WWE Rewind: Royal Rumble 2003

Royal Rumble 2003 poster featuring Triple H

We are just 10 days away from the 25th anniversary of the Royal Rumble, scheduled to be held on January 29th, 2012 at Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. We have revisited fifteen Royal Rumble matches over the past few weeks. Now, let us take a look at the sixteenth Royal Rumble match which took place on January 19, 2003 at the Fleet Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Here are some important facts about this match:

• This was the first Royal Rumble match to be held under the WWE banner and the first after brand extension (Raw and Smackdown).
• The time interval between consecutive entrances was once again reduced to 90 seconds.
• Brock Lesnar won the first Royal Rumble match of his career by eliminating The Undertaker. Brock entered the match as #29.
• Chris Jericho lasted the longest in this match, for about 39 minutes.
• Jericho also made the most number of eliminations in this match – six.

You can watch this historic Royal Rumble match in this video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHu6-U1RO_Y&feature=player_detailpage

In case you haven’t watched them yet, relive the thrill of earlier Royal Rumble events at these links:

• Royal Rumble 2002
• Royal Rumble 2001
• Royal Rumble 2000
• Royal Rumble 1999
• Royal Rumble 1998