Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble match in history

15. Royal Rumble 2005 – Batista

While there were some entertaining moments and eliminations in the middle of this match, the 2005 Royal Rumble will always be remembered for its blistering (literally) start and wild finish.

To start things off, the two heroes of the previous year’s WrestleMania XX, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero, were the first two entrants so we were guaranteed a solid opening. They were soon joined by Tough Enough winner Daniel Puder, who came out and cut a promo saying he would win the Rumble and then proceeded to be broken in something fierce. Benoit and Guerrero took turns chopping on him in the corner (and these were vicious) before running a suplex train on him. And just when you thought things couldn’t get worse for the rookie, Hardcore Holly, who’s not known to be easy on youngsters, hit the ring to get his licks in and certainly made the most of his time in there with Puder. Just go back and watch how devastating this three-man beatdown is. Epic stuff.

But the night belong to two of WWE’s rising stars, John Cena and Batista. Cena entered at number 25, Batista at 28 and between the two of them they eliminated a total of seven competitors in a short amount of time before battling it out one-on-one to decide who would go on to WrestleMania. However, as it had happened in 1994 with Bret Hart and Lex Luger, they eliminated each other simultaneously.

But if that weren’t interesting enough, things got even stranger as the referees argued over a winner. Vince McMahon power-walked his way down to the ring to restart the match but as he got in, he actually tore both quads in the process. Batista wound up getting the win following the restart but both men would actually go on to WrestleMania 21 and win world titles. Crazy night.