WWE Royal Rumble: 10 Winners with the longest stay in the match

#3 Ric Flair - 1:00:02 (Royal Rumble 1992)

Ric Flair was the first superstar to last more than an hour in the Rumble match.

We now enter the category of winners who actually defined the Iron Man performance in the Royal Rumble match, by staying in the match for more than one hour. Who better than Ric Flair to be the first superstar on this list?

By 1992, Flair was arguably the biggest superstar on the planet, on par with Hulk Hogan, and he only solidified his stance with a performance that is still considered the gutsiest one in the history of the Royal Rumble.

Breaking all the longevity records set by the participants in the first four Rumble matches, Flair entered the match at number three and stayed between the ropes for an unprecedented one hour and two seconds.

This was eight minutes more than the previous record set by Rick Martel in 1991, twenty-six minutes more than Roddy Piper, the participant with the second-longest stay in that match, and a whopping 38 minutes more than any previous winner.

With five eliminations to his name, including the likes of Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, and Sid Justice, The Nature Boy's Royal Rumble and WWF Championship victory kick-started a period that he refers to as the favorite time of his legendary career.

Even though his record of most time spent was broken the very next year by Bob Backlund, it took 12 more years for someone to win the Royal Rumble match by staying in the match longer than Flair did in 1992.