Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble PPV in history

9. WWE Royal Rumble 2007

Match card & results

• The Hardy Boyz def. MNM
• ECW Championship Match: Bobby Lashley (c) def. Test
• World Heavyweight Championship Match: Batista (c) def. Mr. Kennedy
• Last Man Standing Match for the WWE Championship: John Cena (c) def. Umaga
• The Undertaker wins 30-Man Royal Rumble Match

There’s only one match from the 2007 Royal Rumble that I didn’t enjoy and that was the ECW Championship Match with Bobby Lashley and Test, which is one I really wanted to as I liked both guys. But this was just not good and the finish was terrible as Test just walked away and got counted out. This was a real downer after The Hardy Boyz and MNM got the crowd going with a good match to start the show.

The World Heavyweight Championship Match between Batista and Mr. Kennedy was a nice surprise. I was never sold on Kennedy being a big player but he held his own in there in big spot. He had a nice run leading up to this match and brought some good psychology to the bout. However, it wasn’t nearly as good as the Last Man Standing Match for the WWE Championship with John Cena and Umaga, which is an extremely underrated match in Cena’s career. It got off to a bit of a slow start but the last half was full of great drama and physicality. Both men gave a wonderful effort and even though Umaga suffered a bit by taking this loss, he looked great. He gave Cena all he could handle and it’s sometimes easy to forge what a great athlete he was.

However, the star of this night was The Undertaker. I strongly believe that one of the best stretches of his career was from 2007 to 2010 and this was the start of that. It’s crazy to think that in all the time he’d been in WWE, The Undertaker had never won a Royal Rumble. But that changed on a crazy night that started out very differently and ended with one of the greatest finishes in the history of the event.

ECW took center stage for a while as Tommy Dreamer, Sabu and The Sandman were all featured in the first half of the match and weapons got involved, which is a pretty rare occurrence in the Rumble. But it made for some nice entertainment. The second half of the match, however, was just that much better and the final four was phenomenal as Randy Orton and Edge, who were doing the Rated-RKO thing at the time, were in there with The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels. That’s a crazy fun lineup. Orton and Edge knocked HBK from the ring and went after ‘Taker but Michaels got back in and eliminated both men to set up a confrontation we hadn’t seen in years.

Since Shawn came back to WWE in 2002, he never really crossed paths with The Undertaker, who had been one of his biggest rivals in the mid-90s. That’s what made this ending so special. For more than 10 minutes, they reminded us how good they were in the ring together and went back and forth and back and forth again before The Undertaker finally triumphed. It was a great ending to a great Royal Rumble. ‘Taker and Shawn would be the first two entries in the Rumble the following year and would later have two of the best WrestleMania matches in history.