Royal Rumble (2003)

The 2003 Royal Rumble was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown! brand divisions. It was the 16th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 19, 2003, at the FleetCenter in Boston, Massachusetts. This was the first Royal Rumble held after the first brand split was introduced in March 2002 and it was also the first Royal Rumble produced under the WWE name after the promotion was renamed from World Wrestling Federation (WWF) to WWE in May 2002. 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 with the winner receiving a world championship match at WrestleMania. Previously, there was only one world championship to challenge for at WrestleMania, but due to the brand split, which led to the creation of a second world championship with each brand having its own top title, the 2003 Royal Rumble winner received a match for their respective brand's world championship at WrestleMania XIX, either Raw's World Heavyweight Championship or SmackDown!'s WWE Championship. This was in turn the first time in which two world championships were eligible to be challenged for by the winner. Six matches were contested at the event, as well as one match taped for the Sunday Night Heat pre-show. The main event was the 2003 Royal Rumble match, which was won by SmackDown!'s Brock Lesnar, who last eliminated The Undertaker, also from SmackDown!. On the undercard, the primary match for Raw saw Triple H versus Scott Steiner for the World Heavyweight Championship, which Steiner won by disqualification resulting in Triple H retaining the championship as titles do not change...