Royal Rumble (1998)

The 1998 Royal Rumble was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It was the 11th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 18, 1998, at the San Jose Arena in San Jose, California. The event was based around the men's Royal Rumble match, a modified 30-man battle royal in which the participants enter at timed intervals instead of all beginning in the ring at the same time and the winner received a WWF Championship match at WrestleMania XIV. This was the first Royal Rumble of the Attitude Era. Six matches were contested on the event's card. The main event was a casket match between Shawn Michaels, and The Undertaker for the WWF Championship, which Michaels won to retain the title. The main match on the undercard was the 1998 Royal Rumble match, which "Stone Cold" Steve Austin won by lastly eliminating Rocky Maivia, becoming the third person to win two Royal Rumble matches and back-to-back, after Hulk Hogan in 1990 and 1991 and Shawn Michaels in 1995 and 1996. This was subsequently the fourth Royal Rumble event in which the titular match was not the main event, after the inaugural 1988 event and the events in 1996 and 1997. Additionally, The Legion Of Doom (Hawk and Animal) defeated The New Age Outlaws ("Road Dogg" Jesse James and "Badd Ass" Billy Gunn) by disqualification, therefore did not win the WWF Tag Team Championship, and "The Rock" Rocky Maivia defeated Ken Shamrock to retain the WWF Intercontinental Championship.