The Royal Rumble is the best part of the W.W.E. Year is great in all, but the Rumble concept is so much fun, even when the build is a bit meh, you can find brilliance from nowhere. I mean, in 2024, Jay Uso won the flipping thing, so now all bets are off, anyone can and sometimes should win. There have been so many great moments too, like Steve Austin being the victor in 1998 to finally become the guy,

or even Sean Michaels and Chris Jericho finally coming to blows in 2003.

Then of course there's the John Cena return in 2008.

That is all time.

You also get the bad times like when poor Ray Mysterio got booed just because he wasn't Daniel

Brian or the Roman Raines fumbles around the same time.

Also had some really drab winners too. Oh, we went with that guy again. Also known as Alberto Dereo. There's way more we can talk about though and so often don't, so I am Simon Mella. Please do subscribe. And here is one mind-blowing secret from every rule rumble. 1988, the real inspiration behind the match. It is time to head to San Francisco. Not literally, I can't afford that. When you go back to the territory days, you will find a very popular wrestling scene and the traditional Cow Palace Battle Royal. Built by promoter Roy Shire, the real joy was that outside talents were invited to compete. It was sort of like a wrestling all-star game, and it went down in January to set out fused to the rest of the year. Most of the time, the winner would get a US title shot of the next major Cal Palace show, too. I mean, hopefully you can already see the similarities. Now, this was still a battle royal, so we didn't have the unique intervals, but that idea did come from Pat Patterson and everything else. Well, it was basically this idea. It all changed around in

1988 when WWF was promoting their own version as a TV special, thanks to NBC Bigwig Dick

Ebersole. He wanted something different and even though Vince Oman hated the Rumble concept,

it was Patterson once again who talked him round. This was correct. It was such a success after

Hacks or Jim Duggan won it. The whole thing got

moved to pay-per-view. There was a reason why Vince Raman wasn't that infused, however. They had actually tried this once in 1987, and it was awful, or at least Vince thought so. Turned out it just needed some television pizzazz and from there, boom, we didn't look back. We've already talked about it. I am talking to you at the end of 2025, and I still think it's the best thing that happens in all of professional wrestling. I mean, that is a pretty good box to tick. Ninety-nine, the opening sequence was kept quiet. Despite the up and down nature of the first two raw rumbles, Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson do deserve credit, as they both realized it had potential for stories and that's where the money was.

Hence why come 1989, entrance number one was Axe and Entrant number two was smash,

Demolution were actually going to fight. This was massive for the time as well. The idea of every

man for himself was true. I mean so often wrestling just says things and they don't mean it.

There was more to this as well because Vince never booked Babyface versus Babyface matches, hence why the WrestleMania 6 main event felt huge too. The

Ultimate Warrior versus Hulk Hogan basically broke new ground. Demolition were super over as well,

so fans bit on this. The other positive was it really sold the idea of how important this

match was. Even buddies were going to go at it if they had to,

everybody wanted to be the champion. It's really what led to the Sean Michaels and Chris Jericho face-to-face that we've talked about because it's that idea of not knowing what's coming. And yeah, as Demolition talked about in a 2023 interview, they were not told about this beforehand, so just kicked each other's ass and waited for number three.

WWE essentially wanted to keep the whole thing a secret for Maximum Shock and awe,

and it did. If you can find any materials from that time, you will see a lot of fans melting down.

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