Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble PPV in history

14. WWE Royal Rumble 1991

Match card & results

• The Rockers def. The Orient Express
• Big Boss Man def. The Barbarian
• WWE Championship Match: Sgt. Slaughter def. The Ultimate Warrior (c)
• The Mountie def. Koko B. Ware
• Ted Dibiase and Virgil def. Dusty Rhodes and Dustin Rhodes
• Hulk Hogan wins 30-Man Royal Rumble Match

On the surface, this card may not look like much, even with the Hogan Rumble win, but this was a very entertaining pay-per-view with one of the best tag matches in the pay-per-view’s history and a shocking title switch that added a little bit of controversy to WWE.

The underrated tag match I’m speaking of is the match that opened the night as The Rockers took on The Orient Express, who have never quite gotten the credit they deserve for their time in WWE. This was the 2.0 version with Paul Diamond back in the mix and there’s a lot of AWA history in this match. This was a whirlwind from the start and the frenetic pace kept up throughout the match and this is just so much fun and what tag team wrestling should look like. I highly recommend going back and checking this one out. Great stuff.

As for the rest of the non-Rumble and no-title matches, Big Boss Man and Barbarian was a little better than it probably should have been and The Mountie vs. Koko B. Ware was just fine as well. Dusty and Dustin Rhodes, who later become Goldust, were pretty much on their way out of WWE at this time and had been jobbing left and right but it was pretty cool to see them in a match together on pay-per-view as they took on The Million Dollar Man and Virgil. The odd thing here is that Virgil was actually named for Dusty Rhodes (Virgil was his real name) when WWE was making fun of him before bringing him in. Dibiase and Virgil picked up the win in a decent match that the crowd was really into and Virgil got the biggest pop of his life when he decked Dibiase with the Million Dollar Belt.

As for the WWE Championship bout between Sgt. Slaughter and The Ultimate Warrior, it really wasn’t that great at all. It actually wasn’t even good. However, it was the story that mattered here. The Ultimate Warrior wasn’t getting the job done as champion and they were looking for a way to transition back to Hulk Hogan. So they had Randy Savage come in and blast Warrior with his scepter (he was running the Macho King thing at the time) and it looked really good. Sgt. Slaughter, who had turned into an Iraqi sympathizer as the Gulf War dominated the headlines, took advantage and won his only WWE Championship.

While the Rumble winner wouldn’t be guaranteed a shot a the title until two years later, the winner of the 1991 Royal Rumble did get a match for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania VII. That, of course, was Hulk Hogan. There was nobody else that was ever going to win this match. With the war going on and Hogan being the ultimate face that was going to wave the American flag around at the end of the night, this really was the way to go. The match itself is entertaining enough and has some good spots and performances in there. Fun night overall.