Royal Rumble

The Royal Rumble is an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view event, produced every January by World Wrestling Entertainment. The event's main featured match is a battle royal-type match, titled the Royal Rumble Match. It is usually called one of the "Big Four", as along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series, it is one of the original four annual WWE pay-per-views.

Royal Rumble match
The first Royal Rumble took place on January 24, 1988 in Hamilton, Ontario. Jim Duggan won, and the first pay-per-view Rumble occurred a year later. Pat Patterson has been credited with "inventing" the match.

Rules
The Royal Rumble is comprised of 30 men; beginning with two men in the ring, and at regular timed intervals (usually, but not always, every 90 seconds), one of the remaining 28 wrestlers enters the ring. Participants must eliminate all other opponents and the winner of the event is the last wrestler remaining after all others have been eliminated. Referees are situated at each side of the ring to validate eliminations. A wrestler is eliminated when leaving the ring over the top rope, and then having both feet touch the floor (although this latter specification was not specified until the 1995 Royal Rumble, where the "both feet" stipulation played a crucial role in the final moments of the match). Going out between the second and third rope or under the bottom rope is not a valid elimination. A referee must witness an elimination in order for it to be valid (in 2000, X-Pac was eliminated by The Rock but since it was not seen by any of the referees, X-Pac re-entered the ring and continued the match until he was officially eliminated by The Big Show).

An elimination can also occur when a wrestler is thrown off the top rope by a non-competing opponent, or by one who had already been eliminated, or when the participant deliberately jumps over the top rope, outside the ring. In other words, if a wrestler goes over the top rope, regardless how it happened, that wrestler is out. Other wrestlers can be de facto eliminated due to interference preventing the wrestler from entering the ring (examples being Spike Dudley in 2004 and Scotty 2 Hotty in 2005).

Rewards for winning
Since the 1993 event, the winner has officially been given the chance to challenge the WWE Champion at WrestleMania. The stipulation stemmed from 1992, when the Royal Rumble decided who would win the then-vacant WWF Championship (Ric Flair won the match).

With the introduction of the brand extension and separate brand championships in 2002, the possibility of a World Heavyweight Championship shot instead of the WWE Championship was added to the reward in 2003's match. Due to the revival of the ECW World Championship as a brand championship in mid-2006, the 2007 event added this championship to the winning stipulation.

This championship match is often the last event on the WrestleMania card according to principles in the WWE that states that "the Royal Rumble winner gets a first-class ticket to WrestleMania", which means that the Royal Rumble winner gets to be in the 'first class' top spot in the main event at WrestleMania. In some cases, this can be part of a stipulation for a match between the Rumble and WrestleMania, where the winner may lose his WrestleMania spot by losing another match.

Brand extension
With the brand extension introduced in mid-2002, the 30 entrants from 2003 to 2006 consisted of 15 wrestlers from the RAW brand and 15 from the SmackDown! brand. This makes it therefore, one of the few pay-per-view events (and certain combined non-televised shows held around WrestleMania time) with inter-brand competition on a regular basis. The official declaration for the first post-brand extension event in 2003, was that the Rumble winner faced their brand's champion at WrestleMania, but starting in 2004, due to a supposed "loophole" in the Rumble's stipulations, the Rumble winner has the option of challenging either brand's champion (Chris Benoit switched brands in 2004 and won the World Heavyweight Championship, which was the basis for a storyline the following year when Batista won the Rumble, but ultimately remained on RAW).

The 2007 Royal Rumble marked the first year participants from the 2006-established ECW brand competed along with the RAW and SmackDown! brands. Unlike previous years where each brand got an even split of wrestlers, the 2007 Rumble featured 13 wrestlers from RAW, 10 from SmackDown! and 7 from ECW. The winner of the Royal Rumble now also has the option to challenge for the ECW World Championship.

Records and statistics

 * Stone Cold Steve Austin has won the most Royal Rumble matches by winning the 1997, 1998 and 2001 Rumbles.
 * Rey Mysterio has spent the longest time in a Royal Rumble when in 2006 he lasted a time of 1:02:12. Conversely, The Warlord has spent the shortest time in a Royal Rumble when in 1989 he lasted a time of 0:02.
 * The longest Royal Rumble match was held in 2002 with a time of 1:09:23. The shortest Royal Rumble match was held in 1988 with a time of 33:00. It should be noted that that match only had 20 entrants. The shortest Royal Rumble with 30 entrants was the 1995 Royal Rumble at 38:39, where entrants entered at 60 second intervals.
 * Kane currently has the most consecutive appearances in the Rumble with 9 appearances from 1999 to 2007.
 * Glen Jacobs (who participated as Issac Yankem DDS, "Diesel" and Kane) has made more Royal Rumble appearances than anyone else with 11.
 * In 1998, Mick Foley made the most appearances in a single Rumble, when he entered as Cactus Jack, Mankind and Dude Love.
 * Stone Cold Steve Austin has made more eliminations overall than anyone else with 36.
 * Kane has the record for most eliminations in a single Rumble when he eliminated 11 wrestlers in 2001.
 * Viscera holds the record for most opponents necessary to eliminate him, with eight other wrestlers directly involved with lifting him over the top rope in the 2007 Royal Rumble. He also holds the record for second most as Mabel, who was eliminated by seven wrestlers in the 1994 Royal Rumble.  Earthquake (1990), Rikishi (2000), and Muhammad Hassan (2005) share the third most, each having been eliminated by six men.
 * Three wrestlers have won two Royal Rumble matches in a row. They are Hulk Hogan (1990 & 1991), Shawn Michaels (1995 & 1996), Steve Austin (1997 & 1998).
 * Shawn Michaels and Chris Benoit have both won the Royal Rumble at #1, and Rey Mysterio and Vince McMahon has won it at #2, the slots theoretically least likely to allow someone to win the Rumble (it has to be reminded that the first two slots enter into the match at the same time).
 * Despite being the best possible number to draw, a wrestler who enters at #30 has never been victorious.
 * The #27 slot has given more wins than any other slot. Big John Studd, Yokozuna, Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin each won a Royal Rumble at 27.
 * Rey Mysterio is the shortest winner of the Royal Rumble, and is also the only masked wrestler to win.
 * Chyna is the only woman who has ever participated in the Royal Rumble.
 * Brock Lesnar spent the shortest time in a Rumble to win when in 2003, he spent just under 9 minutes in the match.
 * The record for most consecutive eliminations is seven, set by Diesel in the 1994 Royal Rumble and later tied by Rikishi in 2000 and The Great Khali in 2007.
 * Shawn Michaels currently has the longest combined time in the Royal Rumble match with a total time of 2:49:03, close runners up include Chris Benoit with 2:37:19, Stone Cold Steve Austin with 2:34:12, and Triple H with 2:32:25.

Video box set
WWE announced that they will release a complete DVD box set of every Royal Rumble event in its entirety (in similar fashion to the WrestleMania Anthology releases in 2005). Note that the 1988-1999 events have never been released on DVD in North America (All except the 1999 event were released as Tagged Classics in UK). Royal Rumble: The Complete Anthology was released on March 13, 2007.