Royal Rumble 2007 Dumbest Ass Award: Shawn Michaels

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." Special considerations made for other stupidity.

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

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2007

A great rivalry renewed, and stupidity abounds.

Dumbasses

Kenny Dykstra

1. After helping Edge eliminate Ric Flair, he mocked The Nature Boy by doing his trademark strut. This makes no sense, both because Ric is already out of the match and can't see it from where he is on the outside and because a match is still ongoing with other people in the ring. Edge immediately used the opening created by Dykstra's dumbassery to throw him out.

Shelton Benjamin

1. As soon as he gets in the ring, he stops Matt Hardy from sending Finlay out. Running wild!

Finlay

1. CM Punk was working on getting Edge out when Finlay, with nothing better to do, at least in his idiot mind, decided to rip him away to fight with him. Because he loves that.
2. He throws Jeff Hardy over the top rope, then watches him skin the cat and actually invites it just so he can punch him again. Amazing.

Chris Benoit

1. Got in fresh and in the midst of his running around hitting people he hit Shelton Benjamin while he was working on getting CM Punk gone.

Johnny Nitro

1. He went up to the second rope, making himself vulernable, and, worse, I can't figure out why he did this. He hit Chris Benoit with a neckbreaker as a set up but when he turned around, he could see Benoit was already getting up. He got up on the second rope anyway and Benoit rushed him and pushed him over. So dumb.

Undertaker

1. He used Old School in a Royal Rumble match. That move is beyond dumb under normal circumstances but doing it in a Royal Rumble is taking it to a new level of ridiculous.
2. Shortly into his one-on-one battle with Shawn Michaels at the end of the match, The Heartbreak Kid went up to the second rope with Undertaker in the corner on two separate occasions. Both times, Undertaker pushed him back into the ring instead of out of it.

Shawn Michaels

1. As noted, he went up to the second rope and made it way too easy for Undertaker to eliminate him. Lucky for him, Undertaker was a dumbass about it.
2. He did that stupid telegraphing of the Sweet Chin Music, stomping the mat to set up for it while the crowd counted along. It was always a really dumb thing to do and especially here because of the stakes. Way to alert Undertaker it was coming! He was choke slammed not long after.

MVP

1. Here because he's the idiot who allowed Old School to happen and was thrown out immediately after.

The Dumbest Ass

Shawn Michaels

Here's the thing: this was entirely dependent on who won the match. Both Michaels and Undertaker had a questionable tactical approach once they were the only two in the ring, and I didn't even mark off a couple of other issues, like Shawn hitting Undertaker back into the ring when they were both on the top rope and Undertaker getting Michaels way up for a choke slam and putting him to the mat instead of over the top rope. In the end, The Heartbreak Kid lost so his dumbass mistakes cost him more than Undertaker's dumbass mistakes. He is, then, The Dumbest Ass.

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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
1998: Disciples of Apocalypse
1999: Stone Cold Steve Austin
2000: Big Show
2001: The Rock
2002: Undertaker
2003: Undertaker
2004: Big Show
2005: Rey Mysterio
2006: Big Show