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. We’re officially into the top 2, so now is the time to check out the rest of the list. Onto the rankings!

2. Ric Flair – 1992 Royal Rumble

Like I wasn’t going to include a video of Flair elbow dropping nothing.

A lot of wrestlers may claim to be crazy, or play a crazy character, but there’s crazy, and then there’s The Nature Boy Ric Flair. Ric Flair is very similar to Lex Luger in regards to this list, in that almost all of their legacy resides outside of the WWE. But whether you watched him in the NWA, WCW or WWE, when Ric Flair was on your television, you were about to be entertained.

The 1992 Royal Rumble was a little more significant than other Rumbles, because instead of the winner going on to main event WrestleMania, he would instead become the WWF Champion. Flair’s performance in the ’92 Rumble is the stuff of legends. He entered at #3, lasted over an hour and eliminated 5 participants on his way to his first (and only) WWF Championship.

The Good: in my opinion, there is no “not so good” when it comes to The Nature Boy. Flair and the #1 entrant on this list are pretty much interchangeable. What Flair did for the NWA/WCW in the late 80’s, the #1 entrant did for the WWF, but I’m more of a WWF/E guy, so Flair is going to have to hold down the number two spot. With his most recent appearance on Mondays Raw, Flair has now been involved in wrestling in some capacity for over 43 years. Officially, he is a 16 time World Champion and he is the only person to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame twice (once as himself and once as a member of the Four Horsemen). His durability in the ring is unmatched, as during his heyday in the 80s, he would regularly wrestle hour long matches defending his coveted NWA World Title. It seemed as if every feud Flair was in became magical, and part of that magic has to be attributed to Flair. Terry Funk, Ricky Steamboat, Harley Race, Lex Luger, Dusty Rhodes, Kerry Von Erich, Shawn Michaels, Sting; everyone who worked with Ric Flair became better off for it. He had more nicknames than you could count, and besides his prowess as an in ring wrestler, he was also tremendous on the microphone and was the centerpiece of one of the greatest factions in wrestling history, The Four Horsemen. If I may slightly change the Horsemen’s famous saying, ‘Diamonds are forever, and so is Ric Flair.’

– Ryan