Since the founding of the Royal Rumble back in 1988, the event has quickly become a big 4 PLE joining Survivor Series, SummerSlam, and WrestleMania as the longest annual PLEs in WWE history. With the introduction of the Women’s Royal Rumble back in 2018, WWE has made this one of the most sought-after and anticipated PLEs in all of WWE.

Since 1992 the prize of winning the 30-man match was a championship at WrestleMania, with the first 5 winners going 3/5 in their title shots and every winner from 2001 to 2007 went on to capture the title and their dreams at WrestleMania.

That trend would stop in 2008 as John Cena would come back meer months after tearing his pectoral muscle, entering as entrant #30, and winning the whole damn thing. Instead of taking his shot at WrestleMania, he would use it the next month at No-Way-Out instead and in the most menace move of all time, Randy Orton would slap the referee seconds after the opening bell forcing a dq, a title retention and wasting Cena’s title shot.

Cena would be added to a triple threat match at WrestleMania with Orton and Triple H but would lose again after Orton stole a pin to retain the title.

This pattern would continue the following year, with Randy Orton winning the Rumble in 2009, calling out Triple H and the WWE title. Orton would go on to lose the match at WrestleMania 25 becoming the 2nd Rumble winner in a row to lose their WWE title match at WrestleMania.

The next year Edge would come back from injury way sooner than expected at the Royal Rumble, winning the whole thing and calling out Chris Jericho and the World Heavyweight Title at Wrestlemania. Jericho would go on to cheat a win and retain the title marking the 3rd time in a row a wrestler won the rumble but lost at WrestleMania.

A year later, Edge would win the World Heavyweight Title but would be forced to retire due to a neck injury.

Fast forward 11 years to the 2021 rumble, where Edge would win the whole thing again but this time in front of no crowd. He would later go on to challenge Roman Reigns for the universal title and yet again come up short marking the first time in WWE history that a wrestler won the Royal Rumble twice and lost both title shots at Mania.

Going back to 2011, when the WWE moved from a 30-man Royal Rumble to a 40-man Royal Rumble with Alberto Del Rio coming out on top and challenging Edge for the World Heavyweight title at WrestleMania 28. He would go on to lose the match, becoming the 4th man in the row to win the rumble but lose their WrestleMania match.

Since then there have been 12 Royal Rumble winners with 7 of them failing to capitalize on their title shot with Drew McIntyre being the latest man to win the Rumble and capitalize on the title match at WrestleMania.

This means since 2008 11 of the 16 men who have won the Rumble have lost their title shot at WrestleMania. meaning whoever wins the rumble has a 70% chance of losing their WrestleMania title shot.

This begs the question, is the Royal Rumble cursed?

Since 2008 we have not seen 4 Wrestlers in a row win the Rumble but lose at WrestleMania. In 2024 we have a chance to see that again with Edge, Brock Lesnar, and Cody Rhodes being the last 3 winners who have all lost to Roman Reigns.

Before 2008 it was almost guaranteed that the Winner of the Rumble would go on to win the title at WrestleMania with 12 of the 16 winners going on to win the title. Since then it’s dropped by more than half to whoever wins the Royal Rumble having a 32% success rate of going on to win at WrestleMania.

So even tho the Royal Rumble itself is historic and is arguably the most iconic match in WWE history, a match that once nearly guaranteed the winner to achieve their dreams, has instead recently created broken dreams.