Royal Rumble (WWF, 1-19-1992)

WWF Royal Rumble, Albany, NY

Request via Ko-fi. There’s a chance I’ve watched this match more than any other match in history. When people say, “What wrestling match would you show friends who don’t like wrestling to get them into wrestling,” my answer is, obviously, “I would not show them wrestling. They have lived however long having made the correct choice to not let this ridiculous shit into their veins.” But sometimes people will suggest a long, epic match, one that we dorks largely agree is great, and people will say, “Ugh! Look at me, pay attention to me, I am extremely smart and I would not show them that match. All wrestling matches should be 18 seconds long and not have anything good, because when you think about it, that is good!” But this is a 62-minute match I might show someone if I were forced to try to get them to like wrestling, because in this one hour, you see 30 various personalities and one of the all-time great performances.

Battle royals and Royal Rumbles are hard to talk about in paragraphs, so I will be doing bullet points for this and just stream of consciousness crap.

This match is for the vacant WWF championship, the first time it’s ever been up for grabs in the Royal Rumble. This came about because of the Hulk Hogan vs Undertaker controversy after Survivor Series ’91 and This Tuesday in Texas, resulting in the vacated belt.

• Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are on commentary. It is the best call of a wrestling match there has ever been.
• The British Bulldog is the No. 1 entrant. He won a big battle royal at Royal Albert Hall a couple months prior to this, which Heenan brings up. That was a 20-man battle royal normal-style. Ted DiBiase is No. 2. We are starting with a couple of genuine stars. At this point, DiBiase is with Sensational Sherri, past his peak years, having never quite reached the very top of the mountain, but he still has the credibility to matter here, same as Davey Boy.
• Monsoon notes DiBiase was in the Rumble for over 30 minutes in ’91, and that Rick Martel holds the record with a run of 53 minutes, 14 seconds.
• DiBiase giving Bulldog the business, but makes an arrogant mistake and gets clotheslined over and out before we can even get to the third entrant. This fires up an already hot crowd.
• The big countdown, a nervous Heenan counting along — and then it is his man, Ric Flair. “No! Damn it!” “Oh, you can kiss it goodbye, Brain!” Monsoon taunts him. “Never before in the history of the Royal Rumble has anyone who has drawn numbers one through five been there at the end.” He then admonishes Heenan to “watch his language” and “sit down before you have a heart attack.”
• Monsoon continues to needle Heenan. And it works. Heenan advises Flair to take his time, pace himself, but Bulldog gets Flair up in a military press slam and drops him down to the canvas. I didn’t get to watch this live in ’92 because I wasn’t able to order a PPV until Starrcade ’96 once I’d started getting Christmas money and worked up the courage to ask if I could spend that money to watch more fucking wrestling, but I knew about the results as soon as I possibly could, of course, and we also visited my Aunt Sharon (she was actually a much older cousin, but I called her Aunt Sharon), who HAD, apparently, ordered the pay-per-view, and she was absolutely livid that Davey Boy had not just thrown Flair out. This was her main observation on the match.
• Bulldog is absolutely juiced to the gills here. Got that body type where his shit is bursting out of his skin because he’s really not big enough for this. Eddie and Benoit and Rey Mysterio would have this in the early 2000s in WWE.
• Flair does survive long enough for Jerry Sags to enter at No. 4, and he comes to Flair’s aid, attacking Bulldog from behind. Heenan advises Flair to “let Sags do all the work” and get a rest. But Bulldog hits them with a double clothesline, then dumps Sags, and it’s back to one-on-one. “This isn’t fair to Flair!” number one comes in at this point. And number two.
• No. 5 is Haku, a former Bobby Heenan client when Heenan was an active manager. Haku gets Smith from behind. They had a shockingly great match sometime in ’91 that made a Coliseum Video comp, a match where, for some reason, they both cared a great deal about putting in effort.
• Monsoon notes that Flair isn’t backing off and resting, he’s staying on the attack, doubling on Bulldog with Haku. But Haku turns on Flair, which gets a little rise from the crowd. Flair tries to fight back, but it is Haku. “This isn’t fair to Flair!”
• Haku piledrives Smith, and Flair just refuses to take a breather, so it’s three guys just fighting each other in bits, one gets knocked away, the other two go at it, etc. Right before the sixth man can enter, Davey Boy dumps Haku for his third elimination of the match.
• No. 6 is Shawn Michaels, pretty recently turned heel and off on his own. He is not what he would become, obviously, but in some ways I think this was the best period of Michaels’ career. He was mostly just hungry to prove himself, that he could be a top player. 10 months later, in a world not really imaginable just at this point in time, he and Bret Hart would be the company’s top two champions in the Survivor Series main event.
• Michaels gets the press slam treatment, and again Davey Boy doesn’t toss him. Aunt Sharon noted that one, as well. Michaels, reeling, gets clotheslined over the top, but hangs on. Not as dramatic as that same spot with Davey Boy would be in ’95, but a good moment, and Shawn springs back in with a superkick, not yet his finisher.
• Shawn is incredibly eager out here, quite possibly trying to impress Flair up close, and I don’t say that as smug speculation or whatever.
• “El Matador” Tito Santana is No. 7. A veteran presence, no longer a serious contender, but still credible, a former Intercontinental champion with, most likely, one last shot at top glory. First time we’ve had four guys in the match at once.
• “Shawn Michaels is making guacamole out of El Matador!” “He is not!”
• Flair keeps fighting people when he could try to find room for a breather. And he uppercuts Smith in the balls and groin. Santana hits his flying burrito on Flair.
• No. 8 is The Barbarian, another former Heenan client. He’s in his furry underpants phase. Monsoon: “Barbarian doesn’t like Flair.” Heenan: “Barbarian doesn’t like anybody! When I managed him he barely liked me!”
• Flair finally does take a small breather. At the same time, Shawn Michaels perches himself on the second rope waiting for Tito to turn around for him, which he never does, so Michaels has to just hop down.
• No. 9 is The Texas Tornado, an old Ric Flair rival from the NWA, very famously beating Flair for the NWA belt in 1984. Flair has eyes on Kerry, Kerry has eyes on Flair. They are playing for the people who know, and Kerry takes it to Flair immediately, giving us a Flair flop on a right hand. Michaels gets over there with Von Erich, who in this setting can look sharp and like he’s still in his best days. He was not.
• No. 10 is Repo Man, who does his whole nervous skulking bit through the curtain and out to the ring. He takes his time getting in, looking for the opportune moment, but doesn’t take forever. Just long enough you notice what he’s doing.
• Flair just lacing everyone with chops in this match, and Kerry gets to eat a few while Barbarian holds him.
• No. 11 is Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, a known Rumble iron man guy, now a babyface, former IC and tag team champion in the WWF, and also an old NWA rival (and partner!) of Flair’s. If Greg had never left for the WWF, he might have made a fine Horseman, though the most ideal spot for him would have been the original group if Ole did not exist, but Ole definitely existed.
• No. 12 is Nikolai Volkoff, the Lithuanian babyface nobody likes, and future Bin Laden associate.
• Valentine gets the figure four on Flair briefly, Barbarian breaking it up. Volkoff predictably is dumped in short order.
• Big Boss Man is No. 13, getting a nice reaction and just unloading his right hands on everyone in sight.
• Valentine is eliminated. He didn’t even get a chance to warm up. This was the first time Valentine and Flair had been in the ring together for a match since 1983, when Flair and Roddy Piper were touring around facing Valentine and various partners (Dory Funk Jr, Dick Slater, One Man Gang, Jake Roberts). It was also the last time Flair and Valentine would share a ring for a match. They seemed to enjoy the moments.
• Repo Man gets hurled by Boss Man, lands on his feet, and does his skulking gimmick on the way out.
• Davey Boy gets dumped by Flair, so he’s finally out. Flair eliminates Von Erich a moment later. This was also the last time Flair and Kerry would be in a match together. Their last big matches came in ’85, but they did do some WWF matches in Oct. ’91 in Europe, too.
• Santana and Michaels eliminate one another, and we’ve cleared the ring to Boss Man, Barbarian, and Flair.
• No. 14 is in, though, and it’s Hercules. Heenan wonders what Hercules’ problem is as he goes after Flair. “Maybe he remembers how you treated him,” Monsoon speculates. Flair and Barbarian team up, but Ric is trying to sucker him. It backfires. Barbarian has Flair going, but Hercules comes over and dumps Barbarian. Immediately after that, Boss Man clotheslines Herc overand out, and appears to go himself, but when Flair turns around, Boss Man is still in there, and he’s ready to take it to Flair, one-on-one. But Boss Man makes a damnfool aggressive mistake, and basically eliminates himself.
• Ric Flair is all alone.
• No. 15 is Rowdy Roddy Piper, who earlier in the night beat The Mountie for the Intercontinental title. Flair’s reaction to Piper, another old Flair rival/partner. This is perfectly timed to get the crowd rocking again, and they are. They also take the chance to switch things up and fight on the floor a bit. Flair tries an inverted atomic drop, but Piper blocks and pokes Flair in the eyes. Everyone loves it. Airplane spin. Everyone loves it.
• Sleephold from Piper! He won the IC belt with that earlier.
• No. 16 is Jake “The Snake” Roberts, in the most truly evil phase of his career. He also has history with Flair, including a handful of shots at the NWA title. Jake slides in with Piper holding the sleephold and takes a seat in the corner, telling Roddy to go ahead and do his business. Since Piper is a fucking idiot, he takes that to mean, “I will also turn my back on this man now.” That goes how you expect.
• Heenan goes back-and-forth thanking and cursing Roberts and Piper, who, for their own benefit, interrupt Flair being beaten up. For the record, this is also the last time Flair and Jake would be in the ring together for a match.
• No. 17 is Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who had a few shots at Flair’s NWA belt in Mid-South back in ’85. Not a classic Flair rival, but like Roberts, there is some history there. Duggan and Piper are wearing basically the same gear, foreshadowing their great bond on Legends House some 20-plus years later.

• No. 18 is Irwin R. Schyster. Fuck this shit I’m done. He got some NWA title shots at Flair between 1983 and 1987, too. Monsoon is thrilled that somebody finally grabbed IRS’ tie and punched him. It was Duggan.
• No. 19 is Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who had a pretty meaty U.S. title feud with Flair in 1979-80, which at this point is ancient history but interesting to me, anyway. This is also the last time Flair and Snuka share a ring for a match.
• Even Monsoon at this point is in appreciation of what Flair has done out here, but he also notes that some “heavy hitters” have yet to enter — Hulk Hogan, Undertaker, Sgt. Slaughter, Randy Savage, Sid Justice.
• No. 20 is Undertaker, who kinda got the shaft on the draw here, as he and Hogan were both guaranteed numbers between 20 and 30. Undertaker slowly enters the ring and people step away from him, so he just calmly walks over and tosses Snuka.
• Undertaker grabs the choke on Flair, who helped him win the WWF belt at Survivor Series, but Undertaker doesn’t care. Duggan, for some reason, attacks Taker from behind, and Undertaker does the zombie special, a mule kick to the nutsack. IRS helps Undertaker with Duggan, only for Undertaker to choke IRS. Flair attacks Taker from behind. Duggan tries to help Flair. IRS, Duggan, and Flair working together. Such is 1992 Undertaker.
• No. 21 is Macho Man Randy Savage, and Jake Roberts immediately dips the fuck out of the ring to hide. Savage has come in like a bat out of hell to get to Jake, but Undertaker gets him from behind, and Jake comes in to attack.
• Space gets created and Savage high knees Jake, who is eliminated. Bonehead Randy Savage then jumps over the top to the floor, eliminating himself to chase after Roberts, which Heenan rightly calls out and Monsoon goes with, because again, Heenan is right. This leaves production scrambling, because Savage is not supposed to be out there. Quickly enough, I suppose, Vince or whomever feeds Heenan the information that you must be propelled over the top to the floor by someone else. This doesn’t really track with how Boss Man got eliminated earlier, but it’s a desperate moment, because Randy is needed for later in the match.
• Once that’s settled, Undertaker does his face clawing bit on Savage until Duggan helps. Duggan’s the only guy in here really purposely going right at Undertaker. Duggan rules.
• Pairings at the moment are Undertaker-Duggan, Flair-Savage, and Piper-IRS. Probably about right.
• Flair goes over and uppercuts Taker in the balls. “Flair just tried to lift the Undertaker!” Heenan shouts.
• No. 22 is The Berzerker, who later in the year attempt to kill Undertaker with a sword on Superstars.
• Flair gets stuck on the apron, but he hangs on and Savage stupidly suplexes him back in. Savage is a real moron, let’s be real.
• Good bit where Undertaker chokes a downed Flair, Piper comes over to help choke Flair, Undertaker uses his other hand to choke Piper, and Piper uses his other hand to choke Undertaker.
• No. 23 is Virgil. He goes after IRS and immediately gets beaten up and Undertaker choked.
• Something I actually never really noticed until this viewing, amazingly, or at least didn’t seem familiar: Piper and Virgil, teacher and pupil from ’91, duke it out. Piper wins.
• No. 24 is Col. Mustafa, and he and Gen. Adnan doing a lazy version of the Bushwhacker march. Zero note that Mustafa is the former Iron Sheik and a former WWF champion.
• Gorilla twice calls Ric Flair “Rick Martel.”
• Undertaker is doing a lot of low key comedy stuff in this match. He probably didn’t realize it was funny.
• No. 25 is Rick Martel, the current record holder for longevity in a Rumble, which he will not have to do tonight. Monsoon corrects the record number: 52 minutes, 34 seconds. He and Flair wrestled a bit in Japan and Canada. Flair was very complimentary of Martel’s skills in his book, calling him “as smooth as Steamboat when he wanted to be.”
• No. 26 is The Hulk Hulkster Hulkamania, Hulk Hogan himself. Hogan obviously gets a big reaction, though it’s not quite the reactions he was getting even a year prior to this. IRS, Berzerker, and Undertaker team up on Hogan, as Undertaker has suddenly gone from a friendless, emotionless machine to a standard big dumbass scared of Hogan, and anyway, Hogan clotheslines Undertaker out. Berzerker backdropped out.
• Hogan chokes Martel with his torn t-shirt. His own, that is. Martel doesn’t wear t-shirts. Duggan and Virgil eliminate one another.
• The best moment of the match, completely ruined by fucking IRS, is Roddy Piper stalking Hulk Hogan with a burning, old hatred in his eyes. It was going to be legitimately great. Rotunda just fucking stepped on it like an absolute moron.
• No. 27 is Skinner. Heenan suggests he spit in peoples mouths. Pretty kinky. MALENKINKY.
• Flair and Martel teaming up on Piper, trying to get him out. Roddy hanging on. Skinner working over Hogan. Savage and IRS taking a little nap in the corner as both would like to do.
• Flair officially passes the record just as Hogan hits him with a clothesline, basically.
• No. 28 is Sgt. Slaughter, former WWF champion. His reaction is kinda mixed even tough he’s a babyface now; he never really recovered from the Iraq deal. Flair and Slaughter had some history, some world title matches between 1981 and 1986, and would have a match on Superstars later in ’92, their last-ever singles match.
• Martel gets rid of Skinner. The Alligator Man will not be the WWF champion.
• FINALLY, Hogan and Piper go at one another a little bit, with Martel coming in and not just letting them go at it. And Monsoon and Heenan really don’t mention much about it, honestly. A missed opportunity all in all.
• No. 29 is Sid Justice. Heenan forgot about him and he’s in distress. Sid is a babyface, hot in the WWF. He takes it to IRS quickly, then Martel.
• Hogan and Flair circling, IRS interrupts and helps Flair. Monsoon is amazed that Flair is still fighting like this. Heenan says, “What’d I say? The man’s a champion.” Monsoon relents: “He’s proven that to me, Brain.”
• Sid gets hold of Flair, his former terrible Horsemen partner. Sid does a kip-up. Sid is a super athlete.
• No. 30 is Warlord. The luck of the draw! Surely he must be the favorite now. (Nobody entering at No. 30 would win the Rumble until Undertaker in 2007, and it has been twice since, John Cena in 2008 and Triple H in 2016.)
• Hogan and Flair fight on the floor a bit, with Hogan suplexing Flair on the gym mat. Slaughter gets eliminated by a Sid Justice Irish whip to the corner. Back inside, Hogan hits Flair with the big foot. Piper helps IRS for no reason. Martel and IRS double team Piper and Sid, the guy Roddy attacked, wanders away. Piper winds up eliminating IRS via tie pull.
• Sid and Hogan team up to get rid of Warlord. Great run, Warlord. Sid sneaks up behind Piper and Martel and pushes them both out.
• We’ve got our Final Four: Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, and Sid Justice. Two former WWF champions, a former many-time NWA champion, and Sid, who was constantly always going to be the next big thing for a while there and never quite was, but was always Sid.
• Savage gets knocked out with Flair running in to knee Sid from behind, while Sid grapples Savage in the corner.
• Hogan takes it to Flair, who gets stuck going for the flip in the corner, but gets knocked to the apron anyway. Sid observes the situation, walks up calmly from behind, and tosses Hogan out. Hogan immediately begins throwing a child’s temper tantrum, begging the crowd to cry for him, but many immediately cheered Justice throwing him over, guaranteeing we get a first-time WWF champion from this match.
• Sid makes fun of Hogan who keeps crying. Hogan grabs Sid’s wrist from outside and pulls, Flair comes in, tosses Sid over, and Flair is the new WWF champion. Hogan continues to bitch and whine while Ric Flair is crowned the man, then Hogan comes in to chase Flair out, not letting Ric have much of a moment in the ring, doesn’t get presented the belt or anything.
• Heenan leaves commentary to go join Flair and Mr. Perfect in the aisle. Instead of anything on that, we go back to the ring where Hogan and Sid lightly shove and yell at one another. Officials run in. Hogan calling for fan support is largely booed. Sid yells at Hulk that he’s a chicken and gets cheered for calling Hogan on.
• After all that, Flair is presented the belt backstage and cuts one of his great promos.

It’s one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time. It is the greatest Royal Rumble of all time. It is filled with bona fide legends — seven WON Hall of Famers, 17 WWE Hall of Famers (not counting Undertaker, who obviously will be, and they could toss in Rick Martel, IRS, Haku, Demolition (so Repo Man), or the Nasty Boys (so Sags) any given year, too) — and a cast of recognizable, legitimate characters. Now, truthfully, about four or five guys had any legitimate chance to win on kayfabe paper, the final four we got and I suppose Undertaker, having recently flired with the belt and all. The parts with Flair and his old rivals are rewards for longtime, all-wrestling-and-not-just-WWF fans, and they’re done nicely. They’re there if you get it, and if you don’t it’s just action.

Flair gives one of the all-time great performances here. Not only is he a dastardly survivor who will win at any cost, but he just gets to be good out there, too, to fully show his worth after the WWF spent a few months kinda fumbling what to do with him, because even back then, and even when it was Ric Flair, Lil’ Vinny was terribly protective of his company’s brand name; having someone come right in to be better than HIS guys was no longer on the table. He used up all his patience for that when he was raiding everyone after taking over in the mid-80s.

You just can’t beat this match. The greatest example of the greatest big event gimmick match ever devised (it’s this or WarGames).

Rating: 5/5