5 fascinating facts about Royal Rumble winners you may not know

#1"Hacksaw" Jim Duggan is not the first Royal Rumble winner

Jim Duggan is often cited as the first-ever Royal Rumble winner...but he wasn't.

One of the most oft-used tales of legend in WWE is that "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan was the first-ever winner of the Royal Rumble. While this is true in one way, it's not true in the two versions it's told.

Jim Duggan was not the first Royal Rumble PPV winner. In fact, he wasn't even the first Royal Rumble match winner.

You may not know this, but the then-WWF gave their first try at a Royal Rumble match at a house show in St. Louis, MO in October of 1987. The bout featured 20 men and there is no known record of the eliminations nor times. All that is known is that Junkyard Dog was the last man eliminated. And who was he eliminated by?

One Man Gang.

That's right - the last man that Jim Duggan eliminated to "win the first-ever Royal Rumble" was the actual first winner of the Royal Rumble. It is also pertinent to note that One Man Gang was arguably more dominant in the 1988 Royal Rumble, eliminating four men to Duggan's three.

So now that you know that, you're probably yelling "well he's the first winner of the Royal Rumble pay-per-view, so that's more important!" Well, that's actually not true either...

See, the 1988 Royal Rumble wasn't a PPV - it was broadcast on the USA Network. The first one to be broadcast on pay-per-view was the 1989 Royal Rumble, which was won by Big John Studd.

First televised winner? Yes. But both of the commonly-told narratives on "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan's Royal Rumble victory are factually inaccurate.

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