumble: How 37 years of bedlam led WWE to the deepest Rumble yet

Yahoo

30-01-2025

For all its glitz and glamour, as well as its raw displays of athleticism, professional wrestling is missing one thing that most other traditional sports enjoy: a draft.
Fans of football, basketball and baseball get to see their franchises build and break based on draft day selections. Wrestling companies mostly do their picking and choosing in private.
But if WWE's WrestleMania is the Super Bowl of wrestling, the Royal Rumble serves as its true one-night evaluation, the closest thing we get to a public selection process. The 2025 edition of the Royal Rumble is especially loaded with top-tier talent, but that wasn't always the case for this event.
Here's a look back at how we got here, from the Rumble's inception to the present day, along with a look at how Saturday's edition stacks up.
WWE's first recognized Royal Rumble, held in 1988 after a smaller, house show version was attempted in 1987, was more akin to an all-star game than a true event of consequence.
It was the introduction of a new type of battle royal, designed to build up the suspense of watching your favorite wrestlers appear one by one. Previously, battle royals saw all of the wrestlers walk to the ring in a staggered fashion, like high school kids headed out on a field trip. Once they'd all entered, the bell rang and the work of tossing each other out of the ring began.
The Royal Rumble added the innovation of timed intervals between wrestler entrances. The time gap was liberally listed at two minutes between entrances.
The original television special, held to oppose Jim Crockett Promotions' 'Bunkhouse Stampede' pay-per-view the same night, originated from Canada's Copp Arena, in Hamilton, Ontario. The Rumble itself didn't actually headline the show. Instead it was sandwiched between two tag team matches, with The Jumping Bomb Angels challenging The Glamour Girls for the WWF Women's Tag Team Championships, and The Islanders taking on The Young Stallions in the show's main event.
In those days, the winner's reward was not a title shot. In fact, that inaugural Rumble has the distinction of featuring the fewest wrestlers who were either past or future WWE champions. Bret Hart opened the event, and The Ultimate Warrior showed up later on, but no other competitor in that first Royal Rumble ever earned a title in WWE higher than the Intercontinental Championship.
Prior to his awakening as Akeem The African Dream, the aptly titled One Man Gang led the match in eliminations before ultimately losing to America's favorite 2x4-toting tough guy, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
The match, with its familiar chaos infused with a fresh format, was an immediate success. The show itself became professional wrestling's most-watched cable event at that time.
In 1992, the year prior to the Rumble gaining 'Golden Ticket' status for its winners, the event's final man standing was awarded the vacant WWE Championship.
In contrast to the first Rumble, this event featured seven past and future WWE Champions. Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker and Sid Justice (Sid Vicious) all went on to achieve wrestling stardom, while the likes of Macho Man Randy Savage and Sgt. Slaughter looked to extend their legends with another world title victory.
Even outside of that fraternity, the 1992 Rumble may be WWE's most star-studded, with The British Bulldog, Roddy Piper, Jake Roberts, Jimmy Snuka and Ted DiBiase all taking part. But wrestling's two biggest stars, WWE's longtime frontman Hulk Hogan and former Jim Crockett Promotions marathon man Ric Flair, were the odds-on favorites to once again emerge as the top dogs of the industry.
Flair entered the match third, giving him the first 'countdown surprise' response of the night. The match's final four participants wound up being Hogan, Flair, Justice and Savage, with Justice eliminating Savage thanks to an assist from Flair.
A conflicted Justice then capitalized on Hogan attacking Flair and grabbed him from behind, tossing him over the top rope to eliminate him. Hogan, completely out of character, took offense to a perfectly legal action on Justice's part, and selfishly grabbed his arm from outside of the ring, giving Flair the leverage to dump Justice over the top rope and claim his first WWE Championship. Soon after, WWE President Jack Tunney awarded Flair the title backstage.
With Bobby Heenan and 'Mr. Perfect' Curt Hennig in tow, Flair marked this moment as his wrestling apex, telling 'Mean' Gene Okerlund that it was the greatest moment of his life and stating that the WWE championship is the only title that makes you number one. Known for his otherworldly endurance, Flair lasted in the match just over an hour from entrance to victory. While he eventually lost and won back the title that same year, his Royal Rumble victory is still considered among his finest moments in WWE.
After 1992, the Royal Rumble became the unofficial 'Road to WrestleMania,' giving fans insight into who was expected to become the company's next headliner. It was the event that provided a preview of WrestleMania's main event championship match, making the Rumble even more of a career-making victory.
That winners list is littered with current and future WWE Hall of Famers. Shawn Michaels, John Cena, Triple H, Batista, Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes are all two-time victors. Stone Cold Steve Austin is the only three-time Royal Rumble winner, having outlasted the competition three times over a five-year span.
The women's Royal Rumble, first held in 2018 and won by Asuka, has been won by three of WWE's Four Horsewomen. The 2022 show has the unique distinction of having both the men's and women's matches won by former UFC champions, as Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey both came out on top. Bianca Belair's 2021 victory earned her the opportunity for the first one-on-one women's main event in WrestleMania history, where she defeated Sasha Banks for the Smackdown Women's Championship.
Over the years, the Rumble has also often featured the year's biggest surprise debuts and startling returns. The 1996 Royal Rumble saw the debut of Vader, who'd dominated Japan and WCW throughout the early '90s. Before being eliminated by eventual winner Shawn Michaels, he bulldozed the competition, finishing third in overall eliminations.
AJ Styles, longtime TNA and New Japan star, finally competed full-time for WWE after his 2016 Rumble appearance, entering in the same heralded spot as Ric Flair and lasting nearly a half-hour before being eliminated by Kevin Owens. Most recently, then-TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace made her unexpected WWE debut in the 2024 Women's Royal Rumble.
On the return end, John Cena made an unexpected appearance after an injury in 2008, entering at the No. 30 spot to win the match. And there's no more unexpected Rumble surprise than the 2020 match that saw Edge return after an injury had forced him into retirement nine years earlier.
While the match will (almost) always have a clear winner, it's the WWE match with the most awe and intrigue, creating matches and rivalries that culminate at the year's largest event.
While the Bloodline odyssey — the winding, weaving story of Roman Reigns, his extended family and the waves they've made in WWE's ocean — may be winding down, it still has one last whirlpool to pull everyone into. WWE has created a war chest of main event talents, and over recent weeks almost all of them have declared for — and stated their case to win — Saturday's 2025 Royal Rumble.
For the first time since 2020, Reigns heads into the first PLE of the year without a world championship. While absence may make the heart grow fonder, uncertainty makes the soul burn. He's out to reclaim his spot as the most important figure in the field, but the biggest difference is that this time he's without his former lieutenants in the same space.
Jey Uso is a bonafide star in his own right now, fresh off challenging Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship. After flanking his cousin throughout the pandemic, Uso is now joined on his way through a crowd by artists like Travis Scott and Quavo, with fans mimicking his dance move and chanting 'Yeet!' after everything he decrees.
Jimmy Uso also found a solid middle ground between caring for his family and getting his own, having helped the OG Bloodline secure a War Games victory but striking out on his own on "WWE Smackdown."
'Honorary Uce' Sami Zayn not only ended the Usos' historic tag title reign at WrestleMania 39, but was the man to end Gunther's record-setting Intercontinental Title run at WrestleMania 40.
And those are the people who like Reigns. There's an even longer line of reanimated, revitalized bodies Reigns has left in his wake, just waiting to drive the final stake in the heart of the Bloodline. No one has been more vocal about his distrust and dislike for Reigns and his crew than Drew McIntyre, who feels they spoiled his crowning moment at Clash at the Castle. And while others have chosen to forgive and forget, McIntyre is more determined than ever to make the Bloodline suffer — and there's no better way than securing the title Reigns covets for himself.
Seth Rollins, Reigns' former running mate in The Shield, pushed himself to the point of exhaustion during 2024's WrestleMania Night One, possibly costing him his World Heavyweight Championship the following night. He's out to prove Reigns is still not on his level, hoping that without his familial security blanket, Reigns can be bested.
If Reigns is the apple of Paul Heyman's eye, CM Punk may be the twinkle, as the counterculture, rough-around-the-edges rock star born a generation too late to 'go extreme.' Through insult and injury, Punk is looking to fulfill a lifelong dream of headlining the largest show in the business.
Lastly, there's the man pursuing finality: John Cena. He's done it all and won it all, and hopes to finish off his once-in-a-generation career by earning a record-breaking 17 world title reigns, which would put him ahead of Flair for the most of all time.
Reigns and The Bloodline — and WWE by extension — have created a situation where there are more potential Royal Rumble winners than ever, and it's possible that the reasons others don't win could tell even greater stories down the road.
WWE has never had so many talents in position to lead. For many, the only question is when might be the right time may be for them to be sent to the forefront. Whoever wins on Saturday, it'll be interesting to see how the next two months unfold.
With Elimination Chamber, and the WrestleMania event itself extending over two nights, plans may change and alliances may shift. But the constant is that the Royal Rumble is sure to provide more than a few moments that alter careers, heighten excitement and keep audiences locked in for whatever's next.