Drew McIntyre
The story of Drew going into the Rumble was that he was on a journey to become the star that he had had so much promise of when he was a rookie, but that somewhere along the line, things had gone offtrack.
The Rumble win itself was something special and unique as Brock Lesnar who was the current Champion had entered and literally eliminated everyone who entered until Drew came in. Needless to say that when Drew took out Lesnar with a Claymore the roof became unglued in the arena.
The perfect story didn’t quite play out as although Drew would go on to main event WrestleMania and defeat Brock, it was at the start of the pandemic and there were no fans in attendance for the show.
Bret Hart
So, Bret and Luger both won the Rumble in 1994. We spoke about Luger earlier, so why is Bret so much higher on the list?
Simply put, it’s the full story that was told. Earlier in the night Bret had tagged with his brother Owen in a losing effort, only for Owen to turn heel on Bret. The two winners situation then lead to Bret having a match with Owen at WrestleMania just for the reason so that Bret would have had a match so that he could face the winner of the Luger-Yokozuna WWE Championship match (this was in an era before ethe Triple Threat match concept).
With Luger failing to capitalise on his half of the Rumble victory, Bret would go on to defeat Yokozuna for the Championship in the main event. But there’s more to all this as I’ll explain.
Bret defeating Yoko was redemption against the sumo wrestler who had cheated to beat Bret at WrestleMania IX the year before.
Bret also had one of the very best WrestleMania matches of all time against his brother Owen. This was a match that Owen won, which makes Bret winning the belt to come back from a loss all the greater underdog story. And this story having also started at the Rumble in a losing tag team match for the brothers just makes this one of the best and neatest packages you could hope for story wise in wrestling.
Becky Lynch
Becky was the winner the fans wanted, and was the winner the fans got. But there was controversy. Becky had already wrestled for the Smackdown Women’s Championship earlier in the show and lost. She then took a spot in the Rumble from Lana and won…which shouldn’t make sense but was somehow allowed.
Despite this slightly dodgy approach to set up the match, at Mania we saw Becky defeat by Charlotte and Ronda Rousey in the first WrestleMania to be main evented by a Women’s match. This would solidify Becky as one of the company’s top stars.
The Rock
If The Rock had stayed with the WWE longer you can be certain he would have won the match more than once, but his one win was at the height of his popularity in the WWE. A slight controversial finish as he last eliminated the Big Show which was later proven on video to have been an incorrect decision. Both men went over the top rope at the same time, but The Rock’s feet hit the ground way before the Big Show’s and it was just that The Rock was able to drag himself back in unseen by the ref.
This controversy would lead to the Big Show getting his way into the WrestleMania main event along with Rock and Triple H. Mick Foley was also thrown into the mix because reasons, and although The Rock didn’t win (in fact it was the first time a heel won a Mania main event) this still stands as a worthy win on the list as The Rock was becoming such a big star at this time that he didn’t actually need the victory to keep his momentum.
Chris Benoit
Yes certainly, this is controversial for the legacy of who Chris Benoit is in a modern context. The tragedy of the final days of his life certainly taints everything about the man, but whilst it’s hard to separate him form those events, its without saying that his Rumble win was spectacular at the time.
Benoit became only the second person to enter the Royal Rumble at the number 1 position and go on to win the whole thing. This was a show of his incredible conditioning and stamina, and told the story of him earning the victory. He would then go on to WrestleMania 20 and win the World Heavyweight Championship in the main event against Triple H and Shawn Michaels.
After the win, he would memorably be joined by Eddie Guerrero as confetti rained down in one of the most iconic scenes from WWE history (although now effectively lost to time following the Benoit double murder-suicide).
