Even though the blog is supposed to be on “hiatus” this month, the Royal Ramble continues onwards… because they’re already written and automatically publish on schedule. So enjoy some content on the blog, even if it’s based on play fighting.
Jeff Jarrett defeated WWF IC Champ Razor to win the title. The match ended when Razor was dumped to the floor and hurt his knee. He was thus counted out; however, Jarrett taunted him about being a quitter and Razor gets the match restarted. One superplex hurts Razor’s knee and Jarrett goes for the pin. Slow at times with all the stalling, but it was alright.
The Undertaker defeated Irwin R. Schyster, then gets distracted by King Kong Bundy while IRS steals the urn… because sure, why not? This was a thing that happened and let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
The match between WWF Champion Diesel and challenger Bret Hart ends in a no-contest. This is the second in a trilogy of matches that began with the 1994 King Of The Ring and eventually culminates in the Survivor Series No Holds Barred match later that year. In an interesting tidbit, I’d be watching these matches in reverse order; the Survivor series match via VHS tape, this match via the Rumble Anthology DVD set, and finally the KOTR match via WWE Network.
The 1-2-3 Kid and Sparky “Thurman” Plugg defeated Tatanka and Bam Bam Bigelow to win the vacant Tag Team titles in a pretty good match. They’d eventually lose the titles to the Smoking Gunns somewhere down the line.
And in the main event, featuring a feat that has been recapped countless times on various video packages, Shawn Michaels wins the Royal Rumble to earn himself a WWF Championship opportunity. This would be something of a great feat worthy of claim… if only it were a normal Rumble. See, what doesn’t get mentioned during all those accounts and recaps is that in this Rumble – billed as a faster-paced Rumble – entrants came in every sixty seconds, resulting in a match that wouldn’t even break the forty-minute mark.
So this is the beginning of what is going to be a rather long stretch of largely terrible wrestling. Not only the WWF side where champion Diesel has to defend against stiffs like Sid and Mabel, but also on the WCW side where Orange Goblin Mania is running mild. However, going into this show, you wouldn’t know it because this was a pretty good show with some good matches, one bad Undertaker match, and a fast-forwarded Rumble match. This was fun stuff… which is more than what I can say for the shows that would follow.
dtm666 