zkonedog In reviewing the four previous Royal Rumble installments before this one, one of my chief complaints on every single one of them was the event was used more as a vehicle for Wrestlemania than as a stand-alone event. Well, this changed with Royal Rumble 1992, where the WWF World Championship Belt was at stake for the winner of the big Rumble.Unfortunately, what with the decreased popularity of Hulk Hogan (one can only be on top for so long) and the utter failure of the Ultimate Warrior character to carry that torch, there really were no interesting plot angles to keep things fun and interesting. The WWF still didn't quite know what to do with Randy "Macho Man" Savage, the Hulk-Sid Justice feud was never all it was hyped to be, and Ric Flair as a major participant in the WWF cannon...you have to be kidding me. It just goes to show how desperate the company was at that time to procure top-tier athletes and entertainers.Thus, although the stakes for this Royal Rumble were higher than they had ever been before, the entire event fizzled due to lack of interesting characters or impressive athletes. The preliminary matches are almost unwatchable, the Rumble features genuine excitement only for about every fifth or sixth participant, and even the broadcast booth isn't as strong as it once was, this time populated by Gorilla Monsoon (always very good) and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (a terrible "negative man" compared to Jesse Ventura).Unless you are a huge WWF fan and are watching all the events in order, this is one you could easily skip, as it will leave you unsatisfied and feel like a huge waste of time.

bh_tafe3 This was the nature Boy's finest night in the WWE, surviving in the Royal Rumble match over an hour before winning the match and also the Undisputed WWE Championship. His words before and after the win, and the commentary of his friend and manager Bobby Heenan during the match made the night.Well the story going into this rumble was that there had been evil shenanigans in a recent series of WWE Championship matches involving Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker. The Undertaker had half the WWE roster run out and interfere in the match where he defeated Hogan for the title at Survivor Series and Hogan himself had blatantly cheated to regain the title at the This Tuesday in Texas PPV a week or so later. So Jack Tunney had stripped Hogan of the title and put it up for grabs in the 30 man royal rumble match.This memorable night began with some tag team action with the New Foundation: Owen hart and Jim Neidhart, a spin off of the original Hart Foundation with Bret Hart replaced by his younger brother, defeated The Orient Express. (I'd like to thank Kassa Naster for correcting me here as I originally had the New Foundation's opponent listed as The Rockers. Nice pick-up Kassa!) Good match. Owen really was very gifted.Next up we get a recap of Bret Hart losing his Intercontinental Championship to the evil Canadian The Mountie. Bret had wrestled the Mountie despite being injured and was beaten after the Mountie cheated. The Mountie seemed proud of himself as he spoke to Sean Mooney backstage, but he had little to be proud of less than ten minutes later as Rody Piper absolutely destroyed him to win the title. Incredibly this was Piper's only singles title in the WWE. Not much of a match, but who cares? Next up the Beverly Brothers defeated the Bushwackers in a pretty long and slow match. The novelty for the Whackers had worn off by this stage and fans didn't really respond too well. This was followed by the Legion of Doom: Hawk and Animal losing to the Natural Disasters: Earthquake and Typhoon, by count out. But seeings as it was only a count out the LOD kept their tag team titles.And finally we come to the big match of the night, the Royal Rumble. This was one of the more star studded Rumble matches ever with The British Bulldog, Ted DiBiase, Flair, Shawn Michaels, Tito Santana, Roddy Piper, Jake Roberts, Jimmy Snuka, Undertaker, Randy Savage, Col Mustafa (The Iron Shiek) Hulk Hogan, Sgt Slaughter and Sid Justice all participating. The Warlord set the record (since broken) for the shortest elimination in history, Sid Justice had the most eliminations with six, but Ric Flair not only became the first man to stay in a rumble match for an hour, he won the thing! The match ended with Sid eliminating Hogan as Hogan was trying to throw out DiBiase. Hogan then grabbed Sid's hand allowing Flair to throw him out. The crowd on the night was booing Hogan for acting like a sook, but it was later edited for the VHS release to fans booing Justice.Jack Tunney then presented the WWE Championship to Flair backstage. Flair said "With a tear in my eye, this is the greatest moment of my life." THe truth of that statement is debatable, but it was certainly a great day for wrestling fans. They had seen an entertaining PPV with a tremendous Main Event and a new champion crowned.The questions now were what was going to happen between Hogan and Sid after this ugly incident and who was Flair going to face at Wrestlemania?

BobbyUK Here are the matches...The New Foundation v Orient Express: It took Orient Express exactly one year to get another P-P-V appearance and this time against the newly formed New Foundation (Owen Hart and an out-of-shape Jim Niedhart). The match was good, showcasing some impressive moves by Owen. Owen balanced on the top ring-rope to get out of an arm-bar at one point. Mr Fuji yet again used his stick to good effect allowing Owen to charge shoulder first into it. Despite the high quality of the wrestling, there was little doubt as to who the winners were as Owen pinned Tanaka after the Rocket Launcher. This would be The Orient Express's last WWF PPV and, despite their success, The New Foundation would split shortly afterwards too. 6/10'Rowdy' Roddy Piper v The Mountie: The match developed after Piper came to Bret Hart's aid after his recent loss against The Mountie (a 'high fever' contributed to this). Piper dished out most of the offence, making The Mountie submit to the sleeper-hold before using his own cattle prod against him. Despite the poor match it was nice to see Piper finally wear some gold. 4/10Bushwhackers v Beverly Brothers: This match was given too much time. A huge portion of it involved The Bushwhackers playing to the crowd before they do their typical Bushwhackers-get-beaten-up routine. Their assistant at ringside, a misfit called Jamison, got attacked by The Genius during the match. We were finally put out of our misery when The Beverly Brothers pinned Butch after a double axe-handle. After Bushwhackers lost the match, they finally got hold of The Genius allowing Jamison to get a measure of revenge. What felt like forever, Jamison finally kicked The Genius in the shin giving The Bushwhackers a moral victory of sorts. Horrendous. 1/10Legion of Doom v Natural Disasters: An awful plodding, lumbering match with a controversial ending tacked on the end for the sake of it. The Legion of Doom are limited when they wrestle bigger opponents than them because most of their attraction is seeing them throw people about. The Natural Disasters beat Legion of Doom by count-out. Apparently, despite Jimmy Hart's long period of time in the WWF, he still hadn't worked out that the WWF titles don't change hands via a count-out or disqualification. Hart made a big deal about it in a backstage interview saying he was going to call his lawyers to reverse the decision. Yawn... 2/10Royal Rumble 1992: For the first time, the WWF title is on the line after the controversial matches involving Hulk Hogan and Undertaker making the title vacant and the focus is on mainly one man - Ric Flair. Flair starts off at No 3 and continues to the end taking quite a beating in the process. Some excellent performances this year involve British Bulldog who picked No 1, Shawn Michaels, 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, Irwin R Schyster and even 'Hacksaw' Jim Duggan (though it was a little difficult to track down Duggan because he looked quite similar to Piper in matching blue trunks). The main upset of the night was Ted Dibiase getting eliminated in less than 2 minutes. He never did have much luck after taking on 'Sensational Sherri' and only regained his fortunes when they parted company. For me, the main highlight of the night was Roddy Piper racing to the ring to get at Ric Flair half-way through, attacking him like a madman until Jake Roberts came out. I would have preferred to tease a Piper victory at the end by having him be the last person Ric Flair eliminate to win the Rumble. Sid Justice showed his dominance at the end after receiving a late number and 'Machoman' made an error jumping over the top rope after eliminating Jake Roberts forgetting he was in a Rumble. I personally think that was a botch as Undertaker made sure Savage was tossed back into the ring to save face. Flair finally eliminated Justice with outside help from Hogan to win setting us up for one of the best wrestling promos the WWF ever had featuring an overjoyed Bobby Heenan, Mr Perfect and a delirious Ric Flair. 7/10The WWF would give the roster a real spring-clean after this Royal Rumble. For various reasons Greg Valentine, Haku, The Barbarian, the late Texas Tornado, Nikolai Volkoff (thank God), the late Hercules, Col Mustapha (originally The Iron Sheik), Jimmy Snuka and The Warlord departed from PPV status though some of these wrestlers would return as cameos in later Royal Rumbles/PPVs. One important development was the crumbling of WWF Hulkamania which started in my opinion just after Wrestlemania VII. Hogan, just like in Royal Rumble 1989, whined about getting eliminated by Sid Justice and in retaliation eliminated Justice from the outside. The difference between 1989 and 1992 was, despite Justice trying as hard as he could to be heel, Hogan was booed for eliminating Justice. Times were changing and I am not sure Hogan was ready for that response which, along with the upcoming steroid trials, sparked his retirement bout at the next Wrestlemania. Talking about eliminations, is it pure coincidence that Hogan eliminated Warlord three times in a Rumble in four years? A shame really because I think Warlord could have been groomed to be a real contender if pushed right.One thing that is talked about a lot when mentioning Royal Rumble 1992 is the quality of the commentating. Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon expertly told the story of Ric Flair in such a humorous way that, in some respects, was better than the wrestling at times. An entertaining Rumble marred by some terrible undercard matches.

wwfhistoryguy *SPOILERS* In all respects, this one was very good but not quite as good as the year before.The opening tag team match between the New Foundation and Orient Express was exciting, but doesn't quite measure up to the Rockers and Orient Express. This was the only time the New Foundation faced the Express; the Express and the Rockers had the thing down to an art by the time of their Royal Rumble match.As far as comparing the title changes from '91 and '92, I think everyone was more satisfied with Rowdy Roddy Piper dominating the Mountie than with the Slaughter-Warrior match. Piper was truly inspiring here, standing up for Bret Hart and becoming the first wrestler to perform in both the undercard and main event of a Royal Rumble. The end of the match is great, as he throws away his wild man persona and smiles broadly about his first WWF title win. In my opinion, he was the true star of this Rumble.The two other tag team matches were diverting.Now, the Rumble had only a few great performances, and for this reason, I don't put it in as high regards as the one from the year before, which had about fifteen. Still, it was one of the great ones. The set-up was perfect, letting the second-tier wrestlers (Davey Boy Smith, Shawn Michaels, Tito Santana, Big Bossman, Kerry von Erich) have their moments; then giving the stage over to the top level (Piper, Savage, Undertaker, Sid Justice, Hulk Hogan, Skinner). This was Ric Flair's WWF highlight, and it's good that they made it unique to his great WCW moments. In WCW, he had great singles matches; here, he had a great match with 28 other men.Perhaps I'm too old school. This was, after all, part of a much different era from the year before. So it's definitely worth it to buy the video if you can find it.