Royal Rumble (2006)

The 2006 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 19th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 29, 2006, in the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida. 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 world championship match at WrestleMania. For the 2006 event, the winner received their choice to challenge for either Raw's WWE Championship or SmackDown!'s World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 22. This was the fifth Royal Rumble event in which the titular match was not the main event (final match), after the inaugural 1988 event and the events in 1996, 1997, and 1998. Six professional wrestling matches were featured on the event's supercard, a scheduling of more than one main event. The main event was the main match from SmackDown! and saw Kurt Angle defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Mark Henry, which Angle won to retain. The main match on the undercard was the 2006 Royal Rumble match, which featured wrestlers from both brands. SmackDown!'s Rey Mysterio, the second entrant, won the match by last eliminating Randy Orton, the 30th entrant, also from SmackDown!. The predominant match on the Raw brand was Edge versus John Cena for the WWE Championship, which Cena won to win the title.