A balanced diet of solid facts and the occasional mark out surprise is what makes the Royal Rumble so special. With this years spectacle approaching this Sunday it’s important to know some key statistics about the participants and the challenge that lies ahead of them. Prepare yourself for large numbers and some quite unexpected little ones too. Some of these you may know, which if you do, then that just makes you a bigger Mark than Sexual Chocolate himself.
Chris Jericho has almost spent the most (cumulative) time in a Rumble:
Aside from Triple H, Chris Jericho is the only active member of the current roster, and indeed WWE history, to have spent more time in cumulative Royal Rumble matches than anybody else. At a combined time of 3 hours, 55 minutes and 59 seconds, Jericho is less than 5 minutes away from The Game’s record and looks set to overtake ‘Trips’ this Sunday providing he escapes that pesky shark cage in time for the match. What’s more surprising is that Cody Rhodes/Stardust has the 6th highest total Rumble time in history at 3 hours, 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Now that’s one I bet you didn’t know!
Lucky number 7:
Though seven isn’t the highest amount of eliminations in one Rumble match (no prizes for guessing who holds that record) it’s rather interesting to note all the same as this is the average number of eliminations you should expect from one man. On no more than 8 separate occasions there has been 7 men that have managed to eliminate 7 opponents in one match. From 1991 to 2011 the infamous list ranges: Hulk Hogan, Yokozuna, Diesel, Stone Cold, Rikishi, The Undertaker, The Great Khali, CM Punk and John Cena. These are all household names amongst the WWE but only two of those men have managed to beat their own personal best. Hogan and Austin have both gone on to eliminate 9 and 10 men respectively in a single Rumble making them more macho than your dad.
The Undertaker hasn’t been in a Rumble since 2009:
The company’s most iconic wrestler hasn’t featured in their biggest match up in over 7 years. It’s astonishing when you think about it. In that time he has gone on to lose his infamous WrestleMania streak at the hands of Brock Lesnar and subsequently see his kayfabe brother lose the record for the most eliminations in a single Rumble to Roman Reigns. In addition to this, The Phenom’s only Royal Rumble win is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. That time the Deadman entered in at number 30 and eliminated Shawn Michaels. But you already knew that! Maybe this year will see the Brothers of Destruction team up one last time and exact revenge on Lesnar and Reigns.
Kane still has the most eliminations overall:
As much as WWE like to remind you that Reigns is the strongest person alive the fact remains that he isn’t (and hopefully never will be) as strong as Kane. As referenced a few times already, 2014 witnessed Kane lose the most eliminations in a single rumble acclaim. Despite this it should still be known that the Big Red Machine still boasts a total of 44 eliminations in 19 separate Royal Rumbles since his first appearance as “Isaac Yankem” in 1996. That’s 10 more Rumble appearances than Chris Jericho and makes the GOAT’s total Rumble time look even more impressive. This year is set to be Kane’s 20th Rumble and with the current crop of talent I don’t envisage even Roman Reigns will get near this record any time soon. That’s until he eliminates 22 people this year of course.
The “Iron Man’s” average time:
The Iron Man is the competitor each year to last the longest in the Rumble. Four men have been the Iron Man more than once. Stone Cold and Triple H are two of those, the others, WWE would be keen for you to forget about – CM Punk and Chris Benoit. In a complete waste of my life I added the total time of all the Iron Men (over 21.6 hours) and divided it by the remaining spaces (29). The average time is just shy of 45 minutes and gives you a hint of how long Sami Zayn will last in this year’s rumble. Yes, he deserves to be the ultimate underdog!
The number to be:
The best chance of winning the Rumble would, of course, find the participant situated between numbers 21 to 30 with 19 of the competitions’ winners having entered in this latter stages. Four of those winners have been in the number 27 slot proving it to be the lucky number. If one of these competitors tends to go for the Iron Man role then they’ll want to start at number one which has been featured on 10 occasions as the distance runner.
I guess that last one is kind of obvious. That’s enough stats for one day.