This is an exciting time in professional wrestling. The Royal Rumble pay-per-view is only a month away (January 28th), and the results from the Royal Rumble will give a great deal of insight into some of the matches the WWE will be putting together for Wrestlemania – the Super Bowl of professional wrestling shows. The addition of a women’s Royal Rumble match is a long overdue twist that should make this year’s edition even more entertaining.
If you’re not familiar with the Royal Rumble match itself, I will try to explain here. The Royal Rumble match is always the final match of the pay-per-view, and the winner gets a shot at either the WWE World Heavyweight Championship or the WWE Universal Championship at Wrestlemania. With there being two premiere singles titles now, I’m still not exactly sure how that works.
How does one win the match, you ask? Well, there are 30 competitors, each entering the ring 90 seconds apart from each other. The match begins with two competitors, and then another is added in random order every 90 seconds and there is no limit to the number of wrestlers in the ring at a given time. So, in theory, there could be 30 wrestlers all fighting each other 45 minutes into the match. The way to eliminate a competitor is to throw them over the top rope and both of their feet hit the floor. The last person left in the ring after all others have been eliminated is the winner of the match and goes to Wrestlemania for their title shot.
What gets lost in the prestige and excitement of this match is a very valid question and my favorite part of the entire Royal Rumble build up: How does one qualify for this monumental match? The answer is that I do not know, and nobody else really does either. Sometimes, wrestlers will have to earn their way into the Royal Rumble by winning qualifying matches. However, the majority of the time, they will just randomly announce they are officially entering the match in a backstage interview or in a talking segment in the ring.
Is it just the first 30 people who announce that they are entering the match or win a qualifying match that get to participate? Are they invited in a non-televised scene and sign a contract, then announce it on TV? In almost 30 years of the Royal Rumble’s existence, the WWE has not provided a clear answer, and every year it becomes more hilarious that a guy can just declare himself as a participant in the match and everybody accepts it. This is like a tennis player declaring that he or she will be entering the Wimbledon field for a chance at the most prestigious title in tennis. It’s like declaring that you will be taking a job without having an interview first. What a world that would be.
Maybe someday the WWE will provide us with an answer, but for now I am more than happy laughing at the ridiculousness of the concept. This will surely not be my last post regarding the Royal Rumble, but for now I would just like to declare that I am officially entering the match. In the spirit of WWE nonsense, I invite all of you to declare yourselves in the match as well, or declare anything else you desire.
