Royal Rumble (2012)

The 2012 Royal Rumble was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE. It was the 25th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 29, 2012, at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the first Royal Rumble event held since the end of the first brand extension in August 2011. 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 2012 event, the winner received their choice to challenge for either the WWE Championship or World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXVIII. While the previous year's event had featured 40 participants in the match, the 2012 event reduced it back to its traditional 30 participants. Six professional wrestling matches were featured at the event. The main event was the 2012 Royal Rumble match. Sheamus, the 22nd entrant, won the match by last eliminating Chris Jericho, the 29th entrant. Two title matches were featured: a WWE Championship match with CM Punk defending against Dolph Ziggler, which Punk won to retain, and a Triple Threat Steel Cage match for the World Heavyweight Championship between the reigning champion Daniel Bryan, Big Show, and Mark Henry, which Bryan won to retain. Incidentally, this event was also noted as Mick Foley's last night as an active wrestler as he would compete in the Royal Rumble match. The event received 443,000 pay-per-view buys, slightly down from 446,000 buys the previous year's event had received.