Royal Rumble 1997 Thoughts

Might be a little rusty as it's been a while or it feels like it's been a while since I've written much on the site. Either way though it's Royal Rumble season which means I had to spend sometime watching a Rumble from the past. This year I chose the Royal Rumble from 1997 and boy was it something else. One of the main things I noticed was the fact that it was a very silent crowd and a lot of that could've been chalked up to the Alamo Dome being a very large building, but it was the between time. This Royal Rumble falls in a time where WWE isn't the hottest company in the world and is actually about a month away from the lowest rated Raw in company history which would take place overseas. 

Audio issues early in the match left you wondering what was happening as superstars would just appear and there really wasn't much from the fans until Ahmed Johnson appeared with an exceptionally large 2 x 4 to attack Faarooq. Even with an in fusion of AAA stars including Latin Lover, Mil Mascaras and Cibernetico it didn't drum up a reaction as I believe most WWE fans wouldn't have known who these guy were or why they should care about them. One takeaway is when Mil Mascaras eliminated himself by jumping off the top to the floor technically not going over the top rope so even though his feet hit the floor he shouldn't be eliminated. 

The amount of Royal Rumble debuts within the match should how deep the transition was the company was going through at the time. For those who might not know 1997 Royal Rumble was actually Goldust's first Royal Rumble. I also couldn't help but notice the amount of praise that Vince was heaping on Rocky Maivia upon him entering the match. There was also a nice mixture of surprise performances and expected solid performances based on knowing history. Terry Funk had the most surprising performance being in the ring for a lot long then I would've expected especially being the hometown hero. The expected solid performances came from The Rock, Austin and Mankind as I would say think about the upcoming year.