Two Feet Must Touch the Floor, But Most Just Fell Flat on Their Butts.
(The one where you can't name half of the competitors, and the other half you wish you could forget.)
Storytelling:1/5 Stars
Match Quality: 1/5 Stars
Finish: 3/5 Stars
Winner: 3/5 Stars
Extracurriculars: 1/5 Stars
TOTAL: 9/25 Stars
Great Moment You May Have Forgotten: Bret Hart making an appearance (there wasn't much in great moments).
Moment You Wish You Were Never Reminded Of: King Kong Bundy's pathetic elimination. How did this guy main event a Wrestlemania?
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There are a handful of Rumbles that will be covered in the next few days that are pretty terrible. So why is this one the worst out of all those clunkers?
Well for starters, if it wasn't for Shawn Michaels and the British Bulldog, this would be completely unwatchable even by a regular match quality. Vince decided that we needed to see a longer Diesel match, so instead of the usual 90 seconds to 2 minutes between competitors, each competitor came out after 60 seconds. Not only does it rush building a wrestler's skill, several competitors weren't even in the ring until about 45 seconds! (although maybe less time for these wrestlers was a good thing). Plus does anyone get the concept of throwing over the rope and not doing your power slam in the middle of the ring (Luger, Bulldog)? Or not eliminating yourself when eliminating another (Eli Blu)?
Thankfully, this Royal Rumble complimented us with some of the biggest names the business has ever had to offer. Wrestlers like Jacob and Eli Blu (Skull and 8-Ball), Sione, Kwang (Savio Vega), Jimmy Del Ray, Tom Pritchard, Timothy Well, Steven Dunn, Mantaur, Adam Bomb, and Aldo Montoya (Justin Credible) graced our televisions for a few minutes too long. These wrestlers are so bad, they're not even legendarily hilarious. But In case you needed those legendary hilarious characters, we have Doink, Rick Martel, Henry O'Godwinn (who unbelievably finished 5th!), the Gunn Brothers, unsightly old KKK member Dick Murdoch, and those great Hall of Famers, the Bushwackers. Throw in Mo being eliminated in 3 second and I just named you 2/3 of the competitors. So yea that lineup is indicative of just how poor the in ring quality was.
Can you guess who? That's a mystery.
But let's look at the "contenders" shall we? Owen Hart and Bob Backlund, two of the best technicians at the time? In the ring a combined 19 seconds after being beat up by Bret Hart outside. Duke the Dumpster Droese? Yea he was a fan favorite for some reason and left mediocrely. King Kong Bundy? Eliminated in an awful manner of just lying on the apron and being pushed out by Mabel, who soon came tumbling after. Fatu? Yea he's fun at times, but this is long before he was shoving his stinky butt in wrestlers faces. Instead he and Murdoch competed in a head banging competition, because safety is the number one priority.
So in the end you have the Final 4 of Michaels, Bulldog, Lex Luger, and Crush, a man who for some reason was pushed to the moon in Vince's eyes. The ending was tolerable due to Michael's infamous hanging on the ropes with only 1 foot touching the ground, but they were better off making this a 40 minute clinic between Michaels and Bulldog than have anyone else even step foot in the ring. In the end I guess Michaels had to win, but we all lost for watching the rest of it.
This match also featured the "Man of 1000 Voices" Vince Mcmahon, doing his wonderful commentary work as always. Lines like "One Foot, One Foot, One Foot...(3 minutes later) One Foot" and "What a maneuver" dragged the quality down so many pegs. Even Jerry Lawler's poor taste jokes could not save us (You will see much of Vince's announcing in the early going).
So why is this match the worst of all time? This is a WWE that had the Rumble for 7 years and should know better than to put on a cluster cuss of this poor magnitude. They would've been served better to throw Bret Hart, Undertaker, and heck even Lawler into this match, but with a roster so thin, action so weak, and story advancement at a standstill, not even Pamela Anderson's bosom could save us.
Well that was certainly rough to watch for me, I encourage you to watch this Duke the Dumpster Fire here or on the network if you're a wrestling historian, or a sadomasochist. Unfortunately we don't get much better, as tomorrow we look at number 27, where the most athletic move was done by a King of the Ring winner. That's not a positive spin on this tale. Tune in tomorrow.
