This day in pro-wrestling history- 31st January: Edge wins the Rumble
This year’s Royal Rumble might be in the books with Randy Orton walking away as the unexpected winner despite being advertised for the show. Another unexpected but unadvertised Rumble win happened seven years ago at the Philip’s Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
The man who won that Rumble was Edge and the Toronto native was unadvertised for the Rumble, having missed the past five months of action due to injury. This edition of ‘This day..’ takes a look at the Ultimate Opportunist’s road to Wrestlemania in 2010.
Also on this day, former WCW stars debuted in the WWE as the Radicalz and Ted Turner’s company produced yet another PPL (Pay per listen).
#1 Edge wins the Rumble – 31st January 2010
Edge had been in the main event of either Raw or SmackDown for nearly two years and had cemented himself as a top drawing star in the WWE when the summer of 2009 came calling. WWE Creative decided to move Edge from singles competition and give his character another shade by entering him in the tag team division alongside Chris Jericho.
The duo would win the Unified tag team titles as a surprise entry and the plan was to have them dominate the WWE and form an opposition to the soon-to-be-reformed DX. However, tragedy struck and Edge got injured, leading to the WWE substituting The Bigshow as Jericho’s partner.
When the Royal Rumble came five months later, nobody really thought about Edge. The main angle going into the Rumble was Shawn Michael’s quest to win the match in order to gain his Wrestlemania rematch against the World Heavyweight Champion The Undertaker.
But the Rated R Superstar would make his presence known, entering the Rumble at # 29 – one spot after his former tag team partner-turned-foe Jericho. Edge would eliminate a shell-shocked Y2J in under three minutes, setting up a clash at Wrestlemania.
The final four would turn out to be Edge, Michaels, Batista and John Cena. Batista would end Michaels’ dream of main eventing Wrestlemania only to be thrown out of the ring by Cena. The booing Atlanta crowd would let out a thunderous applause when Edge foiled Cena’s bid to eliminate him and sent him over the top rope to win the match.
The Rated R Superstar was truly back!!