WWE Royal Rumble 2017: Ranking All 30 Match Winners

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12. Yokozuna – 1993

The early 1990’s could have been dominated by Yokozuna, who emerged as a top heel for WWE. He main evented WrestleMania in 1993 and 1994, having Hulk Hogan in his way for part of this time. To get there, though, he had to go through the 1993 Royal Rumble match.

Yokozuna entered at No. 27 and just destroyed everyone with his sumo wrestler size. He even took out Earthquake, a man who stood in similar stature. Bob Backlund and Randy “Macho Man” Savage would give fans some hope of a face winning, but they were disposed with ease over the ropes to give Yokozuna the victory.

This established Yokozuna for the WWE main event scene, as he went into WrestleMania 9 as the challenger to Bret Hart’s WWE Championship. In a notoriously short main event of just a shade under nine minutes, Mr. Fuji threw salt in the eyes of Hart, who would get pinned moments later to lose his title.

It would seem like a Yokozuna reign had been set up, right? Well, out came Hogan, who checked on the Hit Man. Fuji ended up challenging the Hulkster to face his client in a title match right there and then. Hogan would accept, but Fuji accidentally threw salt into Yokozuna’s eyes, causing the leg drop and successful pin in just 22 seconds. It put a damper on the WrestleMania season run for the 2012 Hall of Famer, but he regained the belt back just a few months later.