On January 31, WWE ran its first Royal Rumble event to emanate from The ThunderDome, without a live crowd in attendance. As is the case with so many years, between the Rumbles and other marquee matches, it was an exciting event with its share of surprises, while also establishing the Road to WrestleMania when it comes to who will wrestle for a top title.
Related: Every Royal Rumble Winner From The '90s, Ranked
With so many roster members involved—particularly in the two Royal Rumble matches themselves—the event featured so many moving parts. As such, it invited all manner of hidden highlights, pieces of trivia, and other subtleties for hardcore fans to sink their teeth into.
10 McIntyre Joins An Elite Group
Not very many men can claim to have picked up victories of Brock Lesnar in WWE. Not very many can say they beat Goldberg either. Leading up to the Royal Rumble, the list of wrestlers who had defeated both was limited to just two people: Triple H and The Undertaker.
Related: 5 Things Roman Reigns Does Better Than Drew McIntyre (& 5 Drew McIntyre Is Best At)
And so, Drew McIntyre has become just the third member of this elite club, and there’s reason to suspect that no one else will join him, given it’s no foregone conclusion we’ll see Lesnar or Goldberg in a WWE ring again, let alone absorbing another loss if they do.
9 Edge Wins His Second Rumble From The Opposite Extreme Of Entry
Edge won the 2021 men’s Royal Rumble and in so doing joined the elite club of Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, Triple H, John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista, who have won the match more than once. Edge is second only to Triple H for the longest gap in between winning (11 years vs 14), but there was nonetheless a unique statistical anomaly to The Rated R Superstar’s second victory.
When Edge first won in 2010, he entered at number 29 and had to last less than eight minutes to win it all. By contrast, in 2021, at the age of 47, he went wire-to-wire, lasting 58 minutes to win the Rumble.
8 The First Time A Title Has Changed Hands In The Women’s Royal Rumble
The Royal Rumble has twice seen a new WWE Champion crowned. In 1992, Ric Flair won the vacant title and in 2016 Roman Reigns was forced to defend the championship in the Rumble match, only to ultimately fall to Triple H.
The women’s Royal Rumble has never had a championship officially on the line, but a title nonetheless came into the mix when R-Truth entered the ring midway through the match. He fended off a number of prospective challengers to his polarizing 24/7 Championship, only for Rumble participant Alicia Fox to steal the pin on him. This was the first time a title changed hands in the women’s Rumble (and the first of three times the title changed hands that night).
7 Owens Vs. Reigns Was A Rematch From Four Years Earlier
It’s no secret that Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship was a rematch from the TLC PPV. However, these two clashing for this very title also happened four years earlier—and even at the Royal Rumble PPV.
The circumstances around these two performers’ characters couldn’t have been more different at that point as Reigns was a face challenging reigning champion Owens, the heel at the time. Owens retained in 2017, which set him up to drop the title to Goldberg at Fastlane in March of that year. There’s little question that this 2020 outing was the more memorable battle, with Reigns arguably the best version of himself as a heel champion, retaining in brutal fashion.
6 Goldberg Has Still Never Won At The Rumble
Goldberg is one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling history. Though he made his name in WCW, there’s no question he’s furthered his legacy—at least in terms of kayfabe accomplishments—in WWE. That includes winning three out of four of his world titles in WWE and winning big matches at “big four” PPV events like WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series.
Goldberg has never won a match at the Royal Rumble PPV, though, and that didn’t change in 2021. To be fair, Goldberg has only wrestled at the Rumble event twice before—in 2004 and 2017—and on both of those occasions, he was in the Rumble match itself. Still, now that he has had a one-on-one match at the show, his record hasn’t improved, now sitting at 0-3.
5 Bayley’s Royal Rumble Luck Runs Out
Bayley was the number one entrant in the women’s Royal Rumble match. On a number of levels, she made sense as a performer to start this match, between being a big enough name to capture the imagination of fans and a gifted performer who conceivably could have had a long run.
Bayley entering at number one marked a stark change in fortune for her, though. Bayley had participated in the Rumble twice before and had the benefit of answering at number 29 in 2018, and then number 27 in 2019. The Golden Role Model was in for a longer, tougher road in 2021.
4 Braun Strowman Remembers 2019
Late in the men’s Royal Rumble, Edge and Christian stood together as a team, despite the "every man for himself" match format. Opposite of them, Seth Rollins tried to rally his contemporary, Braun Strowman, to team up with him against the stars from yesteryear. Strowman thought better of teaming up, though.
In addition to Rollins not being the most trustworthy character in general, The Monster Among Men may have remembered the 2019 Royal Rumble. That event saw Rollins win it all, last eliminating Strowman. It only made sense that Strowman wouldn’t invite the same circumstances to repeat themselves.
3 Natalya Stays True To Herself
Time and again, WWE has revisited the story of wrestlers making temporary alliances—often with Superstars they have a history with—amidst Royal Rumble matches. One of the more noteworthy examples in the 2021 women’s Rumble saw Natalya embrace her former tag team partner Lana, only to turn on and eliminate her moments later.
RELATED: 10 Things About The Royal Rumble That Makes No Sense
Natalya herself has used this tactic before, perhaps more memorably in the original women’s Rumble when she and her tag team partner from much longer ago, Beth Phoenix, hugged it out upon reuniting in the ring. Natalya eliminated Phoenix then as well, marking a clear pattern that any former ally of The Queen of Harts ought to be mindful of in Rumbles to come.
2 Owens & Reigns Pay Tribute To Mankind & The Rock
22-years-ago, The Rock and Mankind feuded across a variety of matches, including a brutal I Quit Match at the 1999 Royal Rumble and then an Empty Arena Match during halftime of the Super Bowl. There are similarities between this rivalry and the modern-day one between Rock’s cousin Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens as a hardworking big man willing to take big bumps a la Mick Foley.
Most matches are contested “empty arena” style in the age of the pandemic, at least in terms of not having a live audience in attendance. Beyond that necessary similarity, Owens and Reigns evoked memories of Rock-Mankind for their fight sprawling the arena, and most directly for their use of a forklift. The forklift was the key to Mankind keeping The Brahma Bull down in their clash on Halftime Heat. Meanwhile, Owens operated a forklift, too, but chose to leap off of it with a Senton onto Reigns for a near fall.
AEW fans may also draw similarities between last Sunday's match and the interactions between Matt Hardy and Sammy Guevara, especially with that golf cart spot. Hardy and Guevara also made use of a forklift at AEW All Out 2020, but thankfully neither Owens nor Reigns received as nasty a bump as Hardy. It's also worth noting that unlike Guevara, Owens got hit with the golf cart so hard he went through the plexiglass, whereas both Guevara and Chris Jericho got clipped by the cart.
1 The First Time Since 2013 There Weren’t At Least Two Shield Members In The Rumble
In late 2012, The Shield debuted on the main roster, and the 2013 Royal Rumble PPV saw them back CM Punk against The Rock. From then on, The Shield faction, or alumni thereof, has had representation in every single Royal Rumble match, and from 2014 to 2020, each men’s Rumble included at least two of the Shield guys.
The tradition broke in 2021. Roman Reigns worked a Last Man Standing Match with Kevin Owens in which he retained the Universal Championship. As such, this became only the second time since his debut when Reigns wasn’t in the Rumble (the other time, he was still out of action in 2019). Dean Ambrose, of course, has moved on to play Jon Moxley in AEW, leaving only Seth Rollins to participate in the Rumble.
NEXT: 5 Ways The Shield Was WWE's Best Stable Of The 2010s (& 5 Ways It Was The Wyatt Family)
