Royal Rumble (2011)

The 2011 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 24th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 30, 2011, at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, This was the second Royal Rumble at the venue, after the 2003 event when it was known as the FleetCenter. The event was based around the men's Royal Rumble match, a modified 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 2011 event, the winner received their choice to challenge for either Raw's WWE Championship or SmackDown's World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXVII. Since the second event in 1989, the Royal Rumble match traditionally had 30 participants, but for 2011, it was increased to 40. Not including the 50-man match at the standalone Greatest Royal Rumble event in April 2018, this was the largest Royal Rumble match at the annual Royal Rumble event. Following this event, the match went back to its traditional 30 participants. Four matches were featured on the event's supercard, a scheduling of more than one main event. The main event was the 2011 Royal Rumble match, which was won by SmackDown's Alberto Del Rio, who last eliminated Raw's Santino Marella. The primary match on the Raw brand was for the WWE Championship between reigning champion The Miz and Randy Orton, which Miz won to retain. The primary match on the SmackDown brand was Edge versus Dolph Ziggler for the World Heavyweight Championship, which Edge won to retain. The other featured match on the card was an interpromotional fatal four-way match for the...