WWE Royal Rumble: Why the Match Should Go Back to Having 30 Wrestlers

The WWE conducted a little experiment at the 2011 Royal Rumble pay-per-view, which came in the form of “The Biggest Royal Rumble in History.” 

The first 23 over-the-top-rope Rumble matches from 1988 to 2010 featured 30 participants each, but company officials made the decision to expand that number to 40 in 2011. 

The idea behind the move was quite obviously that “bigger is better,” but as we learned, that wasn’t exactly true.

In fact, the 2011 Royal Rumble proved that less is indeed more. 

While the company was clearly adding an extra 10 participants in order to use to the tagline of the “biggest Royal Rumble ever” and thus to sell more pay-per-views, the concept of the 40-man Rumble failed miserably. 

Sure, we got a couple of surprise appearances from future WWE Hall of Famers like Kevin Nash and Booker T, but the majority of the 10 additional spots did not go to big names or WWE legends.

They went to lower-card workers and jobbers. 

I don’t mind seeing the likes of Yoshi Tatsu and Curt Hawkins getting to compete on PPV for a change, but the WWE completely wasted those 10 additional spots by giving them to guys who had no realistic shot at actually winning the Royal Rumble.

Going into the Rumble match each year, there are usually, at the absolute most, 10 guys who might have an actual chance of winning.

But if we’re going to be completely honest with ourselves here, then it’s more like five competitors who might win the bout and the guaranteed WrestleMania title shot that goes along with it. 

So, what exactly is expanding to a 40-man field going to accomplish? Well, besides getting more guys on PPV, nothing. 

The additional 10 entrants made the match seem more crowded and more rushed, with eliminations happening a bit quicker and too many guys in the ring at the same time.

And there’s no point to it. 

There’s positively no reason why I should be excited about seeing Darren Young or Tyson Kidd enter the Rumble match when I’d bet my left leg that neither guy has a remote chance of winning the bout or even making any noise in it. 

The concept of the 40-man Royal Rumble just doesn’t work at the moment because the WWE roster is as thin as it’s been at any point in company history.

The departures of main-eventers like Edge and Chris Jericho—and even of upper mid-carders like MVP or Carlito—have stripped the WWE of a luxury it once had: a loaded roster that could fill out a 40-man Rumble match with mid-carders and main-eventers without any sort of problem whatsoever. 

Now, however, the WWE has only 10 or so bona-fide superstars and up-and-coming stars who can be taken seriously as threats to win the match or who at least will get the crowd into the bout.

The rest is simply filler, guys who are there to make the top-tier stars look good and collect a paycheck. 

Trust me, I would be all for a 40-man Rumble format if it truly meant the “biggest Royal Rumble in history,” but it means that only in number and not in terms of star power. 

Let’s take, for example, the 41-man Battle Royal that took place on SmackDown a couple of months ago. The match was won by Randy Orton, but the WWE had to pull guys such as Matt Striker out of the wood works just to get 41 competitors in the bout. 

That’s exactly what will happen if WWE officials decide to go with another 40-man Royal Rumble match, and for the sake of my sanity, I hope they drop it back down its original number, 30, and fill it with as many main-event and mid-card caliber superstars as possible.