Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble PPV in history

29. WWE Royal Rumble 1993

Match card & results

• The Steiner Brothers def. The Beverly Brothers
• WWE Intercontinental Championship Match: Shawn Michaels (c) def. Marty Jannetty
• Bam Bam Bigelow def. Big Boss Man
• WWE Championship Match: Bret Hart (c) def. Razor Ramon
• Yokozuna wins 30-Man Royal Rumble Match

This was the first year that the winner of the Royal Rumble match would get a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania but that didn’t save the Rumble match from being pretty bad. There was a real lack of main-event talent in the match and when you’re relying on the debut of Giant Gonzalez to be a high point of the night (he wasn’t even in the match), that’s going to be a problem.

Ric Flair, who always seems to have a problem picking a good Royal Rumble number, was out first and given what he had done the year before, it wasn’t realistic that he would repeat. He was on his way out of the company at this point anyway, even though most people didn’t know that without the internet around. Bob Backlund breaking Flair’s longevity record was the only fun story of the match and the ending was very strange. Randy Savage hit the big elbow on Yokozuna but then tried to cover him out of habit. Oops. Yokozuna then tossed him and won the match. Big yawn.

The undercard had a couple of decent matches with the Intercontinental Championship Match between Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty being the match of the night. The WWE Championship Match with Bret Hart and Razor Ramon was a solid effort as well but the other two matches were very boring. But hey, at least we got to see Lex Luger posing in front of a bunch of mirrors.