It’s Royal Rumble season, which means it’s almost WrestleMania season. Thanks to the WWE Network, you can go back and watch all the old Royal Rumble pay per views and matches, and in that spirit, I decided to rank the winners. I’ll be ranking the winners every day until the we reach #1, and if you’re interested in checking out who’s already on the list, use the tricky magnifying glass at the top of the screen and search ‘Royal Rumble winners’ or scroll through the blog. Now, onto the rankings!

9. Bret Hart – 1994 Royal Rumble

As I mentioned in my write up for Lex Luger, Bret Hart’s co winner of the 1994 Royal Rumble, this Rumble will always be special to me because it’s the first live pay per view I ever attended. 6 year old Ryan may not have understood what the hell happened when Luger and Hart were both eliminated at the same time, but it’s easy to understand how great Bret Hart the wrestler really was.

The Good: If you look up Mr. Constitency in the dictionary, there will be a picture of Bret Hart. He started in his father’s Canadian promotion, Stampede Wrestling, and eventually caught the eye of Vince McMahon and the WWF. He started off his run in the WWF as a member of the Hart Foundation, he won the Tag Team Championship twice along with his partner Jim Neidhart. He would eventually branch off as a singles competitor, and this is where he really flourished, winning the Intercontinental Championship twice and the WWF Championship five times. His nickname was the ‘excellence of execution’, and whoever he was in the ring was better off for it, as he had great feuds with Mr. Perfect, Diesel, Stone Cold & most famously Shawn Michaels. His iron man match at WrestleMania 12 with HBK has stood the test of time, as has his infamous ‘double turn’ match with Austin at WrestleMania 13.

The Not So Good: Bret was involved in the ‘Montreal Screw Job’, where he famously wouldn’t do the honors of dropping his Championship belt to his on and off screen rival Shawn Michaels, so Vince McMahon pulled the rug out from under him on live pay per view. His subsequent run in WCW was not great, and a concussion suffered at the feet of Goldberg eventually forced him to retire for good.

Hart is a Hall of Famer, and one of the greatest technical wrestlers in the history of the WWE. He still makes appearances for WWE after they buried the hatchet over the Montreal Screw Job in late 2009. He was also apart of the worst match I’ve ever seen, against Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 26.

– Ryan