Royal Rumble 1998 Dumbest Ass Award: Disciples of Apocalypse

The Royal Rumble match is a 30 man over the top rope battle royal, and it's every man for himself. That invites strategy. It's a tactical war as much as a test of physical strength and endurance. Too often, wrestlers either forget this fact or ignore it completely. They do so by engaging in such ridiculously dumb behavior like outright stopping eliminations from occurring. There are exceptions, of course, like tag teams or factions attempting to work together to give themselves the best chance to win but generally, it's a really stupid idea to stop an elimination.

In each Royal Rumble, there are always wrestlers who stop multiple eliminations. In some cases, a wrestler will stop an elimination that has a monumental effect on the match and is detrimental to his chances of winning in a way he ultimately cannot overcome. I like to refer to such a wrestler as the "Dumbest Ass."

Here, we'll hand out the award for "Dumbest Ass" in each of the Royal Rumble matches that have taken place so far.

_______________________________________

1998

The first step to the crowning of a new king, and the smartest Royal Rumble to date, or at least the Rumble with the smallest number of dumbasses.

Dumbasses

Cactus Jack

1. Chainsaw Charlie was trying to finish off an elimination of Phineas Godwinn by pushing him off the apron with his legs after getting him up over the top rope. Cactus comes over, pulls Charlie away, and rushes him right near the ropes. Naturally, Chainsaw ducks and sends him out. The lesson: Unless you're Lex Luger, stupidity never wins, folks.

8-Ball

1. My god, this dipshit. Bradshaw, a big ol' bastard, had just gotten in the ring and made a smart play going over to help The Rock get Chainsaw Charlie's crazy ass out. 8-Ball comes up behind them and blasts them both in the back. Then he walks off, stands around for a few seconds, and decides to come back over and hit them both again to make sure they don't complete the elimination. Charlie may have been the oldest guy in the match but he was arguably the most dangerous because that man was 100-percent out of his mind. Why would you stop the two biggest beasts in the match from getting him out? Cause you're a dumbass, of course.
2. What is the matter with this man? A short time after saving Chainsaw, The Rock, Mosh, and Phineas Godwinn are all ganging up on Steve Blackman when here comes 8-Ball, unable to stop himself from being a complete moron to drill both Mosh and The Rock.
3. Good lord. This man is just hanging out near the ropes doing nothing and no one is engaging him in any way. We're 20 entrants deep at this point and he was number 7, so this is a good time to rest and recover as much as possible right? This idiot gets up, sees The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust has Honky Tonk Man spread across the top rope on the turnbuckle and is working on getting him out, and decides to RUN across the ring to jump on Goldust's back with a double axe handle smash. After doing this, he sort of pushes Goldust down against the ropes, holds his head briefly, and then breaks off to start kicking Honky Tonk Man in the gut. You cannot tell me this man is not somewhere in the world at this very moment falling down.

Ahmed Johnson

1. This just makes me laugh. Johnson comes in at number 20 and Phineas Godwinn, who entered at number 6 and had, obviously, been in for quite a while, approached him for a staredown. Godwinn throws the first punch but Ahmed blocks it and hits him with two headbutts, the second of which has Phineas stumbling around like he's drunk. So Ahmed, bless his heart, just walks off and starts punching D-Lo Brown. You do you, big man.

Chainz

1. This Royal Rumble has taught us the Disciples of Apocalypse were all dumb as hell. Chainz gets in fresh, sees Honky Tonk Man working on Kama, and punches him in the head. He doesn't follow up on this. Instead, he peels away to start fighting with Henry Godwinn.
2. Shortly after this, Chainz makes his way over to Goldust and pulls him away from the man he was trying to toss, Faarooq, just to lay him in the corner and put a boot in his face for a few seconds. Then he took off to find something else to do. Shockingly enough, it didn't involve a coloring book and some crayons.
3. NO WAY. The countdown is on for entrant 30 and as it hits 1, Chainz is seen tossing Kama over the top rope. Yes, that's the same Kama he stopped Honky Tonk Man from eliminating literally like 45 seconds before. He manages to get Kama over with relative ease and then, I shit you not, he CATCHES KAMA AND GENTLY LAYS HIM DOWN ON THE APRON to put a knee on his chest. Then he moved on to fighting Steve Austin. I'm not sure he knows he's in a Royal Rumble match. Then again, I'd be shocked if he was aware of literally anything going on in the world around him at any given time.

Faarooq

1. While Dude Love was lifting Mark Henry's big ass up and out, Faarooq pulled him off. Henry was a new member of Nation of Domination but Faarooq immediately established upon his entrance earlier in the match that that did not matter. Sure enough, he didn't follow up by attacking Dude Love, he went after Henry. In fairness, he saved it by eliminating Henry immediately after and then tossing Love a short time after that.

The Dumbest Ass

Disciples of Apocalypse

I'm going to cheat a bit here and give this award to both Chainz and 8-Ball, known collectively as DOA, as they were both members of the group, because there's just no way to choose between the two. Part of it is the fact that this Royal Rumble only featured five dumbasses, a record low up to this point, which emphasized just how impressively stupid they both were and my god were they stupid. They were the kind of dumb that makes you concerned for their well being.

_________________________________________

Previous "Dumbest Ass" award winners:

1989: Bad News Brown
1990: Ultimate Warrior
1991: British Bulldog
1992: Hulk Hogan
1993: Randy Savage
1994: Lex Luger
1995: Lex Luger
1996: Diesel
1997: Mil Mascaras