Category: Lists

Every 2D Platforming Sonic the Hedgehog Game Ranked

As you may know by now, I really like the Sonic franchise, and I’ve played a hell of a lot of it. There something about the fast-paced platforming that hits me in a way that nothing else in the 2D platforming genre.

That said, Sonic is also known for some of the most horrific fuck ups and awful games known to man, thanks to Sonic games having two very different styles of design. With the 3D games generally being the ones to drag the series down into the depths of…well…you’ve seen Sonic ’06. While the 2D games aren’t without sin, they’re certainly much more consistent in terms of quality and what is ultimately responsible for the blue blurs widespread success.

So what better way to show the best and the worst of the 2D Platforming Sonic game than ranking them all in a completely subjective list? Obviously, there is no better way, so let’s do this.

NOTE: I’m not counting the Nintendo DS/3DS versions of Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations and Sonic Boom because they were afterthoughts compared to the full 3D versions released on other consoles. I’ll also be compressing any handheld series with multiple games into a single entry since the list would be much too long otherwise.

9 – Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episodes I & II

Wow, I didn’t think a 2D Sonic game could go this badly.

For starters, look at that screenshot, this was released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and that’s the best Sega could do? The screen feels so claustrophobic because despite having access to full HD screens with 16:9 resolution, for some reason they decided to keep the camera zoomed in way too close with an offensively ugly art style for level design and backgrounds.

I could look past that though if the gameplay was actually fun, and well, it’s at the bottom of the list so what do you think? It’s this weird hybrid of modern and classic modern Sonic mechanics that just don’t mesh well at all, mostly thanks to the inclusion of modern Sonic’s homing attack. It’s an attack that works well enough the 2D sections of other modern Sonic games, but for some reason here it’s just absolutely awful. You have no way of predicting how close you have to be to something for it to lock onto something and there were countless times where I flung myself in completely the wrong direction because the homing attack refused to work like it does in every other Sonic game it’s been in.

Even when it does work as expected though, all it serves to do is completely kill all of Sonic’s momentum and speed, you know, the two things this entire franchise is supposed to be about. There are very few opportunities in Sonic 4 for you to ever build up any real momentum or speed, and the times where you do are usually extremely brief or set pieces where you have very little control.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was an attempt to bring Sonic back to its 2D platforming roots, but in doing so managed to completely miss what made the originals so much fun in the first place. No wonder the trailers for Sonic Mania completely ignored its existence.

8 – Sonic Rivals Series

This one is more of a disappointment than anything else.

I really think this idea could’ve worked, some of the rival battles in other Sonic games were really fun, and making a whole game based around them seemed like a pretty interesting idea and certainly a way to freshen up the classic Sonic gameplay.

What it actually turned out to be though, were fairly samey levels over and over again and you’d occasionally switch which character you were battling against, although it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference. One of the main flaws of this game was that none of the characters really felt unique to fight against other than each one having slightly better AI than the last. There was variety in playing each of them, but not playing against them, which was the whole point of the game.

The platforming was much more fun than in Sonic 4 in this game, with the designers having pretty much nailed down how to design its visuals and mechanics for handheld consoles by this point, however, the level design let it down a bit. While it was fun at first to blast through the stages, they became a bit samey after a little while, with boss battles dragging on a little longer than they should and the platforming stages just not having enough variety to them to keep me entertained all that long.

I would by no means describe the Sonic Rivals games as bad, but when it comes to handheld Sonic titles, it’s certainly at the bottom of the barrel.

7 – Sonic CD

Ok, this is a weird one.

This was a Sonic game released during the golden era of Sonic, developed at the same time as Sonic 2, for a console that was doing fairly well at the time in the SEGA CD, and yet it just feels so….wrong. Everything from the visual and level design to the soundscape and mechanics felt so disconnected from everything the original Sonic the Hedgehog was.

It’s worth mentioning the situation of the development of this game, since Sonic Team would split for the first of many times not long before development on Sonic CD started, with many of the core Sonic Team members relocating to the US where they would produce Sonic 2 (which we’ll get to later), so while the team developing this game were by no means underskilled, many of the people responsible for Sonic 1 were no longer with them, which may go some way to explaining why this game feels so strange compared to the others in the franchise at the time.

Many of the quality of life tweaks we’d see from Sonic 1 to Sonic 2 were implemented in here, such as the Spin Dash, but they didn’t feel fully fleshed out or developed. Using the Spin Dash as an example, the animation for it was simply Sonic in ball form spinning on the spot, you didn’t get that satisfying animation from Sonic 2 onwards where he’d kick up smoke from the friction with the ground before bolting off at speed.

While the level design was a bit weird, it was still quite varied and fun, and the time travelling mechanic was one that was implemented in quite a fun way. Giving you 4 versions of every level (Past, Present, Bad Future and Good Future) encouraged you to explore every nook and cranny of every level to not only complete the level but complete the secondary objective of destroying Robotnik’s machine and creating a “good future” in every stage.

Sonic CD was a game that had the core of what 2D Sonic platforming should be, but it lacked the polish that the rest of the franchise had at the time of its release, which makes it feel more like the weird cousin of the Sonic golden era. It did give us Metal Sonic though, so it gets bonus points for that one.

6 – Sonic Advance

I wondered about this one’s position for quite a while.

Sonic Advance is a strange one because its flaws are weirdly comparable to Sonic 1. It was the first full Sonic game on a handheld console (unless you count Pocket Adventure, which I don’t because let’s face it who owned a Neo Geo Pocket when you could but a Game Boy instead?) which meant a couple of things: Less cartridge space, which in fairness they got around fairly elegantly, with the game having a bigger scope than both Sonic 1 and 2 did at the time of their release; and more importantly, Less screen space.

Screen space is one of my big criticisms for Sonic 1 and it holds true here. Although the team had got better at making the unavoidable obstacles a lot less unfair, it still fell prey to a few of the same pitfalls that Sonic 1 did, mostly in the placement of well…it’s pitfalls. Admittedly this could be negated by playing as Knuckles, but this is a Sonic game, so I’m gonna play as the Blue Blur whenever possible.

Speaking of this, playing as multiple characters was nothing new to the franchise by now, and Sonic Advance would add to this by making both Amy Rose and Cream the Rabbit (with Cheese the Chao) but they really weren’t inventive with their abilities. Cream could fly, which was a role already filled by Tails so who cares? And Amy could run slower than everyone else, couldn’t go into ball form and instead had to hit enemies with her hammer which is way more tedious than just jumping on them like everyone else.

That’s the thing that gets me about the Sonic Advance series, all of the core mechanics and ideas that were already established in the Sonic franchise are done really well – the level, art and sound design are all fantastic – but when it tried to add something new it felt either pointless or just plain crap. It’s still a very solid entry into the franchise, but it’s not surprising that none of the new features it added never caught on.

5 – Sonic the Hedgehog

The original, but not necessarily the best.

Don’t get me wrong, the historical importance and overall quality of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game can’t be denied, but like with most first games in a franchise, most of the subsequent entries would refine what this one did to a point to make it an overall more enjoyable experience.

Sonic was born out of corporate suits at SEGA trying their damndest to work with their marketing teams to create a hit, and while in this era of gaming that will almost always lead to generic trash, in the 1980s and 1990’s it would often bring the best out of the design teams. While it’s laughable today, designing Sonic as a cool and edgier alternative to Mario was a golden idea at the time, and when it launched in 1991 it was pretty much the only game that looked like it would get even close to knocking Mario off his perch.

Focusing on speed came with some pretty obvious flaws thanks to the technology of the time. For example, a 4:3 resolution screen with a fairly zoomed in character meant you often wouldn’t have time to react to obstacles if you were going full screen since you had only a second or so of them being on screen for you to react. Sometimes these were just momentum killers, but in later levels, they would often be things that deal damage or pits of instant death, which fell quite unfair when you go back and play them today.

That said, many of these moments were few and far between because huge sections of every level were designed for you to feel the joy of going fast, in a style of gameplay that appealed to me in a way that the Mario games never could. This game established the variety in design and satisfaction in momentum based gameplay that would be the core of what makes a good Sonic game right up to the modern day.

Sonic the Hedgehog is rough around the edges and lacks some of the quality of life elements that we’d see later in the franchise (the Spin Dash is a notable element missing from this game). However, it was able to lay the groundwork for what would become some of the best games ever made while still being an enjoyable – and most importantly successful – experience in its own right.

4 – Sonic the Hedgehog 2

That’s more like it.

While Sonic 1 laid the groundwork, Sonic 2 is where the franchise really proved to me that it had the potential to go down as one of the best of all time.

At face value, it doesn’t look like there’s a huge amount of differences between 1 and 2, and if I’m being entirely honest, most of the changes are minor quality of life changes, but these all add up to a much better game than what came before it. We were introduced to the Spin Dash, a move that has been in every main series game since it’s inclusion, to the point where a Sonic game without it feels really lacking.

That wasn’t the only thing that made life better in the Sonic franchise, with one of the biggest issues from Sonic 1 – the fact that you’re moving to fast to react to things that fly in from off-screen when you’re at full speed – being, not necessarily fixed, but certainly improved upon, since now these obstacles that were impossible to react to are no longer damage dealing enemies or pits of instant death, but instead quick momentum killers, or something that forces you to switch to a slower lane. Granted, it doesn’t entirely fix the problem as a lot of the obstacles are still pretty hard to dodge unless you already know they’re there, however it no longer felt like the game was out to get you by taking all your rings or killing you unfairly.

The level design (which was already top notch in Sonic 1) saw a noticeable improvement, with stages designed to pose a solid challenge to platformers of all skill levels, while still leaving plenty of space to enjoy rushing past the scenery at the speed of sound. This lead to several of the most iconic stages in the franchise, with Chemical Plant and Casino Night Zones still ever popular to this day, to the point where almost every Sonic game since has had some sort of copycat version of them.

Sonic 2 did pretty much everything a good sequel should. It took what the first game did and improved upon it in nearly every aspect, without sacrificing the core of what made the original so good, to begin with and provided us with pretty much everything that was expected from a second Sonic the Hedgehog game.

3 – Sonic Rush Series

I will never get the main menu theme to Sonic Rush Adventure out of my head.

The Sonic Rush games are as good as the handheld Sonic games ever got as far as I’m concerned, and it’s disappointing that there’s only ever been two of them because I really think they struck gold with this style of gameplay.

By this point, the developers had long since gotten over the limits of the hardware they were working with, and they were able to spend a lot more of development time putting the shine on things instead and that really shows with these games. I’m not the biggest fan of modern Sonic’s “push one button to instantly hit max speed” style of platforming, but I think these games did a really good job of designing levels in such a way to make the boost mechanic a lot of fun to blast through levels with.

The extra mini-games that were added in Sonic Rush Adventure were also nice and generally more context was given as to why and how the characters were getting between these wildly different zones. The plot was nothing special, but it did give a lot more context to what was going on than many other Sonic games up until that point, and while that isn’t always a good thing, I think it works for what it is here. Plus they introduced Blaze the Cat, who’s basically just Sonic but purple and way cooler.

One of this game’s stand out features were it’s boss fights, with them doing their best to involve you in the fight more than ever. While some of them did still follow the standard formula, most of the bosses were more than just waiting around until the moment to strike appears, and it forces you to be much more proactive when it came to taking down these massive machines, to the point where fights like Whiskers & Johnny are among my favourites in the whole franchise.

The Sonic Rush games were a window into what the Sonic franchise could’ve become if SEGA had dedicated themselves more to merging the two styles of Sonic gameplay instead of sticking rigidly to one or the other, with a constant need to rebrand themselves every other game. It’s a shame we’ll likely never see this style of Sonic game again, so these are definitely ones you should check out.

2 – Sonic 3 & Knuckles

I know Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are technically separate games, but nowadays they’re pretty much only played as one big game instead.

I’d love to have something fresh and profound to say about this, but it’s more or less ditto what I said about Sonic 2. They took what was an already brilliant game, added quality of life changes, made it bigger and better and shipped it out. Ok, so that’s not entirely fair, there were some more major additions this time around.

For one thing, there was a hell of a lot more levels to it, so much so that it couldn’t all fit on one cartridge, so it had to be split into two. We had the elemental shields, which are a really underappreciated feature if you ask me, along with the variety of special stages (which aren’t). We also had the ability to save for the first time in the series, which is just as well considering the length and the biggest addition which was that of a brand new character in Knuckles, who was new and cool in just the right way unlike Shadow, a character that’s trying a bit too hard to be “alternate”.

Outside of the new features, once again every other aspect of the game’s design got tighter and more polished. Levels felt more expansive than ever without feeling obtuse and confusing (except maybe Marble Garden Zone, but you can’t have everything); the difficulty had the right balance of challenge and forgiveness to make sure I kept wanting to push forwards; and thanks to a partial collaboration with Michael Jackson, we had some of the best music in the entire franchise with tracks like Flying Battery, Lava Reef and Ice Cap zones all being among my favourite gaming tracks.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles was a culmination of everything that had gone into the franchise up until that point, having thrown out the trash and kept everything that was great until we had a phenomenal 2D platforming experience. Every time a horrible and broken Sonic game released over the years, I would always come back to this game to remind myself exactly why I loved this franchise to begin with, as by my reckoning this was the best game in the franchise for almost 23 long years until…

1 – Sonic Mania

Could it really have been anything else?

As I just mentioned, come August 2017 it had been very nearly 23 years since a Sonic game on the level of the originals had released. We had the odd glimmers of hope to hold onto, with games like Adventure 2, Colors and Generations proving that the great revival we were all hoping for was just around the corner, but like many fans, once the catastrophic Sonic Boom released I had all but given up hope that the days of the golden age of Sonic would ever return.

So holy shit was I blown away when this game came out.

Thanks to a combination of a development team that were craving a return to form as much as the fans were, and SEGA having the nerve to take a chance with the Sonic franchise for once, we were treated to this absolute perfect tribute to the fastest thing alive.

Sonic Mania took the original games and boiled them down to their purest essence, the development team on Mania seemed to truly understand what was fun about Sonic – the fast-paced, momentum-based gameplay – and designed absolutely everything in the game to feed back into that. The levels are clearly designed more for fast-paced platforming more than ever, and it has this genius way of being so complex while not moving too fast so that you can’t react to anything coming your way (the camera finally being zoomed out a bit more helps).

However, Mania didn’t just take what the originals did and refine it, the Sonic Mania team also included so much new stuff into the game as well. The new additions to old stages – such as the coloured jellies in Chemical Plant – were brilliant ways to spice up familiar territory and the brand new stages like Studiopolis and Press Garden are some of the best in the whole game. The new and the old blended so well in this game that unless you already know, then I doubt you’d be able to tell them apart, it proves that Sonic the Hedgehog wasn’t only good in its time, with the right vision and quality of design it can easily still hold up today.

I sincerely hope that this wasn’t a one-off and that there’s more Sonic games from this team in the future because I really don’t think there is a 2D platforming experience out there anywhere near as good as this one. Sonic Mania doesn’t only mark the return to form of a gaming icon, but it could potentially mark the start of a new Sonic golden age; it really is that special.

And there you have it! Thank you very much for reading, if you enjoyed then please share it around on social media and let me know what you think of the 2D Sonic games on Twitter @10ryawoo. Make sure to come back here at the same time next week, where I’ll be ranking WWE world champions since the 2016 brand split!

Every WWE World Champion Since the 2016 Brand Split Ranked

In 2016, WWE realised that their roster was far too big for only one set of champions all of a sudden, thanks to NXT signing every free agent they possibly could, also the Smackdown ratings were tanking but I’m sure that’s not important. Their solution was to do what they did from 2002 to 2013 and make Raw and Smackdown separate brands with their own world champions.

We can argue the merits of this decision until the cows come home but that’s not what I’m here to do. Instead, just three years later in 2019, we’re facing a situation where the brand split could very well be ending in October thanks to the new Fox deal coming into effect. The future on this is still unclear, however in the event, we are about to see it all end, now would be a good time to start looking back.

Since the brand split started, we’ve seen 16 different world championship reigns between 14 different men across both brands, and not all of them are up to the prestige level that you’d expect from the grandest prize in all of pro-wrestling. With that in mind, I’m going to dive in and analyse all of these title reigns and comprehensively ranking them.

These rankings are going to based on a combination of the pure numbers, the quality of their matches and the overall impact that they left on their respective titles. NOTE: I’m not going to be including current champions, Seth Rollins and Kofi Kingston in these rankings since, as of the time of writing they have each only been champion for 3 weeks and it would be unfair to assess an incomplete title reign.

12 – Finn Balor – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Seth Rollins at Summerslam 2016
Lost to: Vacated on Raw 8/22/16 due to injury
Days as champion: 23 Hours
Best match as champion: vs Seth Rollins at Summerslam 2016

I know, I’d like things to be different as well.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment on the list (although there’s a bit of competition for that dishonour), we all thought the chosen one had ascended with WWE finally fully embracing our NXT beloved when the recently debuted Finn Balor became the first ever Universal Champion at Summerslam. Even if the fans stupidly weren’t paying attention to the match because they were so fixated on how awful the brand new Universal Championship looked, people were over the moon at the former Prince Devitt’s rise to the top of the company.

Sadly, the celebrations would be fairly short-lived, as the next day the news came out that during the match with Seth Rollins where Balor had won the belt, he suffered a Labrum tear during a powerbomb to the ringside barricade during the match. This injury would require Balor to have surgery with an estimated recovery time of 6-8 months, meaning he wouldn’t be able to compete as champion and was forced to vacate the championship that he had only just won.

It’s always going to be one of the big “What if?” questions in WWE history. How long would his reign have been? Who would he have eventually lost the title to? How many amazing matches would he have had? and so on, and so on. Unfortunately what we’ve got was a 23-hour reign where he didn’t even lose the title in a match, so it, unfortunately, can’t be placed anywhere other than the bottom of the list.

11 – Roman Reigns – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Brock Lesnar at Summerslam 2018
Lost to: Vacated on Raw 10/22/18 due to Leukaemia
Days as Champion: 63
Best match as champion: vs Finn Balor on Raw 8/20/18

What is it with the Universal title at Summerslam?

Roman Reigns winning the Universal Championship was a complete and total inevitability going into 2018, with most excepting it to happen at Wrestlemania 34. Instead shockingly – and pretty stupidly – Brock Lesnar retained the championship at Mania in order to convince The Beast to extend his contract for another year, this meant the title change was pushed back to that year’s Summerslam instead.

As much as the match itself was crap, when Roman held the title high it felt like a breath of fresh air washing over Monday Night Raw since Lesnar’s reign as an absentee champion was long past its sell-by date at this point. Having a fighting champion on the show every week was invaluable to the red brand since now it didn’t feel like everyone was just spinning their wheels every week until Brock came down from his mountain top to defend the title once or twice a year.

That said, in the brief time Reigns was holding the title, there wasn’t a great deal to love about it. It was refreshing to see the title every week for once, but Roman was busy in 6 man tag matches for a lot of his reign thanks to The Shield reuniting for the 147th time since they originally broke up. His only actual title defences were against Finn Balor the night after he won it, which was a good match; against Baron Corbin in September for no discernable reason and against Braun Strowman inside Hell in a Cell, a match which mostly consisted of people who weren’t in the match fighting on the outside before Brock Lesnar broke into the cell and caused the match to end in a No Contest which was ridiculous.

The title reign wasn’t off to the greatest of starts come October, however, it was likely to run for many more months, so there was still time to turn things around.

Tragically, it wasn’t to be, as on the October 22nd edition of Raw, Roman Reigns announced his Leukaemia that had gone into remission 11 years ago had returned and he would be taking an undefined amount of time off until he recovered. Thankfully, the Leukaemia went into remission again earlier this year and Roman has now returned to action, however, it meant that his Universal Championship reign had to end prematurely with him vacating the belt just before he was due to defend it against Strowman and Lesnar at Crown Jewel.

This reign stands above Finn Balor’s due to the fact that Reigns actually had 64 days to do something with the title before vacating it, even if that something wasn’t very good. That said, a short reign with a vacated title at the end still can’t rise any higher than this.

10 – Goldberg – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Kevin Owens at Fastlane 2017
Lost to: Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 33
Days as champion: 27
Best match as champion: vs Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 33

Goldberg. Champion. In 2017. I honestly still can’t believe it.

Goldberg created one of the most shocking moments in recent memory at Survivor Series 2016, where he pinned the hyper-protected Brock Lesnar in under five minutes. When this happened it was clear that a Wrestlemania rematch was in the works for the two, and it also became clear that WWE wanted the Universal Championship to be at stake in that match as well. Naturally, the sensible thing to do would’ve been to put the title on Brock Lesnar for that match, since it would be ridiculous if the 50-year-old Goldberg won a world championship after not wrestling for over a decade…

What’s that? They did it anyway? Oh.

Goldberg walked into Fastlane to face Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship, and 22 seconds (and a distraction from Chris Jericho) later, Goldberg was your new Universal Champion. Madness. Goldberg wouldn’t wrestle another televised match until Wrestlemania, meaning there’s very little to analyse here. Everyone knew that Goldberg would be losing the title to Brock at Mania, so we were never going to get any kind of extended reign from Goldberg, which is probably for the best.

After 27 days of doing precisely nothing with Raw’s top prize, he walked into Wrestlemania, had a short but fun match with Brock, and then did the favours for Brock Lesnar, kicking off his first of two reigns with the title. The following night on Raw, Goldberg addressed the fans, thanked them and we haven’t seen him in the ring since.

Goldberg was the very definition of a transitional champion. He won the Universal Championship for the purpose of a single match, and once that match was done it was all over. If it wasn’t for the two reigns where the title was vacated, then this would most certainly be dead last.

9 – Randy Orton – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania 33
Lost to: Jinder Mahal at Backlash 2017
Days as champion: 49
Best match as champion: vs Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania 33

It says a lot about the Universal Championship, that this is the first entry on the list that actually feels like a proper title reign. It wasn’t the longest reign in the world, but Randy actually acted like a champion during this time, including wrestling more than two matches for his entire reign.

As much as it did enough to be classed as a proper title reign, it was arguably one of the worst title reigns in recent memory for a couple of reasons. For one thing, he won it at Wrestlemania in what was probably the most disappointing and boring match on the whole show, and it doesn’t bode well that it can also be classified as his best match during this rather short reign.

Following this, we had a rematch in the one and only “House of Horrors” match, featuring some of the most spooky imagery imaginable! Such as lots of baby dolls badly taped to the ceiling, a hand popping out of an obviously fake wall and….erm…a tower of sticks? It was that level of bad that goes past being so bad it’s funny into just plain awful, what’s more, is it wasn’t even for the title. This was mostly because they wanted to give Bray the win without giving him the title, but it was justified in kayfabe by the fact that Jinder Mahal stole the title the Smackdown before the match.

This brings us to the sad an awkward fact that Randy Orton would end up losing this WWE title to…Jinder Mahal, a man who up until a month prior to this, had lost more matches than Curt Hawkins, and that’s Hawkins’ whole gimmick. It was an extremely boring match as well, with the only thing even remotely exciting is when Randy almost accidentally killed one of the Singh brothers by dropping him neck first on the announce table.

Even compared to Orton’s 12 other world championship reigns this is among the worst of them. When you’re only notable matches as champion are the two that you lost, you know it can’t be any good.

8 – Jinder Mahal – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Randy Orton at Backlash 2017
Lost to: AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/7/17
Days as champion: 170
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/7/17

I’m as surprised as you are that it landed this high up.

When Jinder Mahal pinned Randy Orton at Backlash 2017, the entire wrestling community went through various stages of grief all at once. There were those that reacted with unbridled anger that WWE would sully the most prestigious prize in the business like this; others gave an extended sigh and prepared themselves for the dark times to come, and there were a few who laughed maniacally in twisted delight at the sheer ridiculousness of what just happened.

These would very much be the three camps that stuck around for the entirety of Jinder’s 5 and a half month WWE title reign, even though it felt like it lasted a couple of years. No-one was quite sure what to make of it at the time, with a whole range of opinions flooding the internet following every one of Jinder’s awful title matches.

Jinder spent the next three months putting on some of the worst matches of the year with Randy Orton, including a Punjabi Prison match where The Great Khali helped Jinder to victory only to never have his appearance explained and Khali hasn’t been seen since. He then moved on to fight the new golden boy of Smackdown live in Shinsuke Nakamura, a feud which is remembered only for the racism involved when Jinder claimed that Shinsuke’s facial expressions always “rook” the same in front of an audience who just seemed to be made uncomfortable by the whole thing.

Things were looking to hit their worst point yet going into Survivor Series, when a match with Universal Champion Brock Lesnar on the horizon, only for AJ Styles to mercifully take the title away from the Modern Day Maharaja 2 weeks before the event.

Though opinion may have been divided at the time, it’s pretty clear looking back that Jinder’s reign as champion was pretty damn bad. All of his PPV title defences sucked and the only match of his reign that could really be considered good is the one in which he lost it to AJ. Not only that, but AJ’s mammoth reign that would follow it meant that Jinder’s reign was almost immediately forgotten and Jinder every quickly fell back down the card into the same position he was before his title win. Granted not all of that can be placed on his shoulders, but when you spend over 5 months as world champion it doesn’t elevate your standing in the pecking order at all when you finally lose it, then you were clearly never up for the world title in the first place.

7 – Bray Wyatt – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: John Cena at Elimination Chamber 2017
Lost to: Randy Orton at Wrestlemania 33
Days as champion: 49
Best match as champion: vs John Cena vs AJ Styles on Smackdown 14/2/17

Bray’s and Randy’s are very easily comparable, since their titles reigns came consecutively, and they spent the same number of days as champion, which means you can really boil the argument down to who did more with the title?

Admittedly that’s a pretty easy argument because even though Bray’s reign was a lot shorter than most of us wanted it to be, and the build to his Wrestlemania match with Orton was absolutely bizarre, Bray actually had some really enjoyable matches for the title. The Elimination Chamber in which he won it, is perhaps the best Chamber match in history, and his triple threat against former champions Cena and Styles two nights later on Smackdown was fast-paced and tense action from bell to bell.

His time as champion brought the best out of him as a performer, with him having a couple of the best matches of his career during this very short run. Even on Smackdown, Bray was front and centre every week, regardless of whether or not he’s wrestling, which is something that can’t be said for several of the champions on this list.

Given there was all this great stuff involved with the title reign, why isn’t it higher? Well, for one thing, the length brings it down, as much as you don’t need months and months as champion to make an impact, Wyatt’s reign really felt like it could’ve done more time to really give Bray back the credibility he’d lost over the years, losing matches to basically everyone. Also, the match where he lost the title at Wrestlemania 33 was boring, as I previously mentioned, and unfortunately the manner in which someone loses a title can have a big impact on the opinion of their reign.

In the annals of WWE history, Bray Wyatt’s brief time at the top probably won’t be remembered fondly by many, but when you break it down you can see exactly what Bray Wyatt at his best can be if he was ever given a real chance to shine.

6 – John Cena – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: AJ Styles at Royal Rumble 2017
Lost to: Bray Wyatt at Elimination Chamber 2017
Days as champion: 14
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles at Royal Rumble 2017

It’s really weird to think that John Cena’s record tieing 16th world title reign only lasted two weeks. Then again, about 12 of Cena’s title reigns were all transitional really.

Given that I dropped Randy so low for a reign over three times as long as this one, this may seem like an odd choice, but as short as Cena’s reign was, there were great matches during it.

The match where we won the title was Styles was arguably the best main roster match of 2017 and capped off an absolutely brilliant feud from 2016 to boot. Then he had a surprisingly good match against Randy Orton on Smackdown where a shorter match length allowed for a more exciting match than most of their other encounters. Then his reign was topped off with arguably the best Elimination Chamber match in history where he would lose the title to Bray Wyatt.

Cena’s reign was incredibly brief, but he managed to do more with the title in that time than everyone else I’ve already talked about so far, putting on many great matches and leaving a reign that is still remembered and talked about fondly to this day. Moreso than that, it proves just how good John Cena can be for a world championship when it’s done properly. If Cena ever gets his historic 17th world title, I certainly wouldn’t mind if it was anything like this one.

5 – Dean Ambrose – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: Seth Rollins at Money in the Bank 2016
Lost to: AJ Styles at Backlash 2016
Days as champion: 84
Best match as champion: vs Roman Reigns vs Seth Rollins at Battleground 2016

Ambrose’s reign is a little weird in the context of this list because although it started before the brand split began, the majority of this reign took place inside it.

It started with one of the most exciting WWE moments in recent memory, where Seth Rollins would shockingly beat Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship pretty much as clean as possible, only for Dean Ambrose to cash in the Money in the Bank briefcase he won earlier in the night and walk about of Las Vegas as WWE Champion at long last.

Ambrose’s title reign was something most people had wanted ever since The Shield broke up in 2014, and finally seeing him hoist the title high was a brilliant moment for fans (even if I think he was the worst wrestler of The Shield, but that’s neither here nor there). Also, since it was a long time coming, they had to do something memorable with the reign itself, which I think they achieved for the most part.

After a great match with Rollins that ended in a double pin, and a follow up on the night the brand split began where Ambrose would come out victorious, we got the match fans have been begging for for years, when Ambrose, Rollins and Reigns would face off against one another in a triple threat match for the title. While that match didn’t live up to many people’s expectations, it was still a fantastic contest, that would eventually end with Ambrose walking out still with the title, bringing it to the blue brand for the foreseeable future.

It had been going well up until this point, but it was soon to come crashing down, as Ambrose would then put on a 15-minute snoozefest against Dolph Ziggler for the title at Summerslam, and it was becoming clear that Ambrose’s title reign was fun, it needed to end pretty soon. One kick in the plumbs from AJ Styles later and Ambrose would find his title reign over at Backlash 2016.

Ultimately, Ambrose’s title run did have some crap stuff in it, but it will generally be remembered for the good stuff a lot more than it is the bad, and with Ambrose having left WWE just a couple weeks ago, I don’t think this was a bad legacy to leave behind.

4 – Kevin Owens – 1 Reign
(Universal Championship)

Won from: Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins & Big Cass on Raw 8/19/16
Lost to: Goldberg at Fastlane 2017
Days as champion: 188
Best match as champion: vs Sami Zayn Raw 9/5/16

Kevin Owens’ reign was filled with a whole host of ups and downs, it reign that by many standards would be considered mediocre at best, so it says a lot about the state of the WWE world title scene that it’s landed this high…

Owens’ reign started off to a very good start as far as I’m concerned. Following Finn Balor’s tragic Labrum tear after winning the title. WWE quickly set upon crowning their next Universal Champion who would actually be able to carry the title over the coming months. So a Fatal 4 Way formed between Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens and Big Cass.

Most expected either Rollins or Reigns to walk away with the title here, since, up until now, Owens hadn’t been treated like he was on the world title level for the longest time. Fate would strike again, however, as after laying out Roman Reigns, Triple H looked to hand Seth Rollins the victory only to suddenly turn on the architect and hand the title to Kevin Owens. With Raw ending with Triple H holding Owens’ hand aloft in a brilliant moment.

Owens title reign will likely be remembered mostly for his excellent partnership with Chris Jericho as an extremely entertaining duo who bounced off of each other perfectly. This would also mean that very nearly all of Owens’ major title defences would end in some form of dirty finish, with Jericho and occasionally Strowman getting involved to save Owens’ skin. His title run also ended in disappointing fashion with a 22 second lost to Goldberg thanks to another interference from Jericho.

If you look at Owens’ title run in terms of his matches and PPV defences then it seems like one of the worst, but when you consider how entertaining he was week to week on Raw with Chris Jericho, including the absolutely perfectly done “Festival of Friendship” segment, then it’s one that will always be looked back on fairly fondly.

3 – Brock Lesnar – 2 Reigns
(Universal Championship)

1st Reign:
Won from: Goldberg at Wrestlemania 33
Lost to: Roman Reigns at Summerslam 2018
Days as champion: 503
Best match as champion: vs AJ Styles at Survivor Series 2017

2nd Reign:
Won from: Braun Strowman at Crown Jewel 2018
Lost to: Seth Rollins at Wrestlemania 35
Days as champion: 156
Best match as champion: vs Daniel Bryan at Survivor Series 2018

Groan all you want, but the numbers don’t lie.

In a bubble, Brock Lesnar’s two reigns with the Universal Title seem amazing. With over 600 combined days with the title, and nothing but clean wins in every single defence, Lesnar’s world title reigns seem like the template for what a perfect one looks like. Unfortunately, this title reign didn’t happen in a bubble and anyone who watched through Lesnar’s time at the top knows all too well why it’s not higher up.

While Lesnar did almost always retain his title cleanly, and most of his title defences were Ok-Great matches, the problem was to do with his schedule. During his first run as champion which, bare in mind, lasted 503 days, Brock Lesnar wrestled a total of 12 matches, and that’s including non-televised matches. Compare that for a second to Randy Orton, who wrestled 21 matches – almost double – in just 49 days as champion.

That said, it did have some upsides. For one thing, a Brock Lesnar title defence felt like a big deal, and there was always a lot of speculation made around who his challenger was going to be. Also, with the exception of the Roman Reigns matches, the stories building up to the match were generally very compelling. Samoa Joe’s feud with Lesnar felt intense and finally gave Joe that killer instinct he’d been lacking before that point, Finn Balor got to show that he can hang with the biggest and the best and Braun Strowman was elevated from mid-card monster to main event murderer.

I think that’s the thing with Brock Lesnar as champion, with the exception of Kane, and in his later matches, Strowman, everyone who fought Lesnar for the title came out of the feud looking better than when they went in. It didn’t matter if they lost, because guys like Joe and Balor got to show their in-ring intelligence when trying to take down an indestructible foe, and in a strange way, it would bring the best out of whoever he was competing against.

I’ll admit, if Brock Lesnar never wins another world title again, then I’ll be very happy with that since I really feel like WWE overplayed their hand in 2018 with Lesnar, but it did serve a purpose and several other wrestlers benefitted from his presence at the top.

2 – AJ Styles – 2 Reigns
(WWE Championship)

1st Reign:
Won From: Dean Ambrose at Backlash 2016
Lost to: John Cena at Royal Rumble 2017
Days as champion: 140
Best match as champion: vs John Cena at Royal Rumble 2017

2nd Reign:
Won from: Jinder Mahal on Smackdown 11/7/17
Lost to: Daniel Bryan on Smackdown 11/13/18
Days as champion: 371
Best match as champion: vs Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series 2017

A man who many thought would never even wrestle in the WWE, let alone reign as champion for over 500 days, AJ Styles has done much better for himself in WWE than I think most of us thought he ever would.

AJ’s first reign as champion was shorter but arguably more effective than the second. Being a heel allowed for much greater opportunities for his character to be entertaining, not to mention I just generally think AJ’s always been better at being a heel, especially in WWE. Beating Dean Ambrose with a swift kick to the balls only added to the shock of a man who was then still considered Mr TNA winning the WWE Championship and it carried on great from there.

He had a great triple threat against Cena and Ambrose at No Mercy before going on to get entangled with James bloody Ellsworth for far too long, even going as far as having Ellsworth being directly responsible for AJ retaining after an excellent TLC match between Styles and Ambrose at the PPV of the same name. Then there was the match at the Royal Rumble with John Cena, which as I’ve already mentioned is perhaps the best WWE world title match in recent memory.

His second one wasn’t really as good if you ask me, and this second reign is the main reason I’ve dropped him to second place. It started off very well, with him finally getting a good match out of Jinder Mahal and ending the reign that felt like it was going to last forever. He then went on to have a fantastic match with Brock Lesnar, and it seemed like things were going to be great. He had his formality of a rematch with Jinder the next month, then had a couple of OK matches at the Royal Rumble and Fastlane before finally looking towards Wrestlemania 34.

His match with Shinsuke Nakamura was very good indeed, however it was marred by a couple of things. The first was that Shinsuke didn’t win when it felt like he should have, although that wasn’t too big of a deal since Nakamura turning heel after the match meant the story still had legs. However, it also has to be mentioned that many fans (myself included) didn’t really feel like it met expectations. Admittedly this is down to what you could argue were unreasonably high standards we got from seeing AJ vs Nakamura wrestle a year earlier in New Japan Pro Wrestling, but it still felt like it ended quite suddenly, and about 2 minutes too soon.

This would’ve been fine if the rest of the feud had delivered, but it really didn’t. What we got was a match the Greatest Royal Rumble event, where it ended in a double countout; another one at Backlash which ended in a double KO because both men simultaneously kicked each other in the balls and a pretty good Last Man Standing match at Money in the Bank, but the magic was long gone by that point and left fans disappointed once again after Shinsuke Nakamura failed to win the title.

Following this was a short, but entertaining feud with Rusev before we were launched into the destroyer of families known as Samoa Joe. Once again this feud started off rather well, with a very good match at Summerslam that showcased a rare example of a DQ finish that enhanced the story. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the only highlight of the feud as a dirty finish at Hell in a Cell led to two more mediocre title matches that the fans at large really couldn’t have cared less about by this point.

The dying breaths of this title reign would go some short way to redeeming it a little as the match in which he lost the title to Daniel Bryan was great but suffered slightly from not being on a PPV.

Ultimately, AJ’s title reigns were good, the first one especially was great, and the length of them allowed AJ to establish himself as an all-time legend in WWE in just 3 short years. However, whenever I think back to these title reigns, I’m always going to be reminded of the mediocrity that came with a large portion of the second one, so I can’t honestly give it number one.

1 – Daniel Bryan – 1 Reign
(WWE Championship)

Won from: AJ Styles on Smackdown 11/13/18
Lost to: Kofi Kingston at Wrestlemania 35
Days as champion: 144
Best match as champion: vs Kofi Kingston at Wrestlemania 35

You can have your Kenny Omegas and your Kazuchika Okadas any day, but Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world.

When Daniel Bryan made his miraculous return from injury in March 2018, it only seemed like a matter of time before he held world championship gold once again. Bryan was the biggest babyface in recent memory, so having him standing victorious with the WWE Championship in his hands would be the perfect way to cap off his return year.

How foolish we all were…

Once again we found ourselves building to Survivor Series, where AJ Styles was set to have a rematch with Brock Lesnar from the previous year’s event, he just had to get past Daniel Bryan one night on Smackdown. We would then be hit with a double whammy of shockers on that night, with not only Daniel Bryan taking the title from AJ Styles, but cheating to do it, officially turning heel.

After putting on one of Brock Lesnar’s best ever matches at Survivor Series, Bryan came out week after week on Smackdown with a brand new personality, calling the fans fickle and reminding us all that our planet is dying and it’s our fault. It’s the kind of gimmick that on anyone else would seem stupid to be a heel, since the majority of wrestling fans seem to agree with that line of thinking, but Bryan was so good at saying it in a way that just pulled the boos out of you, even if you agreed with his message.

Bryan would have a match with Styles at TLC where Bryan would adapt his wrestling style to his new persona, focusing on old-school holds, strikes and technical wrestling instead of his more explosive babyface offence which resulted in a brilliant match; which ended in the master of the small package reclaiming his throne. The pair would then have a not quite as good match at Royal Rumble, hindered heavily by the fact that it had to follow Becky Lynch winning the women’s rumble and the finish involved interference from Erick Rowan of all people.

Past that match Rowan’s presence would only help Bryan as a character, giving him not only a big dude to have his back, but someone who agreed with his message, which only added to his preachy persona. Following the Royal Rumble, Bryan was set to defend his title in an Elimination Chamber match, when the cruel hand of fate would cause Mustafa Ali to go down with an injury and pull out of the match, leaving a spot open. Enter Kofi Kingston.

In one of the most unexpected, yet wonderful stories in recent memory, Kofi Kingston would take Ali’s place in the match, and remind us all that he’s one of the best, and deserves to be recognised as such. This became the main story of Bryan’s title reign going into Wrestlemania 35, and it couldn’t have been any better. Bryan and Kingston went 25 minutes at the start of a gauntlet match on Smackdown, in which Bryan showed exactly why he’s the best wrestler in the world because he can go to absolutely any length to make his opponent look like the best wrestler to ever do it, without making himself look totally inept.

It was in large part thanks to Bryan’s performance in this match and the ending of the Elimination Chamber that we all got behind Kofi Kingston as much as we did. It all culminated in the best match of the Wrestlemania 35 card, where Kofi would finally overcome and take the title from Bryan.

Daniel Bryan may not have had that long of a reign with the WWE Championship in comparison to other champions on this list, but Bryan got more out of his 144 days as champion than someone like Styles did in over 500. While Bryan was champion he was able to elevate himself, and anyone he ever got in the ring with to stratospheric heights, and that is the mark of a champion that is truly one of the greatest to ever do it.

And those are my rankings! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and a share would be greatly appreciated if you enjoyed. If you disagree with this list then let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back next week, where we’ll be diving back into the mines of Doctor Who opinions.

10 Times a World Title Changed Hands Between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania

As we continue our travel along the winding road to Wrestlemania, there is often one thing that is a complete certainty, none of the major championships will be changing hands.

Coming out of the Royal Rumble WWE begin the process of advertising their big main events to sell tickets, and as the media starts to promote them more and more in the build-up, it’d be a pretty bad idea to suddenly change a marquee match simply for the sake of shock value.

While this holds true for the most part, sometimes (ten times to be precise) there are outside circumstances or storyline plans that trickle over into the months between the two major events, and the result is that we get a shocking title change only a month or so out of the granddaddy of them all. So I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at all the times this has happened, the circumstances surrounding them, and what came of them come Wrestlemania.

Shawn Michaels – Vacant – Bret Hart – Sycho Sid: 1997 (WWF Championship)

One of the most talked about moments in Shawn Michaels career is what kicks off this list.

Going into Wrestlemania 13, there were big plans for a main event match between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart in a rematch from their Wrestlemania 12 Iron Man match, with the plan being for Michaels to return the favour and drop the title back to Bret Hart, however, it was not to be.

Thanks to a knee injury that Shawn claimed had been nagging him for a while, he was forced to vacate the championship over a month out from the big event. There are many that claim this injury wasn’t as bad as Michaels made it out to be and just didn’t want to drop the title to Bret Hart due to growing real-life heat between the two.

Shawn would drop his infamous “Lost my smile” promo and disappear from our screens for a good few months. This left a WWF Champion sized void in the plans for Wrestlemania, so a Fatal 4 Way match was made between Bret Hart, The Undertaker, Stone Cold and Vader, in which the Hitman would come out victorious.

It wasn’t to last though, as thanks to interference from rival Stone Cold, Bret Hart would lose the title just 24 hours later to Sycho Sid. Sid would carry the title into Wrestlemania 13, where The Undertaker would defeat Sid to claim his second WWF Championship and grow the still very young streak to 6-0.

The Rock – Mankind – The Rock: 1999
(WWF Championship)

Two years down the line, the landscape of the then WWF was vastly different, the Attitude Era was in full swing, and with it came a whole host of quick title changes.

Mankind and The Rock had been feuding for the WWF Championship ever since The Rock and Vince Mcmahon had pulled a repeat of the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 1998 to give The Rock the title. Mankind had claimed the title for himself the following December with an assist from Stone Cold (and turning the tide in the Monday Night Wars in the process), only for The Rock to take the title back at the Royal Rumble in the infamous I Quit match where The Rock went way over the top with chair shots and used a recording to win the gold.

This led us to the first ever Halftime Heat event, that took place 7 days after the Royal Rumble and aired during half time of Superbowl 33. This featured the only ever empty arena match for the WWF Championship where Mankind would win the title for the second time by pinning Rock with a forklift that seemed to have a camera strapped to the underside for some reason.

This epic feud would eventually come to an end on the February 15th 1999 episode of Raw where a ladder match between The Rock and Mankind would end with The Rock picking up the gold in an extremely brutal hardcore match. Sadly for The Rock, he would once again experience a short reign as at Wrestlemania 15, The Rock would lose the title to Stone Cold Steve Austin, with Mankind acting as the referee.

Kurt Angle – The Rock: 2001
(WWF Championship)

Due to the nature of the road to Wrestlemania, most of the title changes that are highlighted on this list tend to have some series of shenanigans or storyline justification surrounding them, to heighten drama going into the grandest stage of them all. So it’s quite weird to see a title change as clean cut as this one at this time of year.

This title change is exactly that, however, since at No Way Out 2001 The Rock would take the WWF Championship from Kurt Angle a chaotic match, with a couple of shenanigans throughout, but had a fairly clean finish. This would mean that The Rock would carry the WWF Championship into Wrestlemania X-7 to face off against Stone Cold in their legendary main event. Where Austin would famously shake hands with Satan himself, turning heel and aligning himself with Vince Mcmahon in the process.

Edge – Triple H: 2009
(WWE Championship)

These next two form a little bit of a two-parter, as both took place at the No Way Out Pay-Per-View in 2009.

Edge carried the WWE Championship into the Elimination Chamber that night, after winning it from Jeff Hardy the previous month at the Royal Rumble, however by the end of the night, things would look very different. The WWE Championship Elimination Chamber match kicked off the night, with Edge being in the unfavourable position of entering the Chamber first, against the man he beat for the title, Jeff Hardy.

A mere three minutes into the match, however, Edge would go for a spear, only for Hardy to catch Edge into a small package, pinning him and eliminating him from the match, losing the WWE Championship in the process. What followed was a fairly entertaining chamber match between the remaining five men, ending in an exciting one on one between Triple H and The Undertaker, with the king of kings eventually coming out on top.

Triple H would carry the WWE Championship into Wrestlemania 25 where he would face Randy Orton in the world’s most boring match, retaining the gold in the process.

John Cena – Edge: 2009
(World Heavyweight Championship)

Edge wouldn’t stay without world title gold for long though, as we would find out later that same night.

Once again looking at No Way Out 2009, this time we’re taking a look at the main event, an Elimination Chamber match for John Cena’s World Heavyweight Championship featuring, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, Kane, Mike Knox (no, I don’t remember who he is either) and Kofi Kingston. Sadly for everyone’s new favourite wrestler, Edge would make a surprise appearance during Kingston’s entrance, laying Kofi out before locking himself in the pod, taking the spot in the match.

This tactic would end up paying off for the superstar that’s rated R, as he was able to convince the other participants in the match to gang up on champion John Cena, taking him out after everyone hit their finishers on him. Edge would then find himself in the final two against Rey Mysterio and eventually came out victorious, walking out of No Way Out 2009 drapped in just as much gold as he entered with.

This wasn’t to last, unfortunately, since at Wrestlemania 25, Edge would lose his World Heavyweight Championship back to John Cena, in a triple threat match along with the Big Show. Yeah…Mania 25 wasn’t really that good, to be honest.

Sheamus – John Cena – Batista: 2010
(WWE Championship)

Yet another set of changes that took place on the same night, only this time around it’s not thanks to a single man.

Entering 2010, the WWE Championship scene was in a rather strange place. It was a time before CM Punk would make his meteoric rise, the age of Orton was over and Triple H was slowly winding down the amount he wrestled on such a high profile, this meant there was a big void at the top of the card for someone to face John Cena. Then along came Sheamus.

I’ve mentioned in various articles about how Sheamus tended to win things at the wrong time and in weird ways, and his WWE title win at TLC 2009 was no different. Sheamus would defeat John Cena in a tables match to claim the title in one of the worst table matches finishes ever – on par with Big Show accidentally stepping through a table – as both men would fall off the top turnbuckle, and Sheamus would narrowly miss a table as he fell, so narrowly that it looked more like a botch than anything else.

Regardless, come February Sheamus walking into Wrestlemania as WWE Champion seemed like a very real possibility, until he ran into an Elimination Chamber featuring both John Cena and Triple H. In expected fashion, John Cena “overcame the odds” to become WWE Champion yet again, only for Vince Mcmahon to come out, announce the return of Batista, who would immediately be granted a WWE title match against the leader of the Cenation and came out victorious.

Batista would take the title to Wrestlemania 26, where he would immediately lose it back to big match John. So that was worthwhile.

The Undertaker – Chris Jericho: 2010
(World Heavyweight Championship)

The night wasn’t over, however, as in the main event of Elimination Chamber 2010, we would see the World Heavyweight Championship change hands. Not because of a random Batista appearance, but a sudden Shawn Michaels appearance.

The Undertaker had held the World Heavyweight Championship ever since October 2009, where he defeated CM Punk in the most one-sided Hell in a Cell match in history, and we were now in the midst of the excellent storyline, where Shawn Michaels was begging The Undertaker for a rematch of their classic Wrestlemania 25 bout.

The Undertaker would constantly refuse Shawn Michaels’ request, and after Michaels failed to win the Royal Rumble to face the Deadman at Wrestlemania, the heartbreak kid decided drastic action was needed. Right at the end of what was a rather good Chamber match, which included The Undertaker being set on fire by his own pyro, Shawn Michaels would appear from underneath the Chamber, superkick the unaware phenom allowing Chris Jericho to pick up the gold.

Jericho would be challenged by Royal Rumble winner Edge at Wrestlemania and successfully retain his title, before being cashed in on the very next Smackdown by the one and only, Jack Swagger.

Edge – Vacant – Dolph Ziggler – Edge: 2011
(World Heavyweight Championship)

Now time for some title changes that happened all in the same night.

Going into 2011, Vickie Guerrero had paired herself up with Dolph Ziggler during her “cougar” phase and was still mad at Edge for that time they were supposed to get married. Also at some point prior to his World Heavyweight Championship the Spear had been banned, so, since hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Vickie used that as an excuse to strip Edge of his World Heavyweight Title.

Once this was done, Vickie would waste no time in handing the title to her boy toy Dolph Ziggler, which was a historic title reign that would last all of an hour, since Edge would win the title back later on that very same episode of Smackdown.

This title reign would take Edge through Wrestlemania, where he would defeat Alberto Del Rio until he would tragically have to vacate the title due to a neck injury that also forced him into retirement. As much as the ending of it was historic though, nothing else about this particular title change was in any way noteworthy, and just seems rather weird when you look back at it.

John Cena – Bray Wyatt: 2017
(WWE Championship)

It’s strange to think that John Cena’s most recent WWE Championship reign (the reign which tied Ric Flair’s record) lasted a mere two weeks, but that was the state of affairs we were faced with just two years ago.

The Royal Rumble 2017 was quite a weird event, with an excellent WWE title match that was won by John Cena, a cluster of a Universal Title match where Kevin Owens would defeat Roman Reigns thanks to Chris Jericho – who was hanging above the ring in a shark cage – and a sudden Braun Strowman appearance. Then we had the Royal Rumble match which, despite having about 7 potential winners, was one by Randy Orton in an extremely confusing fashion.

This left us with arguably one of the most predictable Elimination Chamber matches ever, as Randy Orton was still involved with Bray Wyatt at the time, and it was clear that things were leading to a Wrestlemania encounter. Eventually, following an extremely good Elimination Chamber match, Bray Wyatt would stand tall among his fireflies as WWE Champion for the first (and as of writing, only) time.

Sadly, it wasn’t to last as Bray would disappointingly lose the title to Randy Orton at Wrestlemania 33 in what was arguably the most boring match on the card.

Kevin Owens – Goldberg: 2017
(Universal Championship)

Oh boy.

Goldberg won a World Championship in 2017, I’m just pointing that out because I don’t think we make a big enough deal about it. It was over so quickly that it’s pretty easy to forget, but we must always remember that Goldberg won a WWE World Championship in 2017, and also at one point his son joined them in the ring to celebrate and took his shirt off for no apparent reason. Never Forget.

There was a lot of moving pieces going into Fastlane 2017, Brock Lesnar vs Goldberg had already been booked for Wrestlemania 33, and Kevin Owens had recently turned on Chris Jericho at the heartbreakingly wonderful Festival of Friendship. This left us with two big Wrestlemania matches in the works, both of which could’ve potentially been for the Universal Championship. WWE just had to make a simple choice.

They chose poorly.

Kevin Owens vs Goldberg was booked for Fastlane and panned out pretty much how you remember it in your head. Owens refused to get into the ring and officially start the match until eventually, Chris Jericho appeared to distract Owens, Spear, Jackhammer and 22 seconds later, Goldberg was your new Universal Champion.

Golberg also wouldn’t hold his newly won title very long, as Brock Lesnar would conquer the one who conquered the one in twenty-one and one to take the Univeral Championship. Which, in a roundabout way, leads us up to exactly where we are today, going into Wrestlemania 35.

So there you have it, all 10 times that a world title changed hands going into Wrestlemania. Thankfully we haven’t had anything as exhausting as that to deal with this year (although there is still one more week for Shane to win the title making Shane vs Miz a title match), but I hope you enjoyed this look through the past to see how it’s been done before.

If you enjoyed then please leave a like and share this around on all your favourite social media sites, and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo as we head into Wrestlemania weekend, as I’ll have a whole lot of opinions to blurt out into the ether, and stay tuned for my NXT Takeover & Wrestlemania predictions and reviews over the next couple of weeks.

My Favourite Stories in Video Games

Every form of media out there is trying to tell us some form of story. TV, Film, even advertising is there to craft some sort of narrative to sell to us in some way, but I think no medium achieves that better than video games. When I’m playing a game I’m not just watching the action unfold, I’m making it unfold. Actually being in control of what’s going on and how everything plays out gets me more invested in the world I’m in than any other form of storytelling.

So today, I want to celebrate that. I want to talk about my favourite stories that video games have ever told me, and break down just what it is that makes it brilliant and why they draw the emotions out of me that they do.

NOTE: This post will contain both minor and major SPOILERS for each of the games I’m talking about, so be warned.

Bully

Bully is somewhat unique in why its story is so effective. Normally in games, the story of the game serves to build the world, but in Bully I find that the world is what makes the story so much fun.

Setting the game in a school seems like such a simple change from Rockstar’s usual formula, but it completely transforms your attitude towards all of the characters you encounter. It does such a brilliant job of emulating your time in school and capturing that feeling of wandering around a school and recognising all the faces and going to all the classes.

That dynamic creates a weird relationship with the main villain in Gary, because he’s so evil and hatable, but unlike something like GTA, you can’t just go and fight him because you’ll get expelled from school. This causes the story to become more about using the intricate social construct of the school to undermine him and take his power away like that.

It’s exactly the kind of story that you would come up with when in the playground at school, and I think that makes it all the more brilliant.

The Stanley Parable

“Story” may not quite be the right word to describe what takes place in the Stanley Parable, more of an experiment.

That said, there is a very simple story there, all you have to do is listen to the narrator and you get told a simple story about a man named Stanley fighting against the system to gain his freedom. As I’m sure most of you know by now though, that’s not where the brilliance of this game lies.

The Stanley Parable was the first game to properly take the idea of a “meta-narrative” and run with it. There’s been a lot of games who’ve tried since, and many have done a rather good job of it, but I don’t think any have topped this one.

All of the jokes and narrative points are things that can only come from truly understanding exactly how a game works. Anyone can make some jokes about common gaming tropes, but it takes a deep understanding of how a game is constructed in order to totally obliterate it like The Stanely Parable does.

Subsurface Circular

I’ve spoken about Quantum Circular a fair bit in the past, but I’ve never had much of a chance to talk about its predecessor, Subsurface Circular.

This game gives you a very simple premise, and then sends you off to learn all about the world, using the framing of trying to solve a mystery. You then spend the whole game riding around on one train line and encountering lots of different people from all different areas of this society and while interrogating them, they tell you their stories. Why they’re on the train, how they’re feeling about their life, what their goals and hopes are, and the entire game serves as to build up to one of the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make in a game.

We’re going into full SPOILER territory now, so if you want to play the game yourself, then it’s time to scroll down to the next game.

During your investigation, you find about this figure, who is in charge of a rebellion, which is looking to overturn the current government and install a new one, and he gives you a very simple choice. Kill him and stop the revolution, or kill yourself and allow the revolution to take place. I went back and forth on this choice so many times, because I’d spent the past few hours learning all about the world, seeing good people who have had their lives destroyed by the government and good people who rely on this government for their livelihood.

On top of all that, the game doesn’t let you see the result of your choice, which is such an underused, yet brilliant technique. It means there is no “right” choice, the game leaves you to ponder it in your own head and an experience like that is something that stays with you for a long time.

Life is Strange

No points for guessing this one would be on the list.

Life is Strange takes a similar setting to Bully, but goes more down the path of realism, than nostalgia. The characters in Life is Strange are very grounded in reality, even if they do have some more “out there” traits.

It’s another game that spends so much time getting you invested in the world and all the characters in it, only to turn all that emotional investment around on you at key points in the story. I had some level of emotional connection to every character in Life is Strange, regardless of whether it was positive or negative, I cared about all of them in some way, and I could actually remember all of their names, which is a rarity for a game with as many characters as this one.

Then we come to the most memorable point of this game, the final choice. (Full SPOILER territory coming at y’all right now.)

I was in an odd position going into Life is Strange, because I went into it already knowing what the final choice was, and it seemed like an easy choice at first. Then I played through the game, and when I came to the final choice, I suddenly realised just how difficult it was. At face value, it’s a choice between your best friend or everyone else you know, but it’s so much more than that when you look through it all.

For one thing, it’s a problem that you caused which gives you such a huge sense of responsibility and you feel like you need to own up to your actions. On top of that though, you have the knowledge that, by saving the town, so much of the work you’d put towards getting to know people and helping them turn their lives around and become better people will all be undone.

This time, the game does show you a brief look at the consequences of your choice, but it doesn’t really frame either choice as “right”, once again leaving you to ponder your choices.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky

To those who have never played the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, this might seem like a strange pick, since Pokemon isn’t exactly known for their high emotion, well-written stories, but hear me out.

PMD doesn’t try to subvert any narrative tropes or try to craft some unique story, however, it uses all of the tropes extremely effectively, and implements them in such a way that you don’t quite seem them coming. The story uses the idea of a world of Pokemon, without any human interaction to great effect and has plenty of mystery to keep you going the whole way through.

I find it interesting how PMD doesn’t stray from the theme that the main series Pokemon games have, and yet the way the narrative is crafted is almost unrecognisable. Spending the whole game building up a friendship with your partner Pokemon is something that the main series try to achieve, but you’re fairly limited when you can’t actually communicate with them at all. So PMD thrusts this character upon you in such a way, that you end up having a fairly similar journey towards friendship with them as your character does in the game; starting off as some slightly annoying, random  character that you wish would just leave you alone, to your best friend that you’ve fought with side by side the whole journey.

You add in all the other mad and wonderful complexities that the Explorers of Sky narrative has to it – which there just isn’t time to go into now – and you’ve got yourself one hell of an emotional rollercoaster ride. Explorers of Sky has a slight leg up on it from its counterparts (Explorers of Time/Darkness) since it has a set of additional stories that gives some background to all of the characters.

That final gut-punch of a narrative point is such a wonderful moment, I well up at games a fair amount, but it takes a lot to make me actually cry at something on a screen, and that’s exactly what PMD: EoS achieved.

Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops is the exception to my key rule of the games I play and enjoy. Usually, my general attitude is that I play games to have fun, and that’s pretty much it, but Spec Ops: The Line isn’t a fun game, not at all, so why is it here?

What happens when you play Spec Ops, is you boot it up, get told the basic premise for the game and are sent to a ruined city to go and shoot some bad guys. Then as the game progresses, the character you play as will start to do some things that you as the player will disagree with slightly, I didn’t think much of it at the time because I often disagree with characters in things and carried on.

The game then continues to reel you in with its generic shooter gameplay and basic tactics and choice systems, as you begin to notice your mission is sliding down a slippery slope. As the other members of your squad start to argue and say you’ve lost your mind, you don’t quite understand what they’re talking about, then the game reveals it’s hand and knocks you the fuck out with what it’s actually been doing the whole time.

(BIG SPOILERS RIGHT NOW)

This whole time you’ve been playing the game and shooting all these people, in an attempt to hunt down the big bad guy. He never existed, the whole game you’ve been killing American troops and civilians, and the game lingers on that fact, it spends so much time showing you just how much of a monster you truly are.

It’s a game that makes you question everything you know about military shooters and also game narratives, it’s thanks to Spec Ops that I now over analyse and instantly distrust decisions that the characters make. It taught me to just not blindly go with whatever the game is telling me and actually think for myself on what the narrative is trying to do.

It’s an uncomfortable and unpleasant game to play through, but it completely changed how I view narratives in games and how I approach a whole genre, and that is a story that deserves all the praise in the world.

Octopath Traveller

I’ve already talked a lot about Octopath Traveller, so I’m going to try my best not to repeat myself when talking about its story.

The thing that’s unique about Octopath, is that it’s not just a single linear story, it’s 8 stories, all technically separate but the way in which you encounter them makes them feel like their interweaving. Each of the stories themselves aren’t anything outstanding or revolutionary, but every single one of Octopath’s characters is so carefully and brilliantly crafted that they vastly increase the quality and impact of the stories they’re in.

Every single character in Octopath feels like a real person, and I feel like I understand them on a fairly deep level. I know who they are, what they want, how they prefer to go about getting it. Then you add on the travel banter scenes where the characters interact with each other and you slowly learn all of the little nuances to them that really make you feel like you’re on a journey with them.

When these characters are then placed into their respective stories, you feel fully aligned with them and ready to charge head-on into achieving their goals. Never once in Octopath did I find myself at odds with one of the characters, I felt like I knew them and thus understood some of their more questionable actions.

That feeling of unity with the characters is something that I can’t honestly say I’ve felt in a game on this level before or since, and it’s something I wish more games could achieve.

Thomas Was Alone

It’s a red rectangle, it can move left, right and it can jump, and it is the most well rounded, well-written character to ever come from a video game.

Made by the infinitely talented Mike Bithell (who also made Subsurface Circular & Quantum Circular), every single part of the design in this game is focused around enhancing the story. Everything is beautifully told through the narration of Danny Wallace, who’s voice creates such a warm and wonderful feeling when you listen to it, to the point where I can honestly say this story wouldn’t be as good with someone else reading it.

Even the visual design of all of the characters contributes to their personalities – despite all just being slightly different rectangles – because that’s exactly what makes this story work so well, the personalities. The characters are all AI’s that were created by some unidentified programmers, so they all feel like they’re just learning about the world. When you first encounter Thomas he’s essentially trying to come to terms with his own sentience.

All of the AI’s have moments like this, as they begin to discover emotions you quite literally see their personalities grow from nothing and form into some adorably ridiculous characters. Such as Chris, who just wants to be left alone at all times, or Claire, who can do something no one else can do so jumps to the conclusion that she must be a superhero.

Then you put these personalities together and you see these characters grow and begin to understand the world around them the more they interact with each other. This naivety from the characters really makes you feel like you need to look after them and you end up caring for them quite deeply. The characters also begin to start looking after each other as things progress, as the puzzles are designed in such a way that none of them can complete a level without help from another.

Never have I ever cared for characters in a game more than I have in Thomas Was Alone, and the world and story the game crafts is just so warm and wonderful that I can’t help but fall back in love every time I play it.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for reading, make sure to share this around of social media if you enjoyed and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo for more thoughts on both games and wrestling. I’ll see you next time!

Every Royal Rumble Match Winner Ranked (Part 2)

(Read part 1 here)

So we’ve looked at the worst, now it’s time for the best as I continue to countdown every Royal Rumble match winner ever from the very worst to the very best.

13 – Hulk Hogan – 1990 & 1991

I had some difficulty placing Hogan on this list, but I think right in the middle feels right in the end.

On paper, both of Hogan’s Rumble wins are fairly impressive, with 6 and 7 eliminations in ’90 and ’91 respectively, and eliminated some fairly big names to do it both times. In addition to this, Hogan would win the WWF Championship at Wrestlemania 7 in ’91, and although he lost at Wrestlemania 6 in ’90, the match has achieved legendary status in the decades since.

So again, the question must be posed, why have I put him this low?

The thing is, the “world championship opportunity” stipulation wouldn’t be brought in until 1993, so the Royal Rumble was still basically for nothing, and in both ’90 and ’91, Hogan was ALWAYS going to be fighting for the title at Wrestlemania (in fact he already was WWF Champion going into the ’90 Royal Rumble). There was never any reason for Hogan to win either of the Rumbles he did, so ultimately it didn’t achieve anything that wouldn’t have been achieved anyway.

12 – Bret Hart – 1994

Now, the other side of the ’94 coin.

While Luger would horrifically fail with his opportunity that came from co-winning the Rumble, Bret would do very much the opposite.

He started off the night at Wrestlemania 10 with an amazing match with his brother Owen Hart, a match which Hart clearly put his all into despite having to perform again later on in the night, and would sadly come out the loser of it. That mattered little by the end of the night, however, as after yet another hard-fought match, Bret would topple the giant Yokozuna and stand triumphant as the new WWF Champion.

It’s very rare that one man puts on two incredible performances in one night, though I had to drop Bret down a few places due to the fact he was simply a “co-winner” of a Royal Rumble, and not a winner. Sure what he did was amazing, but the fact that he didn’t outright win the ’94 Rumble does take the shine off the apple just a little.

11 – Asuka – 2018

Historic.

I’m sorry for giving you horrible flashbacks to the time WWE couldn’t go half a sentence without shouting how “historic” the first Women’s Royal Rumble was, but looking back now, they were right. I wasn’t overly thrilled by the first ever women’s Royal Rumble at the time, but going back and watching it now, it was better than I gave it credit for, with there being plenty to like before Asuka entered the fray.

Asuka did eventually enter the match at number 25, and from that moment on it seemed pretty obvious she was going to win. Personally, I feel WWE were quite smart about it, with Sasha Banks digging into her old heel persona to direct the eternally evil Bella Twins to try and get rid of Asuka. Eventually, she would overcome this, and top off the night on a high note.

What came after her Rumble win wasn’t brilliant though. Charlotte would snap Asuka’s undefeated streak at Wrestlemania 34 in a match I still maintain Asuka should’ve won. She would then continue to be torn down in her feud with Carmella, and wouldn’t recover until the dying breaths of 2018 when she finally claimed the Smackdown Women’s Championship at last month’s TLC.

That said, this victory will go down in history for being the first of its kind, and I tend to look back on this one fondly as well.

10 – Triple H – 2002 & 2016

I didn’t think Triple H would make it this high in my list, but looking back on his two Rumble victories, I quite enjoyed both of them.

In 2002, Triple H’s performance was fairly standard, lasting just over 20 minutes and eliminating 4 men on his way to victory. However, the last few moments of the match were rather exciting in their execution, with Kurt Angle almost winning the match, and while the thought of a Jericho vs Angle Mania match makes my mouth start to salivate, Triple H – who was fresh of a huge return – was a good counter of Jericho’s heel antics.

Speaking of which, complain all you like about how Jericho played second fiddle in his own Wrestlemania main event where he was champion, Triple H looked great throughout the whole thing, and in this list, that’s all that matters.

Moving onto 2016, Triple H’s win here is something that tends to divide opinion quite drastically.

Some people believe that Triple H winning the WWE Championship was a cynical and unnecessary move that simply served Triple H’s ego providing his 14th World Championship. While others think it was a great moment that was well executed and served the story that was being told between the McMahons and Roman Reigns.

I tend to fall into the 2nd camp, although I understand the perspective of the first. Triple H entering at number 30 to win was arguably the most predictable “surprise” in Royal Rumble history, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. People were so zeroed in on not wanting Roman Reigns to win, that literally anyone else was fantastic, and it was executed brilliantly, with Roman going out just before the end to create some proper investment in Ambrose in the final moments.

Sure, Triple H would go on to lose the title back to Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 32, but it’s hard to argue with winning the WWE Championship with the Royal Rumble.

9 – John Cena – 2008 & 2013

Cena’s two Rumble wins seem very much like two sides of the same coin.

In 2008, John Cena wasn’t even expected to participate, having to have surgery on a torn pectoral muscle; a surgery with an expected recovery of 6-8 months. However, John Cena doesn’t care for your puny human recovery times and returned triumphantly after only 3 months to enter at number 30 and win the 2008 Royal Rumble. That moment is an iconic Rumble moment, so shocking that even the Cena hating New York crowd that night couldn’t help but cheer at it.

What happened following the match however was quite strange.

The following night on Raw, Cena claimed he just couldn’t wait to fight Randy Orton, and the Wrestlemania match was instead scheduled for No Way Out in February, (A bit weird, but ok). Then the match ended in disappointing fashion when Orton intentionally got himself disqualified to retain the title, (Even weirder, but we’ll see where this is going…). Then at Wrestlemania, Triple H was added to make it a triple threat, where Randy Orton won quite easily. Oh.

It was all just a really strange way to get to Randy Orton retaining his championship twice, pretty underwhelming to say the least.

Cena’s win in the 2013 Rumble was pretty much the exact opposite, with the win itself being extremely predictable and quite boring. With it being no secret that Rock vs Cena II was on the horizon for Wrestlemania 29, and The Rock having a WWE Champion match that same night, Cena’s win felt entirely like an inevitability.

Then going into Wrestlemania 29, the pair had a perfectly serviceable match, that ended up with Cena winning the championship and standing victorious.

Ultimately, both of the big moments here are big enough to overcome the bad ones and place Cena higher up on this list.

8 – Shinsuke Nakamura – 2018

Now, we have the one entry that Ryan ranks higher than it deserves because Ryan wants to.

It’s well known by this point that I loved the 2018 men’s Royal Rumble, with it featuring pretty much everything I love about the match. In addition to this, Shinsuke Nakamura winning it is one of those things that we couldn’t quite believe was going to happen. WWE had spent 7 years conditioning us for disappointment with their Royal Rumble winners, that we just didn’t want to get our hopes up. With guys like Cena and Reigns in the match, surely something would go wrong and we’d all end up miserable again.

However, that wasn’t the case as after a fantastic final 4, Nakamura would eliminate both John Cena and Roman Reigns to win the Royal Rumble after being on WWE’s main roster for under a year and that feeling was incredible. That’s what I remember in wrestling more than amazing matches and more than great characters, it’s the moments of pure emotion that I feel while watching it.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address what happened after Nakamura’s Rumble win because it’s the reason I couldn’t bear to bring it any higher than 9.

First of all, Nakamura lost his title match at Wrestlemania 34 to AJ Styles. That’s Bad! Then he impaled AJ right in his balls. That’s Good! Then he proceeded to lose to AJ three more times before doing nothing of note for the rest of the year. That’s Bad, very, very bad.

While Nakamura’s future in WWE is up in the air, I think it’s important we celebrate this amazing Rumble performance, because it might be the best we’ll ever get.

7 – Brock Lesnar – 2003

The rise of Brock Lesnar is something that was very much once in a lifetime. Never before or since has someone successfully come into the WWE main roster and immediately asserted themselves as a permanent main event force.

Lesnar hadn’t even been in the WWE for a year when the ’03 Royal Rumble rolled around and he’d already been WWE Champion once before. Lesnar wasn’t in the Rumble for very long, entering at 28 and only being in the ring for 9 minutes before he won, but in that time he threw out 4 men, including The Undertaker.

Following his win, Lesnar would fight Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania 19 for the Undisputed Championship in what many call the best match of Lesnar’s career. Even if he did almost kill himself during the match, he came out the victor in the end and seems to be a very solid template for a successful Royal Rumble winner.

6 – Rey Mysterio – 2006

It’s wins like this that stop us losing hope in the Rumble when someone we hate wins it every damn year.

Being the number 2 entrant in the Royal Rumble really does seem like more of a curse than number 1. Despite having to fight for just as long and do just as much work as number 1, WWE treats winning from the number 2 spot as far less impressive for some reason. Regardless, Mysterio lasting a record 1 hour and 2 minutes in the ’06 Royal Rumble to win it is arguably one of the best feel-good stories that have been told in a Rumble to date.

Once you put all the controversy surrounding how WWE exploited the death of Eddie Guerrero to one side, the rest of the saga was pretty feel good too. Mysterio’s performance at Wrestlemania 22 was arguably just as impressive as his feat in the Rumble match, defeating both Randy Orton and Kurt Angle in order to claim the big gold belt.

Mysterio is the prime example for how you book a babyface to win a Royal Rumble and is something I wish we’d see a tad more often in WWE. I’m looking at you, Seth Rollins.

5 – Edge – 2010

Tell all the long and valiant hero stories you want, there are few things in wrestling that feel as good as a surprise return.

As with Cena in ’08, Edge’s return in the 2010 Royal Rumble really was a total surprise to cap off what had already been one of the best Royal Rumble matches ever. Entering at 29 (thanks to Batista having reserved the number 30 spot for himself), Edge needed only 7 short minutes to claim his victory, eliminating both John Cena and Chris Jericho on his way.

His Wrestlemania 26 match against Chris Jericho for the World Heavyweight Championship didn’t go quite as well though, with Edge surprisingly being defeated by Jericho to continue their still fairly young feud. However, such a brilliant and surprising win in one of my favourite Rumble matches was so exhilarating that I couldn’t possibly have put it any lower on the list.

4 – The Undertaker – 2007

Now we’re getting to the point in the list where it’s getting really hard to pick any one of the others.

The 2007 Royal Rumble wasn’t among one of the best in terms of overall quality, but the action from the moment The Undertaker entered the match at the number 30 spot makes it have the best finale in Rumble history. First of all, the timing of the entrance was spot on, with The Great Khali laying everyone out and looking to potentially ruin the match, only for the countdown timer to hit zero, the lights to go out and the iconic gong rang through the arena to mark the arrival of the deadman.

Undertaker quickly dispatched of the Great Khali and clear the floor of anyone else left standing until only one other remained…Shawn Michaels. What followed next was almost ten minutes of incredible back and forth action that made you feel like the match could end at any moment with either man standing victorious and giving us just a little taste of what was to come in their legendary encounter two years later. It had to end eventually though, and The Undertaker dropped Michaels’ to the floor to claim his first Royal Rumble win of his iconic career.

What followed at Wrestlemania 23 was great as well. Undertaker would face off for the World Heavyweight Championship against Batista, in what was one of Undertaker’s better Wrestlemania matches and perhaps Batista’s greatest match. You don’t need me to tell you, but Undertaker, of course, would win the title at Wrestlemania and take his streak to 15-0.

3 – Chris Benoit – 2004

Every single year, you’ll hear the same snippet of information from someone of the commentary team, that “only two people have ever won from the number 1 spot!” They’ll be all too excited to tell you that the first one is Shawn Michaels, but they’ll be very silent on the second.

That’s because the second is Chris Benoit. I’m not going to go into why, but if you don’t then a quick Google should tell you everything you need to know.

Aside from the tragedy behind the man who won the 2004 Royal Rumble, this was perhaps my favourite win out of the ones on this list. He didn’t win the Royal Rumble by being lucky or cowardly or opportunistic, he won by being smart. The clearest indication of that is right at the end, as Benoit face of against the Big Show. Benoit knows he’s not going to be able to pick the giant up, so why bother trying? Instead, he waits until Big Show tries to throw him out, and leverages his weight and uses Big Show’s momentum to drag the giant over the top rope and to the floor. It’s such a rare display of intelligence and logic from a WWE babyface that I can’t help but love it.

What happened after the win was brilliant too, defeating both Triple H and Shawn Michaels in the main event of Wrestlemania 20 to claim the World Heavyweight Championship. Leading to the beautiful moment were best friends Benoit and Eddie stood tall to end the biggest WWE show of the year. It’s just a shame it’s a moment we can never look at the same way again.

 2 – Ric Flair – 1992

Being a WWE fan of only five years, I often don’t really “get” or appreciate stuff from the mid-’90s or earlier, but watching the 1992 Rumble, I totally understand why everything about it is so beloved by long-time fans.

With arguably the most star-studded Rumble ever, and the number 3 entry spot, it was going to be one hell of a challenge for Ric Flair to come out victorious in the 1992 Royal Rumble, a match that was for the vacant WWF Championship. If there’s one thing you can rely on Ric Flair to do though, it’s to find a way to win by any means necessary.

After one hell of a Rumble match, Ric Flair would throw Sid Justice over the ropes (with a little help from Hulk Hogan) to win the match and claim his first WWF Championship. Immediately afterwards Flair would cut one of his best promos “with a tear in his eye”.

While Flair’s run with the title would be very long, with him losing it to Randy Savage a couple of months later at Wrestlemania 8, it felt like a massive deal, that the guy who was all about the NWA and old-school wrasslin’ was the undisputed champion of the WWF, at least for a little while.

1 – Stone Cold Steve Austin – 1997, 1998 & 2001

Could it really have been anyone else?

Being the only man (to date) to have won three Royal Rumble matches is quite the achievement, considering there are only a select few superstars that get to win one. The Royal Rumble just seemed to be where Austin could be at his best.

While the 1997 Rumble wasn’t all that good overall, it had some really great moments, all of which had something to do with Stone Cold. The sequence where Stone Cold had cleared the ring and was throwing people out faster than they were coming in was great to see, and the image of Austin sitting on the turnbuckle checking his watch is an iconic Royal Rumble image. It got even better when the expression of Austin’s face would change from whimsy to fear the moment Bret Hart’s music played.

Austin’s first Rumble win, however, was a tad tainted. For one, Austin was actually eliminated from the match, but the referees were busy breaking up a fight at ringside between Vader and The Undertaker, which allowed Austin to sneak back into the ring and eliminate Bret Hart after the hitman thought he had won.

Due to the controversial nature of the win, Austin’s title shot wouldn’t come at Wrestlemania, but instead at In Your House 13, where he would lose a fatal 4 way, and go on to have his infamous match with Bret Hart at Wrestlemania 13.

1998 was a vast improvement from this. For starters, this time instead of Austin looking terrified, it was everyone else who looked on in fear when Austin’s music hit at the number 24 spot. Austin would then go balls to the walls eliminating everyone in sight until eventually he tossed The Rock out of the ring, and would win his first ever WWF Championship from Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 24.

2001 was yet another triumphant win for Austin, not going on quite the same tear he did in ’97 or ’98 thanks to some well-placed shots by Triple H, but a fantastic performance nonetheless. The 2001 Rumble was also a very star-studded one, with the amazing final 4 of The Rock, Austin, Kane and Billy Gunn (well they can’t ALL be winners). Regardless, Stone Cold would come out victorious and go on to fight The Rock for the WWF Championship at Wrestlemania 17, where he would win the title by shaking hands “with the Devil himself”.

Three Rumble wins, all of which had at least some really great qualities to them lands Austin undisputedly in the top spot on this list.

And that – as they say – is that. Thank you so much for reading this list (kudos if you didn’t just skim to see the top and bottom three), but the fun doesn’t stop here! The Rumble is a mere 6 days away, so I shall be giving out my predictions on Friday, and a review the following week.

Stay tuned for that, and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo to read it as soon as it comes out!