We have reached the end of January, and every WWE fan knows what this part of the year brings: the Royal Rumble. The 30-wrestler battle royal — which serves as the centerpiece match of the eponymous January pay-per-view — has become a fan favorite because of the potential for surprises and the implications the match carries for WrestleMania season.
Since 1992, the Royal Rumble winner has either received a world championship match at “The Showcase of the Immortals” or outright won the title. With stakes that high, fans understand the significance of being the last person standing.
Most years, WWE picks the right person to win this match. You don’t hear too many fans talking about how Steve Austin shouldn’t have won in 2001 (or 1998), or that someone other than Shinsuke Nakamura should’ve gotten the dub in 2018, for example.
That said, WWE has gotten the Royal Rumble winner wrong more than a few times, leaving wrestlers who should’ve won without a cool accolade on their résumé.
These are wrestlers who — due to the trajectory of the storyline they were in, how over they were with the audience, or both — seemed like obvious candidates to win the Royal Rumble only for WWE to go in a different direction. In some cases, the lack of a Rumble win derailed their momentum and they’re still working to recover from the misstep.
5. “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig (1990)
At the start of Curt Hennig’s second WWE stint, the promotion got a lot of things right with him. After hyping him up with numerous vignettes designed to get over his “Mr. Perfect” persona, Hennig went undefeated for over a year and would eventually enter a feud with world champion Hulk Hogan that included the moment where Hennig destroyed the WWF Championship belt at Saturday Night’s Main Event. He even got a televised win over Hogan, albeit via disqualification.
This culminated at the 1990 Royal Rumble in the titular match, where it came down to Hennig and Hogan. Apparently, WWE planned to keep Hennig’s momentum going with a win, but Vince McMahon changed his mind and went with Hogan as the winner instead.
It’s not hard to understand the possible rationale for giving Hogan the win; he was the world champ at the time and on a collision course with the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI, so it made sense to build Hogan up as much as possible before he put over the next top babyface.
However, Hogan — the well-established face of the company — did not need the win as much as Hennig did. The Rumble win would’ve cemented “Mr. Perfect” as one of the top heels in the WWF at a time when the company desperately needed those. Instead, Hennig settled in as a dependable upper midcarder, winning the Intercontinental Championship twice.
Plus, it would’ve kept racist Terry from winning multiple Rumbles.
4. Chris Jericho (2012)
When Chris Jericho returned to WWE in January 2012, almost everyone assumed that his first major feud would be with then-WWE Champion CM Punk. It made sense; Punk had spent the better part of 2011 christening himself the best wrestler in the world (and had the championship to prove it) and Jericho’s most fruitful WWE run consisted of him telling anyone who would listen that he was “the best in the world at what I do”. Plus, it was a relatively fresh matchup.
All WWE needed to do to make this dream match a reality was book Jericho to win the 2012 Royal Rumble. Instead, they went with Sheamus, with Jericho finishing as the runner-up.
This Rumble result showed us the shortcomings of having two world championships in one promotion. WWE assumed that it could use the Rumble to heat up Sheamus — who it viewed as, at least, a possible number three babyface — while finding another way to get to the Jericho/Punk match.
Unfortunately, Sheamus’ win didn’t make his program with World Heavyweight Champion Daniel Bryan feel like a bigger deal (that storyline primarily centered around Bryan’s mistreatment of on-screen girlfriend AJ Lee) and…well, we saw what happened in their match at WrestleMania XXVIII.
As for Jericho, not winning the Rumble fizzled the buzz he had when he returned to the promotion. He got his title shot against Punk, but the “Punk is a copycat of Jericho” aspect didn’t resonate with fans the way WWE thought. Perhaps it would have if Jericho won the Rumble.
3. Shayna Baszler (2020)
After Shayna Baszler’s 416-day reign and NXT Women’s Champion ended at the hands of Rhea Ripley, fans eagerly awaited her arrival to the main roster. With WWE teasing a future feud with Becky Lynch at Survivor Series 2019, most viewers hoped to see Baszler win the women’s Royal Rumble to set that match up for WrestleMania 36.
These folks didn’t account for WWE’s need to pad Charlotte Flair’s stats.
Once again, WWE felt that it could take an alternate route to get to Baszler vs. Lynch, so it booked Baszler to finish as the runner-up to Flair. Meanwhile, Flair used the title shot she earned via her Rumble win to…wait around until Ripley appeared on Raw and challenged her to an NXT Women’s Title match? So, if that was the plan, why did Flair need to win the Rumble?
Baszler eventually got her title shot against Lynch by winning an underwhelming Elimination Chamber match. She faced Lynch at WrestleMania, but despite Lynch reportedly offering to do the honors for her, the champion retained after countering the Kirifuda Clutch into a pin (a finish that Baszler has succumbed to far too many times).
Baszler has struggled to regain her credibility since that loss.
2. Sasha Banks (2022)
WWE made a grave mistake picking Ronda Rousey to win the 2022 women’s Royal Rumble. Between her inconsistent workrate, incomprehensible promos, and anti-charisma, she has become a sunk cost for WWE; the immense star power she cultivated through her MMA career isn’t enough to paper over her many shortcomings anymore.
Sasha Banks would’ve made a better choice. Perpetually reliable in the ring and on the mic while gaining more name value thanks to her role in The Mandalorian, Banks vs. Flair at WrestleMania 38 would’ve been far preferable to the okay-but-not-great Flair vs. Rousey match we ultimately got.
Instead, Banks teamed with Naomi to win the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship in a multi-woman match, which was a nice moment…until you remembered that the company cares about those titles about as much as Ben Simmons cares about taking jump shots, and that lack of attention ultimately led to Banks and Naomi walking out on the company this past summer.
1. Daniel Bryan (2014 and 2015)
When you think of real “missed opportunities” for WWE over the years, there are fewer obvious choices than mid-2010s Daniel Bryan.
Between 2013-16 (and every year after that, quite frankly), you could count the number of wrestlers more over than Bryan on one hand without needing to use all of your fingers. Unfortunately, WWE often sees that as a detriment if it feels that it wasn’t responsible for a wrestler getting those reactions or if the wrestler doesn’t fit into whatever its plans are.
In 2014, it didn’t matter how many cheers Bryan got (cheers WWE tried to quell by turning him heel and booking him to join the Wyatt Family), WWE was determined to book Randy Orton vs. Batista as the main event of WrestleMania XXX. So, WWE kept Bryan out of the Rumble and moved forward with Batista as the winner.
How did the fans react to that? Well, they rejected it so much that it forced WWE to speed up Batista’s heel turn and made it add Bryan to the main event (CM Punk’s departure also forced WWE’s hand there).
Bryan ultimately won the world title at ‘Mania, but a neck injury forced him to relinquish the title not long after. When he returned to action in 2015 and announced his entry into the Royal Rumble, fans viewed him as the favorite to win, but once again, WWE had other plans.
With the company ready to push Roman Reigns as the next top babyface and not wanting a repeat of 2014, it scripted Bryan to enter the 2015 Rumble midway through the match, last a few minutes, and get unceremoniously eliminated by Bray Wyatt. It didn’t work; the Philadelphia crowd immediately turned on the match after Bryan’s elimination and maintained that animus until Reigns got the win.
WWE followed this up by attempting to push Reigns as John Cena 2.0 for several years before finally giving in and turning him heel, a move that WWE could’ve avoided by giving the fans what they wanted to begin with.