Royal Rumble (2017)

The 2017 Royal Rumble was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE, held for wrestlers from the promotion's main roster brands, Raw and SmackDown. It was the 30th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 29, 2017, at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. This was the third Royal Rumble in San Antonio, after 1997 at the same venue and 2007 at the AT&T Center, and the fourth overall in the U.S. state of Texas, with 1989 in Houston. 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. After the 2016 event deviated from the match's annual tradition of awarding a world championship match at WrestleMania, as the 2016 match itself was for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship (truncated to WWE Championship later that year), the 2017 event returned the match to its annual tradition. Due to the reintroduction of the brand split in July 2016, which added a second world championship to give each brand its own top title, the winner of the 2017 match received a match for their respective brand's world championship at WrestleMania 33, either Raw's WWE Universal Championship or SmackDown's WWE Championship. This was the first time since 2013 in which there were two eligible championships for the winner to challenge for. The main event was the 2017 Royal Rumble match, which was won by SmackDown's Randy Orton, who last eliminated Raw's Roman Reigns. This was Orton's second win, after 2009, which made him the seventh multi-time winner. This was also the last time that only a men's Royal Rumble match took place as a women's version was introduced the following year. Seven other...