It was great to hear that WWE is bringing back the King of the Ring tournament as a one-night event next week on a special three-hour Raw.
Before it was brought to pay per view in 1993, the KOTR was a one-night single elimination tournament held each year at house shows in the New England area. For almost a decade, the tournament was the focal point of WWE's annual June pay per view offering.
Similar to what the Money in the Bank ladder match winner has become in recent years, the King of the Ring winner was traditionally a WWE mid carder that was being groomed for a top spot in the cards, if not a world title run. Some of the Kings went on to become greats in the industry, while others were colossal flops.
Counting only the winners of the PPV tournaments, here are my rankings of their majesties.
1. Steve Austin (1996) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Led WWE during its hottest run in the late 1990s; won 6 WWE world titles; considered one of the biggest stars in wrestling history.
2. Bret Hart (1993) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won four WWE world titles; won two WCW world titles; inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
3. Kurt Angle (2000) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won five world titles in WWE; won two world titles in TNA; headlined three WrestleManias.
4. Triple H (1997) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won 11 world titles in WWE; headlined seven WrestleManias; married into the most powerful family in wrestling.
5. Edge (2001) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won four world titles in WWE; headlined WrestleMania XXIV.
6. Owen Hart (1994) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Had a memorable feud with his brother Bret for the WWE world title, culminating in a classic cage match at SummerSlam 1994; headlined several pay per views and won various titles before his tragic death in 1999.
7. Booker T (2006) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won the Smackdown version of the world title; jumped to TNA.
8. Brock Lesnar (2002) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Won three WWE world titles; headlined WrestleMania XIX; now a featured heavyweight fighter in UFC.
9. Ken Shamrock (1998) - Post KOTR Career Highlights; Headlined a few WWE pay per views; was TNA's first world champion; Headlined some UFC cards.
10. Mabel (1995) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Headlined SummerSlam 1995 in a world title match against Diesel; As Big Daddy V competed for a WrestleMania world title shot in the Elimination Chamber in February.
11. Billy Gunn (1999) - Post KOTR Career Highlights: Briefly feuded against the Rock leading up to their SummerSlam 1999 match; Was part of the super hot D-Generation X in the late 1990s; Almost married Chuck Palumbo. Who wrote that junk?
Comments (3)
Good list. Personally, I think Billy Gunn deserves to be over Mabel, if only for the fact that he has slightly less "X-Pac heat" than Mabel does, regardless of gimmick. That, and he was (barely) more deserving of the honor. Mabel just falls into a long line of fat "wrestlers" that WWE thinks can get over (see also: Rikishi). They got lucky with Yokozuna, but couldn't replicate it later.
It is interesting that only three of these eleven are active in WWE today. Obviously Big Daddy V won't sneak past Ken Shamrock in the near future, but do you think Edge might someday surpass Triple H? Even though Kurt Angle's resume is weaker than Triple H's, it appears that you factored in the notion that H was already on his way when he passed through KOTR (as well as other factors, perhaps), whereas Angle's win in 2000 gave him a lot more momentum and served as more of a 'coming out party' to define him as a star. Could Edge add more success to his resume resulting in a higher ranking? Or would it be an inverted case of what I described above; are we too far removed from 2001 for Edge's future accomplishments to count in this ranking?
Reasonable people could differ on who went further after KOTR - Angle or HHH. I'd give Angle a small edge in that I think he's an overall better performer than Triple H, who will always have to deal with criticisms that some of his success is due to marrying into the McMahon family. Had Angle not left to TNA, he could have surpassed Triple H's success in WWE - and he still might some day. Even in TNA, he has done great work.
I'm surprised Billy/Kip/Monty didn't bottom out this list. Remember when Edge won KOTR the year after BG and had his first Royal Proclamation (King Edge the Awesome -- I miss those days) on RAW? BG came out to interrupt and Edge cut a wicked promo talking about how Billy was KOTR the year before and he was hosting the KOTR party at WWE New York the year after (culminating in the line "So Billy, if this time next year my very special assignment is to go eat a meatball hoagie at WWE New York, please...shoot me in the head!"). That was so true.