Royal Rumble (2001) - Background

Background

The main event at the Royal Rumble was the Royal Rumble match, a battle royal in which wrestlers entered the ring at regular timed intervals of approximately 120 seconds, attempting to eliminate each other by throwing opponents over the top rope and both of their feet touching the ground. The winner of the match received a match for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania X-Seven. The match is scheduled annually and the scripted build up occasionally features qualifying matches. The Rock began discussing the Royal Rumble on the January 4 episode of SmackDown!, when he promised to win the Royal Rumble match for the second year in a row to earn the title match at WrestleMania with the first being the previous year's Royal Rumble event. On the following week's episode of SmackDown!, Vince McMahon, the WWF Chairman, added Stone Cold Steve Austin to the match. The same episode also featured a standard match involving four wrestlers contested between The Rock, Kane, Rikishi and The Undertaker, with the winner earning the right to enter at number 30 in the Royal Rumble match. The match was won by Rikishi.

A featured preliminary match at the Royal Rumble was WWF Champion Kurt Angle defending against Triple H in a standard match. The build up to the match began on the January 8 episode of Raw, when Angle defended the WWF Championship against Steve Austin, which ended in a No Contest when Triple H interfered and ambushed Austin with a steel pipe. On the January 11 episode of SmackDown!, Vince McMahon announced that Angle would defend his title at the Royal Rumble event against Triple H. Leading up to the event, both men spoke about the match, with Triple H claiming that Angle only held the championship because he allowed him to, and Angle denying this.

Another featured preliminary contest at the Royal Rumble was a ladder match for the WWF Intercontinental Championship, in which the champion, Chris Benoit, defended his title against Chris Jericho. In the match, the title belt was suspended above the ring from the ceiling, and the only method to win the competitors had to climb a ladder to retrieve the belt. Their feud started at WrestleMania 2000, when Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho challenged Kurt Angle both the Intercontinental title and the WWF European Championship in a Two-fall Triple Threat match. During that match, both men pinned each other in one fall each to win the respective championship from Angle. Since that event, Benoit would hold three pay per view victories over Jericho esp. at SummerSlam in the best 2 out of 3 falls match. On the January 4 episode of SmackDown!, Benoit defended his title against Jericho in a standard match. During the match, Perry Saturn (Perry Satullo) and Dean Malenko, Benoit's partners in the group of The Radicalz, interfered by attacking Jericho, causing him to win the match by disqualification but not the championship. On the January 8 episode of Raw, Jericho teamed with The Hardy Boyz (Matt and Jeff Hardy) against The Radicalz (Saturn, Malenko, and Benoit) in a six man tag team match, which Jericho won by pinning Benoit. On the January 11 episode of SmackDown!, Jericho demanded a title match at the Royal Rumble, and Benoit offered to give Jericho any type of match he wanted. Jericho then announced that their match would be a ladder match.