Ranking WWE Men's Royal Rumble Winners from the last 5 Years
The WWE Royal Rumble is one of the most anticipated and exciting events in all of professional wrestling. Fans will always tune in to watch the Rumble because of its entertainment factor. This year, even though the WWE Universe will not be in attendance, people will still be watching through their screens and it holds the same importance as any other Royal Rumble.
Picking the winner for the WWE Royal Rumble can be extremely tricky because that Superstar will be main eventing WrestleMania, which is a big responsibility. Moreover, a Royal Rumble match is mostly remembered for who won it and what followed. Sometimes, these matches can work wonderfully. However, there are times when WWE picks the wrong Superstar to win the marquee match and it fails to create an impact.
In the last five years, we have seen five different WWE men's Royal Rumble winners (not counting the Greatest Royal Rumble) who have gone on to challenge for a World Championship. Some were received and booked quite well, while others, not so much. While judging the winners we'll have to take a look at how it was won, how the Superstar benefited from it, and what came out of the win.
So, without further ado, let's rank the winners of the WWE men's Royal Rumble from the last five years.
#5 Randy Orton (WWE Royal Rumble 2017)
Randy Orton is one of the veterans on the WWE Roster. He has been around for a long time and has been part of some major storylines over the last few years. However, an odd one was him joining the Wyatt Family for a while in late 2016 and early 2017. During that period Orton won the Royal Rumble.
This was an odd decision on WWE's part given that there were other narratives much more entertaining such as Goldberg versus Brock Lesnar and Jericho with Owens. The weeks that followed also were also a result of inconsistent booking where Orton first relinquished his title shot but then turned face and still challenged Bray Wyatt.
The most important factor in this whole scenario was the match at WWE WrestleMania 33 which fans could not get behind. The match was not worthy of a spot on the WrestleMania card. It would have been more interesting if Luke Harper was thrown into the mix as he was much more of a fan favorite than Orton and Wyatt at that point.
Even though Orton wasn't the worst Royal Rumble winner of all time, he still landed the last spot on this list, unfortunately.