Last Word on Sports reached out to Travis Stowe to give a detailed analysis on the Royal Rumble. This is Part I. Part II will be published on Saturday.
WWE as sports entertainment has been missing something that all other sports excel in: numbers and analysis. Nowadays the sports world is as much about the sharing of stats and analysis as it is highlights and action. I have always wanted to bring this statistical analysis to professional wrestling as I think fans would appreciate attention being paid to the sports side of the business.
In honor of the upcoming 2015 Royal Rumble, I sat down and re-watched the 2014 Royal Rumble, in which Batista won and Roman Reigns set a new record for eliminations, and collected as much data as I could. I logged a total of 706 events, including entrances, strikes, grapple moves, and elimination attempts. While watching, I collected a set of questions I wanted to examine within the data. Does Reigns actually deserve credit for eliminating 12 combatants? Why do guys insist on trying to muscle guys over the top; does that ever work? Is CM Punk taking a nap over there in the corner? The data gives the answer to these questions and more.
Royal Rumble Eliminations
Lets start at the most important metric; Eliminations. It has always bothered me that WWE and others count every elimination by every person as a full elimination, but the math doesn’t add up. If everyone gets full credit, you end up with far too many eliminations. There were 29 eliminations. That’s it. We have to divvy those 29 up somehow. For example Wikipedia claims a total of 34 people were eliminated in the 2014 rumble. Where’d those extra 5 guys come from? This happens because when people work together, each of them gets credit.
Therefore, I went through and gave partial credits to all those involved in every elimination. If wrestlers teamed up to toss a wrestler over the top rope, or if one combatant tossed a wrestler over to the apron and another punched him off, I split the credit for that elimination evenly.
The result is a list of eliminations that totals 29 eliminations. Reigns did not make it to 12 eliminations, but actually 9.5. Three of his eliminations were a team up of the entire shield and 1 was shared with Batista.
The immediate reaction to this is to compare this new value to Kane’s 2001 performance. I went back and looked at Kane’s eliminations and saw that he only had assistance in one elimination, resulting in his total standing at 10.5. I haven’t checked every rumble for other inconsistencies, but I know Kane is higher than Reigns. I believe that its fair to stand by the fact that Reigns does not hold this record after all.
This isn’t to say that Reigns didn’t have an amazing rumble. He had an amazing match, just not a record breaking one.
Elimination Percentage (%)
I also kept track of every attempt to eliminate someone. This includes simply trying to muscle someone over the top rope and every maneuver used to try to knock someone over the top rope. I counted a total of 168 elimination attempts, with partial credit given to those that worked together. Of these, only 17.2% were successful. 8 wrestlers had a better elimination % than the average. Kane actually had a 100% elimination percentage, having only attempted to eliminate CM Punk and succeeding, but I believe his percentage should be disqualified due to his already being eliminated at the time of his attempt.
This leaves El Torito with the best elimination %. That said, a sample of one can’t possibly say that he had the best performance. Reigns elimination percentage of 76% is actually quite impressive. For the most part, this is because he didn’t spend time trying to muscle someone over the top rope, but used clotheslines and gorilla presses to throw people out.
When looking for poor performances, it’s hard to judge people that had only a few elimination attempts and a 0% success rate, but Cesaro stands out as being the most futile in his attempts. He was extremely innovative though, twice trying to toss someone out using a catapult. Shamus deserves a mention as well. He came into the match as the 17th entrant and still managed to have the most elimination attempts. Having only succeeded in eliminating Big E, I consider his efforts to be among the poorest.
Defense
With the exception of Batista, everyone eventually got eliminated. Therefore I think an interesting stat to check out is how successful each of the combatants were avoiding elimination. Here I compare how many times a person was the victim of an opponent’s elimination attempt and the resulting % of success.
With a low % being the best, it makes sense that we see Seth and Punk at the top here, still since they were in the match for so long. It appears to me that being a big guy isn’t an advantage in the Rumble, though the commentary always makes it seem that way. These guys don’t usually have the dexterity to save themselves from elimination attempts and their center of gravity is too high to stay below the ropes. It stands to reason that guys like Khali, Kevin Nash (and Big Show this year) could just go dead weight, sitting in the corner and never get eliminated (But where’s the fighting spirit in that!).
The biggest stand-out to me on this chart is Kofi being so low. He’s known for being exceedingly difficult to eliminate, but it seems he ran into Reigns at the wrong time. I this is an interesting point. I’m all about stats and data, but sometimes even I have to admit to a bit of the intangibles. Maybe this year I’ll keep track of how many of the elimination avoidances are ‘acrobatic’ versus simply holding on for dear life.
Lastly, I think its worth pointing out Cody Rhodes’ unsung performance. As the #4 entrant, he lasted over 20 minutes and avoided being eliminated 10 times. I’d give his performance most-underrated for this rumble.
Maneuver Analysis
Here’s another thing that has always bothered me most about the Royal Rumble; why do wrestlers always try to just muscle other guys over the top rope to eliminate them? It seemed to me that this basically never works. It was always a clothesline or a back body drop that did the trick. But before I could claim this, I had to confirm it using data. [Yes, I know that these elimination attempts are actual rest moves, but come on, it’s more fun this way!]
I broke the 168 elimination attempts into two categories: maneuvers (clotheslines, punches, etc) and standard elimination attempts (muscling someone over, whether alone or with others). The results are quite clear.
17% of elimination attempts succeed, but standard eliminations only worked 9% of the time. Not all maneuvers were successful, but in general they are far more successful than the contrary. Looking closer you can see this story far better.
Simply muscling someone over the ropes, which I label “Elimination Attempt”, has only a 6% success rate, far lower than the average. interestingly 2-person attempts were even less successful at 4%. That said, 3-person and 4-person attempts were far stronger. So there it is. Either get a few guys together or do something interesting when eliminating a guy.
Tune in to Part II tomorrow.
