Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble PPV in history

26. WWE Royal Rumble 1996

Match card & results

• Ahmed Johnson def. Jeff Jarrett
• WWE Tag Team Championship Match: The Smoking Gunns (c) def. The Bodydonnas
• WWE Intercontinental Championship Match: Goldust def. Razor Ramon (c)
• Shawn Michaels wins 30-Man Royal Rumble Match
• WWE Championship Match: The Undertaker def. Bret Hart (c) by disqualification

You might think that Shawn Michaels winning his second consecutive Royal Rumble match and a WWE Championship Match featuring Bret Hart and The Undertaker would make for a decent pay-per-view but you’d be wrong. It’s not that the ‘Taker-Hart match was completely awful but it was very long and given the competitors involved, this should have been so much better. In addition, if creative was going to go with a screwy finish, don’t put it on last. I don’t like pay-per-views ending in a DQ and that’s what happened here.

As for Shawn Michaels and his Rumble win that would set up his Iron Man Match at WrestleMania XII, it was merely okay. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the match was seeing all of the “New Generation” gimmicks on guys that would later be a big part of WWE. Triple H had the Hunter Hearst Helmsley thing going and had an impressive 48-minute run. Sean Waltman still had The 1-2-3 Kid gimmick. Isaac Yankem, D.D.S., who would later become Kane, was in full effect here and “The Ringmaster” Steve Austin made his WWE pay-per-view debut here. Gotta love the mid-’90s.

The surprise of the night turned out to be The Smoking Gunns versus The Bodydonnas, which was the match of the show as the two teams put on a great tag bout. Goldust versus Razor Ramon should have been better and just dragged a bit while Ahmed Johnson and Jeff Jarrett was boring until the end when Jarrett blistered Ahmed’s head with a nasty guitar shot.