10 WWE Stars Who Should Have Won A Royal Rumble (But Didn’t)

Hello. My name is Tempest and I am an agent of the TVA. I’ve been sent here because there have been a number of disturbances in the sacred timeline. Disturbances very specifically relating to Royal Rumbles and people who were meant to win them.

As history passes and infinite possibilities are created across our multiverse each day, sometimes we have these Variants who wander from their assigned paths, paths that would have seen them win the Royal Rumble.

Some may have never been at the right place at the right time, others were the victim of booking malpractice and managerial negligence, but the one thing the following ten Variants have in common is they should all have won the WWE Royal Rumble.

It’s time to clean up the sacred WWE timeline and set things back on their proper course. I’m Tempest hailing from the TVA- I mean partsFUNknown, and these are 10 Stars who should have won the WWE Royal Rumble (but never did).

10. Andre The Giant

This list will be taken in a few directions over the next 8-12 minutes. I don’t know how much time is left, I’m merely writing a script. However, a few of the names chosen have been chosen to help give the legacy of the Royal Rumble a boost.

Having a long lineage of impressive winners is important to a match like this and the Rumble accomplishes this better than most. I mean the phrase “Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royale winner Mojo Rawley” doesn’t exactly light a fire in my loins.

Now with that in mind, why did Andre The Giant, the king of the battle royale, not win one of the most royalest of rumbles? I have a lot of love for Jim Duggan, don’t get me wrong, but it is hard to argue that the sentence “winner of the first ever Royal Rumble dot dot dot” wouldn’t sound better with Andre The Giant at the end of it.

The first Rumble didn’t play into the plans for WrestleMania IV whatsoever but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have! Have Andre win the match just two weeks ahead of him winning the WWF title in the whole double Hebner shmozz and tell me this match wouldn’t be more memorable for it!

9. CM Punk

 

Given how popular and influential CM Punk was from 2011 to 2014, it does seem rather blasphemous that he didn’t manage to win the Royal Rumble match or main event WrestleMania during that time. Sure he was WWE Champion at the time of the Rumble event in 2012 and 2013 but still, book something else, find a way.

Anyone but Daniel Bryan winning the Royal Rumble in 2014 would have likely been a tough sell for that crowd in Pittsburgh but maybe I’m crazy for thinking CM Punk would have been a more welcomed second choice than Mr. Hinx over here.

What’s even crazier to ponder, though, is that CM Punk would have been a more than fitting choice to win the Rumble earlier as well. As the leader of the Straightedge Society, Punk was the best working heel in WWE from 2009 to 2010 and was incredibly underutilized at the time.

As he said in his Best in the World DVD, the best good guy should fight the best bad guy at the biggest show of the year and you could easily make the argument that Punk qualified for much of his career. Shoulda won the Rumble. What a robbery.

8. The Ultimate Warrior

Now I will not be the one to sing the praises of the Ultimate Warrior but if I’m booking the Royal Rumble in 1990 and am handed the notepad that says WrestleMania VI: Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior my immediate thoughts are not “hey WWF Champion Hulk Hogan really needs to win the Royal Rumble”.

The 1990 Rumble is a good one in no small part to the intense staredown between these impending Mania main event mountainous men. However, whereas Hogan gets the better of the exchange and eventually wins the match, I propose that Warrior should have been the final man standing.

The Royal Rumble may not have had the “win a one-way trip to WrestleMania and also here is your complimentary title shot” stipulation added just yet, but I dunno, having your top contender win a huge match before challenging for the WWF Championship seems like sound booking regardless of what era it takes place in.

7. Eddie Guerrero

It remains truly remarkable just how big of an impression Eddie Guerrero made on the lives of so many fans who watched him.

There is a whole generation of current talent who have come up idolizing Eddie Guerrero and for good reason. The man was a generational talent, by all accounts a wonderful human, and a proper icon in pro wrestling.

With regards to this list, it would simply mean more to scroll through Wikipedia on the list of Royal Rumble winners and see Eddie Guerrero’s name.

There is a slight issue as to when this should happen as Eddie’s main event run only came at the tail end of his career, but if this is a fantasy world where we get to access the fabric of reality and warp all Royal Rumble happenings to our whim, I dunno just book him as a main event talent from the start and badda bing badda boom problem solved.

You can surely find a year in which one of the best wrestlers of all time could make a go for the title at WrestleMania.

6. Kofi Kingston

It was booked by Adam Blampied himself once upon a time so you know it has his seal of approval.

Straight up, the conclusion and follow up or lack thereof to Kofi Kingston’s WWE Championship reign remains one of the most disheartening things I’ve witnessed as a wrestling fan. I know it, you know it, your mum knows it, Nathan your boss at Starbucks knows it, they did my boy Kofi dirty.

The easy way to remedy this? By having Kofi Kingston win the 2020 Royal Rumble.

Now at the same time, yes, I like Drew McIntyre a lot and don’t want to advocate for time travelers to go back and take away his moment, but for the purposes of this list and Kofi Kingston’s place on it, 2020 is when this needs to happen.

In theory, Kofi Kingston losing to Brock Lesnar in 8 seconds could be an intriguing story if that is then used to propel Kofi’s own personal battle, motivating him to win the Rumble and reclaim his title at WrestleMania.

A Rumble win would have given Kofi the momentum to remain a main event talent after that eight second nightmare and think of how happy it would have made everyone. People f**king love Kofi Kingston.

5. Randy Savage

Randy Savage, brother of Fred, is among the first five or six names an older casual fan might recall from the WWE’s big boom period of the 80s. In many ways he was the number two star in the company behind Hulk Hogan even if people like The Ultimate Warrior were being pushed ahead of him.

Randy Savage, cousin of Rick, should have won the Royal Rumble in place of Yokozuna and that is a hill I will die on.

Not only would it have meant Randy Savage, inspiration for Vandal, vs. Bret Hart would have been added to a WrestleMania card that was crawling through the Nevada desert in search for a decent match, but it would have allowed Bret to have a classic coronation as the next guy, something that was sorely needed after winning the title from Ric Flair at a house show and then defending it against then-midcarders Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon.

Not only that, but being able to include Randy Savage, linemate of Reggie, in WWE’s annual By The Numbers video would be pretty swell. And it would erase the dumbest Royal Rumble finish in history from existence, we’re really cleaning up the timeline today!

4. Chris Jericho

If you want to talk about timelines and the various ripple effects and branches created by one small decision in wrestling, I want you to ponder this. Chris Jericho at one point was penciled in to win the 2017 Royal Rumble and main event WrestleMania against Kevin Owens. That plan changed.

Instead, Randy Orton won the Rumble and Owens and Jericho went on second at WrestleMania, ultimately being a big reason for Jericho’s departure from WWE.

In his absence, Jericho faces Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12, doing big numbers for New Japan Pro Wrestling and putting the idea in Tony Khan’s mind that there is an audience for a wrestling alternative to WWE. One year later All Elite Wrestling was launched with Chris Jericho as a major player and they’ve been off to the races ever since.

Does All Elite Wrestling exist if Chris Jericho simply wins the Royal Rumble in 2017? Would the entirety of the wrestling business have changed so vociferously if Vinnie Mac had just let Jericho carve his name onto the slab of granite that lists every Royal Rumble winner? It exists at Titan Towers, I’ve seen it.

We’ll never know. I mean, I know, because I’m from the TVA, but you? No, you’ll never know.

3. Daniel Bryan

I mean, f**king obviously, right? Like we’ve all been on our own separate but collective emotional journeys as a result of Daniel Bryan not winning the Royal Rumble in 2014 and then again in 2015 and it goes without saying that he definitely should have won one if not both of those matches.

However, for the sake of sprucing things up because a few of these entries have been covered by Adam in his list of 10 times WWE got the Royal Rumble wrong, allow me to say that WWE missing the boat on Daniel Bryan’s return from retirement is as sinful and baffling as either the 2014 or 2015 Royal Rumbles.

Daniel Bryan, returning hero of the people, had to turn heel to be booked well. Goodness me. You had three chances to finally give Daniel Bryan the Royal Rumble win he had been destined for following his return. THREE.

Again some of these are tough because I have nothing wrong with Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre or Edge winning the Royal Rumble in 2019, 2020 and 2021, but Daniel Bryan having never won the Royal Rumble just does not sit right in my jellies.

And again, if you don’t want to pick any of those three years, just have him win when he was supposed to you absolute bowling ball.

2. Christian

This might be a controversial one, it might not, I don’t know.

I don’t really ever see this opinion get aggressively typed and shouted into the big blue bird box that is Twitter but hell, Christian is f**king brilliant and he should have won the Royal Rumble. More specifically, he should have won the Royal Rumble in 2011.

At the time, Christian was recovering from a torn pectoral and eventually made his return at Elimination Chamber, three weeks later. It is possible that he hadn’t recovered at the time and if that is the case fair play to them, but my guess is he could have done it.

Christian never truly busted through the glass ceiling of WWE’s incredibly crowded greenhouse prison, but a Royal Rumble win would certainly have gone a long way towards making that happen.

It would have been the perfect time to pull the trigger on the most hideous Canadian, Vince McMahon’s thoughts not mine, as Edge was World Heavyweight Champion at the time and seeing Edge and Christian battle over the big gold belt at a WrestleMania would legitimately make my heart emit an angelic chorus. Edge even used the Killswitch to beat Dolph Ziggler on this show. It’s like this was the plan but they just didn’t do it.

And finally, if Christian won the Royal Rumble in 2011 that would mean the match wouldn’t have been won by a colossal piece of s**t! This is the ultimate timeline, trust me.

1. Kurt Angle

 

 

Some careers are made by having won the Royal Rumble. In this case, the Royal Rumble is worse off because Kurt Angle did not win it.

Despite being one of the best to ever pull down a singlet strap, put it back on and pull it down again, the Royal Rumble match barely played a role in Angle’s career. He was the runner up in 2002 and was in the final three in 2004, but otherwise the Rumble was simply a WWE accomplishment that passed Angle by.

He was often champion in January, missing the Rumble match in 2001, 2003 and 2006, so finding a year to slot him into becomes more difficult but I can close my eyes and envision his goofy ass celebrating the Royal Rumble match and it is glorious so here is what I propose.

Kurt Angle wins the 2004 Royal Rumble in place of Chris Benoit. Angle would go on to wrestle Eddie Guerrero for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania anyway and honestly it would make the 04 Rumble about 10,000% more watchable.

I don’t really have a fun way to end this now, so here is the picture I took with Kurt Angle in dual cowboy hats in 2019. I feel like a real cowboy, yippee-ki-yay!