Be honest fellow wrestling maniacs, how many coffees did you need to get through Monday after the epic Royal Rumble show carried on till 5.30 in the bloody morning?
Still our grappling geeks have been crunching the numbers on our Royal Rumble Fantasy Game since Sunday’s event (won by Seth Rollins) and we’ve got ourselves a winner so knowledgeable, Vince McMahon himself will want to hire him.
Over 4,000 of you entered our battle royal to win a trip of your choice to either Raw or Smackdown Live tapings in London on May 13 and 14 respectively, but only one of you could emulate the Kingslayer to claim the crown.
Before we get to our winners, let’s reveal the all-important combination you needed to score with your three picks that totalled no more than 10 rumble points.
First of all, of course you needed the winner of the 2019 Royal Rumble Seth Rollins! Not only did he take home the 25-point bonus for winning the whole thing and four additional points for being in the final four, he also scored an extra 10 points by winning the Endurance Award for lasting the longest in the match, at 43 minutes and 26 seconds.
All told, Monday Night Rollins ended on a stunning total of 66 points by himself, so it should come as no surprise that you needed him in your trio to stand any chance of winning a prize. Next on the hit list, you had to have a veteran in the shape of Shelton Benjamin.
This is mainly because he became the first man in the rich three-year history of the Royal Rumble Fantasy Game to land the elusive Skinning The Cat bonus for ten points. That helped him to a spectacular total of 15 points for a wrestler valued at just two in our game. What a bargain!
Finally, he might be on a 258-match losing streak, but Curt Hawkins is a winner in our eyes thanks to the single elimination he scored for seeing off Titus O’Neil after coming out from his hiding spot under the ring. Added together Rollins (6), Shelton (2) and Hawkins (1) come in as a value of nine in our game and would have scored you a total of 87 points to net top spot.
Here’s the kicker folks, out of the thousands of entries, none of you actually guessed the winning combo. That forced us to go to the second-best trio in the scoring, which was Rollins (6), Aleister Black (3) and Hawkins (1), which would have landed you a score of 82.
Only one of you managed to pick that trio, making Mike Pyper from Forres in Scotland our overall winner. He’s chosen to travel to Monday Night Raw in London’s O2 Arena on May 13.
After that though we were still left with five prizes to give away, including the second trip to see Smackdown Live. The results showed that 21 people had tied for second spot with the combination of Seth, Shelton and any other wrestler valued at two or less, because everyone else at those qualifying values scored nothing.
That combo would have landed you 81 total points in the game and because of the rules, the tie meant we required a draw to pick our additional winners. That happened on Tuesday, January 29, on Paddy Power’s Twitter account. You can watch that draw here.
The winners were as follows:
1st Place – A choice of a trip to Raw in London: Mike Pyper, Forres.
2nd Place – The remaining trip to Smackdown Live in London: Josh Kerr, Manchester.
3rd Place – £100 in free bets and £100 to spend on WWE Euro Shop: Luke Gallagher, Newport.
4th Place – £100 in free bets: Daryn Jackson, Dundee.
5th Place – £50 in free bets: Matthew Bell, Belfast.
6th Place – £25 in free bets: Gareth Holloway, Swansea.
All the winners have been emailed about their prizes and all that’s left to say is thanks to all who entered. The game will be back in 2020, when our favourite pay-per-view of the year swings around once more.
If you were playing along with your friends at home, here’s the final points table for the 29 men* who bravely battled in the Royal Rumble match is below:
ROYAL RUMBLE FANTASY GAME POINTS TABLE
Superstar Points Value
Seth Rollins 66 6
Braun Strowman 48 6
Drew McIntyre 35 6
Samoa Joe 26 5
Dolph Ziggler 26 5
Mustafa Ali 19 4
Shelton Benjamin 15 2
Randy Orton 14 5
Shinsuke Nakamura 13 5
Baron Corbin 13 4
Andrade 12 5
Rey Mysterio 11 5
Kofi Kingston 11 4
Dean Ambrose 10 6
Aleister Black 10 3
Johnnny Gargano 8 3
Elias 7 5
Curt Hawkins 6 1
Kurt Angle 4 4
Jeff Hardy 1 4
Big E 0 4
Apollo Crews 0 4
Jinder Mahal 0 3
Xavier Woods 0 3
Titus O’Neil 0 2
Jeff Jarrett 0 1
No Way Jose 0 1
Pete Dunne 0 1
- All selections that didn’t enter the match are automatically given a score of ‘0’ points.
* Nia Jax didn’t score any points as there is now a Women’s Royal Rumble Match, although all finishers performed on her and her elimination did count towards the final total of her male counterparts in the match as she was an official entrant.