Should “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig have won the 1990 Royal Rumble?
We’ll get to that in a minute.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Nevin Barich, I’m a former sportswriter for the L.A. Daily News, I’ve been out of the sportswriting game longer than I care to admit, and I’ve graciously been given an opportunity from “The Sporting Tribune” to write about historical matches and cards in both pro wrestling and boxing. I’m an old school fan of these sports so let’s go for a ride into the past!
Starting with the 1990 Royal Rumble.
I want to talk about this event for a couple of reasons. First, with the 2026 Royal Rumble now in the books, it made sense for my first article to be about one of WWE’s most iconic match types.
And second: the 1990 Royal Rumble was the first Rumble I ever watched. So I’m a bit nostalgic.
The undercard leading to the Royal Rumble match was pretty ho-hum, with the only highlights being Mr. Perfect and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake laying down the foundation for an eventual feud, and “Rugged” Ronnie Garvin and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine having a submission match that was both better than expected and was the last major match either of these wrestlers would have during their WWE run.
But the Royal Rumble itself more than made up for the undercard. Among the highlights:
--“The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase drawing No. 1 after paying to have No. 30 at the 1989 Rumble.
--Dibiase and Jake “The Snake” Roberts having two minutes all to themselves early on in the Rumble, continuing their feud that had begun the previous May.
--The seeds being laid down for a feud between “Macho King” Randy Savage and “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes, which began earlier in the evening when the two had an altercation on the Brother Love Show and then continued at the Rumble itself when Savage took a huge back body drop from Rhodes out of the ring and onto the apron.
--And perhaps most memorable: a one-on-one altercation between WWE champion Hulk Hogan and Intercontinental champion The Ultimate Warrior that easily got the crowd’s biggest pop of the night. This laid the groundwork for their eventual title-for-title main event at Wrestlemania 6 a couple of months later.
The Rumble would end after Hogan kicked out of Mr. Perfect’s “Perfect Plex” and threw Perfect over the steel post and onto the floor. Hogan posed for the fans, like he always did back then, and sent the crowd home happy.
But many people who watched this Rumble—both at the time and over the years—wondered whether Hogan really needed to go over here. Critics of Hogan’s win here point out that he was already world champion, was as popular as ever, and winning the Rumble really didn’t elevate Hogan that much more, since he was already at such a high level within the company.
So if not Hogan going over, then who? These same critics argued for Mr. Perfect, who had been getting the “Hogan rub” since October 1989, when he helped “The Genius” Lanny Poffo upset Hogan via count-out on Saturday Night’s Main Event and later destroyed Hogan’s world title belt with a hammer. Perfect had been scoring count-out and disqualification wins against Hogan during a house show run between the two wrestlers. So, the reasoning went, if Perfect went over instead of Hogan at the Rumble, Perfect could be realistically seen as a challenger for Hogan at a future WWE pay-per-view, maybe even Wrestlemania!
But here was the problem:
The Ultimate Warrior.
The Warrior, by this point, was being groomed to usurp Hogan as champion. At Survivor Series 1989, the Warrior’s match was given the main event slot and the crowd reacted positively. He had a good house show run with Andre the Giant, in which Warrior often beat the Giant in 30 seconds. Then, of course, there was the huge pop when Warrior and Hogan had their brief encounter at the Rumble. In short, all signs pointed to Hogan vs. Warrior at Wrestlemania.
And having Mr. Perfect win the Rumble would have tarnished all of that.
Hogan, despite being the top dog at this point, needed the victory at the Rumble to ensure he would remain in the top spot at Wrestlemania. In addition, despite not winning the Rumble, Perfect (along with The Genius) was soon after involved in a highly-touted Saturday Night’s Main Event tag-team match against Hogan and Warrior, was given a Wrestlemania slot against Beefcake—at the time the company’s third-hottest babyface behind only Hogan and Warrior—and later given a run with the Intercontinental Title and being paired with Bobby “The Brain” Heenan as his manager.
So Perfect didn’t need to win the 1990 Royal Rumble. Giving him the victory would have done more harm than good.
