Royal Rumble 1997

Commentary Vince McMahon, Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross
The Royal Rumble 1997 kicks off with two established mid-card stars squaring off for the Intercontinental title. Champion Triple H, with his new butler, Mr Hughes takes on challenger Goldust, managed by Marlena. The feud these two began when Triple H wanted Marlena and went to the length of kidnapping her from ringside during one of Goldust’s matches. However, she was saved by Marc Mero at the time. The first half of the match shows the aggressive side to Goldust as he punishes Triple H both in and outside the ring. The two continue to battle using the stairs, and guardrails to hurt one another. Towards the end, Mr Hughes throws Triple H the championship belt while the distracts the referee. Triple H then goes over to Marlena and kisses her before moving back towards Goldust with the title in his hand. However, this backfires as Goldust hits Triple H with the belt and then pushes Marlena’s cigar into Mr Hughe’s face. Triple H though recovers and hits his finishing move, the pedigree on Goldust to take the win.
The next match is between one man versus a nation, as the lone soldier Ahmed Johnson takes on the army lead by Faarooq. The Nation of Domination by this time had grown even more with more officials amongst them D’Lo Brown and a woman. During the match Crush throws in a belt to Faarooq, however, it is Ahmed Johnson who ends up using it on Faarooq. Towards the end Crush gets involved again causing a disqualification for Faarooq. Each member of the Nation gets involved against Ahmed Johnson, but are all beaten by Ahmed. Finally, Ahmed grabs another member of the Nation of Domination and powerbombs him through the French announcer table. As Jim Ross says the war between Ahmed Johnson and the Nation of Domination has just begun.
The Undertaker takes on Vader in the next match. During the match, the Undertaker kicks out easily from a Vader bomb. Paul Bearer then shows up and although the Undertaker knocks Paul Bearer to the ground, when Bearer gets back up he takes the opportunity to hit the Undertaker with the urn. This allows Vader to splash the Undertaker and steal the win. At the end the Undertaker chokeslams the referee and shouts at Vince McMahon.
The next match is a 6 man tag team match between Canek, Héctor Garza and Perro Aguayo against Fuerza Guerrera, Heavy Metal and Jerry Estrada. All wrestlers are from the AAA organisation. Heavy Metal shows off some great agility with some flash moves in his confrontation against Héctor Garza. In the end, Perro Aguayo pins Heavy Metal to score the pin for his team.
The next match on the card is the actual Royal Rumble match itself, which begins with Nation of Domination member Crush and Ahmed Johnson. Ahmed Johnson eliminates himself when he sees Faarooq down the aisle. Steve Austin enters at number 4 and after a short period is left alone waiting for new competitors to enter until the British Bulldog enters. Following further eliminations, Steve Austin is yet again left alone in the ring, but this time it is Bret Hart’s entry that stops his short streak of eliminations. Towards the end, there are a number of potential winners remaining, including, Vader, Fake Diesel, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, Mankind, Rocky Maivia and The Undertaker who was the 30th entry. Bret Hart eliminates Steve Austin but the referees are distracted by Mankind and Terry Funk fighting with one another following their eliminations. Steve Austin sneaks back into the ring and throws out The Undertaker and Vader. Whilst Bret eliminates Diesel, Steve Austin throws Bret Hart over from behind and becomes the 1997 Royal Rumble winner.
The main event of the Royal Rumble 1997 is for the WWE championship, where Shawn Michaels, managed by Jose Lothario challenges the champion, Psycho Sid. Sid dominates most of the match and when he throws Shawn Michaels outside the ring, he grabs hold of Jose and his son Paul Lothario. However, unlike last time he does not hit Jose and instead returns to the ring with Shawn. Shawn however, gets his revenge from their previous encounter, when he grabs the camera from the cameraman and hits Sid with it. Shawn then follows this up with sweet chin music to score the win against Psycho Sid.