This day in Pro Wrestling history - 22nd January
The Royal Rumble is one of the’ Big three PPVs’ in the WWE, the others being Wrestlemania and Summerslam. Hence it is no wonder that the Creative has been in full swing planning and promoting the event.
There is no clear favourite to win the iconic Rumble match yet, with superstars like Goldberg, The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, Braun Strowman and Chris Jericho having already thrown their hats into the mix.
Multiple storylines intersect at the Rumble and the road to Wrestlemania becomes clearer in its aftermath. With the last weeks of January being the traditional date for the Royal Rumble over the years, it is no surprise that today’s edition of ‘This day...’ includes two Rumble matches held on January 22.
One of them had a dual winner and the other one saw a controversial finish – Also on this day, the late Andrew Martin aka Test won the European Championship on an episode of Raw.
#1 Royal Rumble ‘94 has two winners – January 22, 1994
The Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island hosted the 1994 edition of the Royal Rumble and the PPV had a packed card including the likes of Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Diesel, The Undertaker and the WWE Champion Yokozuna.
The Rumble match would headline the event and a lot of feuds would intercross during the match – Shawn Michaels would eliminate his former Rockers teammate Marty Jannetty, Crush would eliminate former friend Randy Savage, Diesel would eliminate seven superstars only to be multi-teamed out of the ring with associate Shawn Michaels refusing to come to his aid.
The match would come down to Bret Hart – who had wrestled the same night in a losing effort for the tag team titles and had been attacked by his partner Owen Hart after the match – and Lex Luger. Hart and Luger would eliminate each other, with the duo landing on the floor at the same time.
Luger and Hart would be declared co-winners and each would receive separate title shots against Yokozuna at the ensuing Wrestlemania. Luger would fall short, but Hart would prevail, capturing the WWE Championship.