[1993-01-24-WWF-Royal Rumble] Royal Rumble

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This starts right before #30 enters, which is Randy Savage. Almost on cue, guys start dropping like flies. Backlund, who drew #1, is still there. The Yoko/Backlund stuff is fun, but Backlund finally goes out. Then we get Savage and Yoko. Interesting how Vince made the decision in such a short period of time to phase out guys like Flair and Savage in favor of new stars, as Savage is already in a different role to put over younger guys. I always HATED this finish, as Savage was a veteran, going for a pin was a dumb mistake he shouldn't have made. But Yoko wins and is on his way to Wrestlemania.

[El-P]

Yeah, bad finish for a good Rumble match. Backlund going the distance (before it became a total yearly gimmick which I hate) was great (and again, French announcer Guy Hauray gave probably his best performance ever making fun of him during the whole match, my father and I can still drop his favourite line from this match 18 years later), you got Flair and Perfect going at it, Lawler debuting, a rather great debut for Giant Gonzalez (well, ok, he sucked, but 15 year old me thought this was cool as hell), you got oddball guys like Tenryu and Carlos Colon. Really good Rumble match I thought.

[benj]

Owen and Martel's eliminations were sweet. That thrust kick cutoff on Macho by Yoko was beautiful. Obviously Macho going for a pin is dumb, but I liked the idea of Yoko pressing someone over the top rope from his back. Yoko is a monster.

[Dooley]

Savage also screwed up by eliminating himself in the Rumble prior (although they looked the other way). Maybe the gimmick is the wildman Savage just can't understand the Rumble rules

[shoe]

The finish was stupid. Still the Backlund storyline was great. If he would have eliminated Yoko that would have been huge. The crowd was so behind Backlund. Of course it had a lot of the good workers in the promotion at the time in towards the finish. Santana,Backlund,SaVage, Martel, Owen, Yoko. It also showed that they were really lacking star power at the time because you usually mix in the stars with a lot of the great workers toward the finish. With Backlund and this crowd they really could have done the Rocky story that they were afraid to do for Flair, and even Lawler this year. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though they did a great job with building up Yoko. Makes you wonder how long Vince knew Hogan was coming back. Yoko seems like the perfect opponent for Hogan or a more traditional opponent for Hogan than say Bret.

[flyonthewall2983]

This was a good Rumble, particularly in that you had a glimpse at a few matches that never went beyond the brief scuffle in the ring. Dibiase and Hennig at each other is a great example.

[FLIK]

I should give this a re-watch sometime, i've seen it once and remember it being one of the weaker Rumbles ever.

[Matt Franklin]

Damn, Owen's elimination looked nasty. Was he legit injured after the match? I seem to remember him having knee problems at this time.

 

Yoko looks great here as a monster, and this is a great way to set him up as a credible challenger to the title. I agree about Savage looking totally stupid going for the pin, but that is the only issue I had with an otherwise really fun closing stretch to the rumble.

[Kevin Ridge]

First time that winner of Rumble would go to face WWF Champion at WrestleMania. Monsoon doesn't think either Backlund/Flair has a chance in being there in the end. He said that about Flair in 92 Rumble. Shango doesn't stick around long. Outside of buying the 30 spot in 89 Rumble, DiBiase has drawn some really bad picks. Flair was leaving but him going out early really hurt the already lack of star power in match. Monsoon mentions loser leaves town match between Flair/Perfect on tomorrow night's Raw. Skinner still around in WWF. Perfect's elimination was great with him hanging on for life before the numbers got to him.

 

Big pop for Undertaker's entrance. The obvious favorite to win and the crowd favorite. Spirited exchange between Undertaker and Tenryu. Backlund is knocked out on the floor. Terry Taylor! This Rumble just had some really random entrants. There goes Taylor. Giant Gonzales! What is that?! Heenan speculates that he is 20 or 30 feet tall. Dragon Master is close to 50 feet tall on my measurement. And there goes Undertaker and the wind goes out of the live audience. I firmly believed that Chris Chavis was both Max Moon and Tatanka in this match.

 

Weak star power in the ring. The older Rumbles seemed to have the issue of peaking too early and then limping to the end. Outside of the 92 Rumble, this would continue the trend. The Disasters square off but this match is dead right now. Carlos Colon with great youngster comment from Monsoon. He's a strange entrant as he has to have very little if any experience on WWF/North American TV. Here's Yoko! This suddenly feels obvious who is going to win. Yoko white tights doesn't work though. Big confrontation between Yoko and Earthquake. Repo Man with bad physique. This feels like such a end run for lots of these guys.

 

Everyone tries to gang up against Yoko but he survives it! That was cool cause that was the moment to get rid of him and they couldn't do it. Savage is the only legit competition to Yoko at this point. That really is some bad competition at the end. Crowd are appreciate of Backlund's run but he still didn't feel like a legit shot to win it. Yoko manages to knock himself off his feet. Savage goes to the top rope for the elbow drop. Even Gorilla points out to Savage that pinfalls don't count. Yoko launches Savage over the top rope for the win. I think this has to be one of the weakest Rumble's due to the lack of overall star power.

 

Bret gets in Yoko's face afterwards backstage and puts the WWF title in his face.

[PeteF3]

It may seem more obvious in retrospect, but just like with Bret's title win I can't adequately described how flabbergasting Yokozuna winning this was. Before the match started I pegged this to come down to Flair vs. Perfect. Then they both went out early, so I figured it would come down to Undertaker or Savage. Then Backlund started getting the marathon push, and I actually thought he'd win it. At best, Yokozuna was the #6 pick for me, behind all of them. It wasn't until Savage's feet hit the floor that I believed for even half a second that they'd headline any PPV, much less a WrestleMania, with Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna. It'd be the equivalent of John Cena working a tag title match while WM gets headlined by Daniel Bryan vs. Big E. Langston.

 

The ring clears as soon as Savage gets in, after a failed attempt at ganging up on Yoko. '90s Backlund would never be as over as a babyface as he was by the end of this match--every teased elimination, his elimination of Martel, and his actual elimination by Yokozuna all get loud reactions. Yoko and Savage work almost a full-fledged match in their own right--this would have to be the longest closing stretch for the Rumble until that year Undertaker and Shawn went at it for awhile. Yoko's timing and selling are already pretty much impeccable, staggering just enough so that it looks like both Backlund and Savage have an opening to knock him over the ropes, before decisively cutting them off. Then that stupid ending. Oh well, the match was going great before then. I forgot the stupid Caesar & Cleopatra bit surrounding all this. Yokozuna has this act down pat and he's way better than I credited him for at the time, but he was probably a year away from being a legitimate headliner.

[WingedEagle]

Just wanted to echo 2 big points others brought up here -- 1) First time the Rumble directly leads to the Mania main event, and 2) Yoko's win felt like it came out of nowhere.

 

When we join, there's no one you could even imagine winning other than Yoko until Savage joins as #30. Yoko looks much smaller than in later years. Owen's elimination looked nasty landing on his knee, but I don't remember any big injury coming from this so he must've gotten pretty lucky. The finish with Savage going for a pinfall was pretty weak, even if it was a nice toss by Yoko to send him out. We then get some some Vegas characters out to set the stage for Mania.

[flyonthewall2983]

Caesar & Cleo walking by Randy Savage writhing on the ground is an image that sticks out as an unfortunate simile to his last couple of years in the company.

[C.S.]

One of my favorite Rumbles ever, believe it or not. Yokozuna was a lot more obvious to me than it was to most of you, but he wasn't quite a sure thing and the Backlund iron man performance planted some seeds of doubt in my mind.

[soup23]

This Rumble match has ebbs and flows. I like the early portion with the legends of the 80's (Flair, Lawler, Hennig, Dibiase, Backlund) all out there. Then Giant Gonsales comes in and things grind to a halt. The finish here is good up to the nonsensical ending of Savage going for a pin. I dont understand why he coudn't have missed the big elbow, staggered up to his feet and then get thrust kicked out or something.

[garretta]

I know that they were trying to get Yoko over as even more of a physical marvel than Andre, but did they have to make Savage look ridiculous to do it? I'm surprised he went along with trying for a pin in a battle royal; it didn't do much for Yoko that couldn't have been accomplished in some other way and reinforced the notion that Savage was slipping (which may have been what Vince wanted everyone to think so they wouldn't miss him as a wrestler).

 

If Yoko had remained able to move and work as well throughout his title reign as he was here, he would have been something more than the guy my dad (and probably others) dismiss as "the fat Jap"., his actual Samoan heritage notwithstanding.

 

I would have loved to see Backlund-Bret at Mania IX, and I'm actually surprised that Vince went with Yoko at a time when he was seemingly committed to much lighter guys as his top stars. Bobby looked really good here, not at all like a forty-three year old, while there was definitely the air of an old man (at least mentally) about Savage, who was two years younger.

 

How could Gino have possibly confused Carlos Colon (whom he'd worked with for years as a business partner in Puerto Rico) with Rick Martel? Unless Colon wore bright pink trunks, that's just another sign of Gino not really caring in the booth anymore, which saddens me.

 

Fuji looks a lot more credible in the native kimono than he ever did in the tux, with or without facepaint. I'm not sure if it was actually planned this way or not, but Yoko's run served as a nice thank you to Fuji for all his years of loyalty to the McMahons. It's kind of a shame that Corny had to come in and take away the vast majority of Fuji's duties; does anyone know the real reason he got put with a guy who already had a manager? I'm guessing Fuji wanted to get off the road for health reasons much like Heenan did. In his case, it was bad knees, which he talked about in his shoot.

 

About Hogan: I'm guessing that the negotiations for his return weren't quite done. If his return was already known, you would think he'd have been in this match. The setup is simple: Yoko eliminates Hogan last through some screwjob or other, then beats Bret for the title at Mania as he did in real life. Hogan comes down and demands a match, but at least this time he's got a legit reason which everyone knows about, which means that his winning the belt back after Yoko's held it for less than two minutes doesn't feel quite so cheap. Alternatvely, make sure that Raw is live the next night and do the switch there.