Federation Fridays #2: WWF Royal Rumble 1995 PPV
Welcome back to the second installment of Federation Fridays, the column where Stinger puts on some nostalgia glasses (and sometimes they’re rose-colored) and relives the glory days of the World Wrestling Federation. Last week’s debut looked at a WWF Championship Match between Bret Hart and 1-2-3 Kid from a RAW in July 1994. This week, I’m taking a look back at the entire WWF Royal Rumble 1995 pay-per-view.
January 22, 1995 was the first time I ever watched a Royal Rumble live. Not live in person. I mean live via pay-per-view, sitting at home knowing I didn’t already know who won. That distinction matters more than it sounds. When you’re a kid and you find out the results before you watch something, the whole thing deflates. This one I got to experience in real time, and I was hyped about it from the moment I woke up that morning.
My dad worked late that night, so he missed most of the opening match between Razor Ramon and Jeff Jarrett for the Intercontinental Championship. I didn’t miss a second of it. Razor was the champion coming in, and Jarrett had The Roadie in his corner, which already told you how this was probably going to go. Sure enough, The Roadie got involved, injured Razor’s leg, and the match ended on a countout. Jarrett had his hand raised, hadn’t actually beaten the man, and you could see it all over him that he knew it too. So he grabbed the microphone and called Razor yellow, goading him into restarting the match.
It worked, but not the way Jarrett planned. Ramon fought back with a bad leg, had Jarrett up for the Razor’s Edge, and that injured leg just buckled under the weight. Jarrett rolled him up and we had a new Intercontinental Champion. I was a fan of both men, and even losing, Razor came out of that match looking like a competitor. He didn’t take the cheap win. He came back out and fought and it cost him his championship. The bad leg was just the difference. That’s a good story even if it stings to watch.
The Undertaker and IRS was next, and I’ll be honest with you, even as a kid I was not locked in for this one. I liked Undertaker plenty, but the Million Dollar Corporation feud had been going for a while and IRS wasn’t exactly the guy you’d pick to make Taker look extraordinary. The match did what it needed to do and not much more. Twelve minutes felt like it ran a little longer than it should have.
Then came Diesel and Bret Hart for the WWF Championship, and that’s where the show really started to cook, as the kids would say. Two babyfaces. Two guys the crowd loved, thrown in against each other with the title on the line. This was still early in Diesel’s reign, his first real championship defense, and you wanted to see how he’d handle Bret at that level. The answer was pretty well, actually. The match had heat, the crowd was invested, and then the whole thing fell apart in the best way as every feud either man was in seemed to pour into the ring at once. First, Shawn Michaels came down and attacked Diesel when it appeared Diesel had the match won. Earl Hebner ordered the match must continue. Soon after, Bret had Diesel in the Sharpshooter and out came Owen Hart to attack him. Again, Earl said the match must continue. A few more minutes go by, Earl gets knocked down, and then HBK attacks Diesel again, swiftly joined by Owen Hart and Bob Backlund on Bret, then Jeff Jarrett and The Roadie on Diesel. Earl gets up, realizes he’s lost total control and the match has gone to hell in a handbasket, calls for the bell. It ends in a draw.
In hindsight, it worked. Diesel kept the belt, Bret didn’t have to lose, and it planted seeds for their rematch at Survivor Series later that year, which was excellent. But in the moment, watching it live, part of me wished Diesel could’ve just gotten a clean win and established himself properly. He had the run in him. The interference, while fun chaos in the moment, slightly softened what could have been a defining win.
The tag team tournament final was the match that surprised me the most on the whole card. 1-2-3 Kid and Bob Holly against Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka, with the vacant WWF Tag Team Championship on the line. The commentary kept calling them the Cinderella team, and that was exactly right. Nobody expected Holly and Kid to be there, let alone win. Bigelow and Tatanka with Ted DiBiase in their corner looked like the obvious answer. And then Kid pinned Bigelow and the place erupted. It was one of those moments that genuinely surprised you, which don’t happen as often as you’d like. A shame the underdog duo lost the titles the next night.
Earlier in the day, before the show started, I made two predictions. Shawn Michaels would win the Royal Rumble, and Crush would be the last man in the match. Shawn was my favorite wrestler at the time and I just had a feeling. The Crush prediction I won’t pretend had deep analysis behind it. Both were correct that though.
Michaels entered at number one and I immediately started thinking maybe my prediction was wrong. Nobody wins the Rumble from the first spot. That’s just not how it works. Except that night it was. He survived all twenty-nine other entrants, including a final stretch with the British Bulldog that had the crowd going back and forth the whole time. Bulldog knocked Michaels over the top and his music played, the ring announcer nearly called it, and then everybody realized Shawn had held onto the rope with one foot barely touching the floor. He slid back in, dumped Bulldog over, and that was it.
I want to mention Pamela Anderson, because I was nine years old and I thought she was the just the hottest woman on the planet at the time. She was shown backstage throughout the night, and was ringside for the Rumble as she was supposed to accompany the winner to the ring at WrestleMania. I was happy every time they showed her. That’s just honesty. A total smokeshow back in the 1990s.
The Rumble match itself didn’t have the star power of other years. It was pretty heavy on names that weren’t exactly headlining anything. But the pacing was fast, Michaels carried the whole thing on his back, and the finish was the kind of moment you talk about for years. For my money, it delivered. I recorded this PPV off of cable, and I probably watched it a hundred times between 1995 and 2002 or so, and a few more times after that.
My first live Rumble. Still one I remember clearly.
Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments or over at the Vortex Effect forums.
