Number 1: Stone Cold Steve Austin
And here’s the third man on the list to win two consecutive Royal Rumble matches…but in the case of Stone Cold, he would actually go on to be the only person so far in WWE history to win three Royal Rumble matches.
Austin’s first two wins came in 1997 and 1998, and much like Shawn Michaels before him a heel Austin won the first time, but didn’t become WWF Champion at Wrestlemania, but then a face Austin did win the title after winning a second Royal Rumble.
Unlike Shawn however, the heel Steve Austin didn’t even get a world title match at Wrestlemania! In this instance however the heel somewhat got what was deserved as Austin was one of a few wrestlers who was a Rumble winner when they should not have been. Just as a couple of years later when the Rock won even though he was technically eliminated before the Big Show Austin here was much more clearly thrown out the ring. Fortunately for Austin the referees were trying to break upa brawl at ringside and didn’t see the elimination so Austin jumped back in and threw both the Hitman Bret Hart and the Fake Diesel out the ring for the win.
This controversy lead to the Final Four Pay Per View event where the supposed final four in the match – Bret Hart, Vader, Undertaker and Steve Austin, who had eliminated all the others after being eliminated himself, would battle for the WWF Championship…even though the future Kane aka Fake Diesel was actually one of the true final four. I suppose the argument here is that Bret actually eliminated Diesel and that was a legit elimination where as Steve Austin had illegally eliminated the others. Why Austin should have been included in this match then is still a mystery as like Diesel he was also legitimately eliminated.
Still all is well that ends well as between the Rumble and Final Four, then WWF Champion Shawn Michaels lost his smile and gave up the belt and whilst we ended up with Sid and Undertaker in a fairly weak Wrestlemania main event, we also got the incredible Bret-Austin classic which really made Stone Cold the main event talent he would be for the rest of his career.
Austin’s next two wins are much easier to detail, and in ways slightly less fun then the 1997 event, but the 1998 one saw Austin as the clear fan favourite to go in and earn his shot at Wrestlemania. By this stage we were really starting to get into the Austin era of WWE and Austin was becoming the guy who would flip off authority and was the target of everyone else in the WWF. Austin last eliminated The Rock, who himself was emerging as a brighter star who was defying Farooq in the Nation of Domination.
The Rumble would set the stage for Wrestlemania 14, which was Shawn Michaels last match for our years and would see Austin win his first World Championship in a memorable match that had so much hype, not only because of the rise of Steve Austin, but also because of the inclusion of Mike Tyson as the enforcer who would also do the count to give Austin the title.
Austin would again win the Rumble in 2001 at the absolute height of the attitude era, and also at a time when the WWF had just defeated it’s rivals WCW and ECW to become the last big dog in the yard of the professional wrestling industry.
Austin was in this Rumble for only 10 minutes and only eliminated three opponents with Kane being the last eliminated once again. The match didn’t stand out as much as Austin’s previous victories, but would set up one of the biggest and most memorable main event matches in Wrestlemania history as we got Austin taking on the Rock in the main event, which by 2001 was a much bigger main event compared to when they took on the top stop of Wrestlemania 15 two years prior.
So there you have it! The top 5 Royal Rumble winners in history! Do you agree with the list? What’s your view? As always feel free to put your thoughts in the comments.
