Royal Rumble (2021)

Royal Rumble
Promotional poster featuring various WWE wrestlers
Promotion	WWE
Brand(s)	Raw SmackDown
Date	January 31, 2021
City	St. Petersburg, Florida
Venue	WWE ThunderDome at Tropicana Field
Attendance	0 (behind closed doors)[a]
WWE Network event chronology
← Previous Superstar Spectacle Next → NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day
Royal Rumble chronology
← Previous 2020 Next → 2022

The 2021 Royal Rumble was the 34th annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on January 31, 2021, from the WWE ThunderDome, hosted at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was the first Royal Rumble event held since the death of Pat Patterson, who created the Royal Rumble match. This is the only Royal Rumble event to not have live fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Traditionally, the Royal Rumble match winner receives a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2021 event, the winners of both the men's and women's matches received a choice of which championship to challenge for at WrestleMania 37. The men could choose to challenge for either Raw's WWE Championship, SmackDown's Universal Championship, or the NXT Championship, while the women had the choice between the Raw Women's Championship, the SmackDown Women's Championship, and the NXT Women's Championship. This was the last Royal Rumble in which three championships were an option for the Royal Rumble winner, as well as the last Royal Rumble in which the NXT Championship and NXT Women's Championship was an eligible option for that winner, as in September 2021, the NXT brand reverted to being WWE's developmental territory.

Six matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, WWE Hall of Famer Edge won the men's Royal Rumble match and was later said to be part of Raw, marking his second overall Royal Rumble win after last winning it in 2010, thus becoming the eighth two-time winner, the third wrestler to win it as the number one entrant, the fifth wrestler to win it as one of the two starting wrestlers, and the first wrestler to win it after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. The women's Royal Rumble match was won by SmackDown's Bianca Belair. In other prominent matches, Roman Reigns defeated Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match to retain SmackDown's Universal Championship and in the opening bout, Drew McIntyre defeated Goldberg to retain Raw's WWE Championship. The event featured returns from The Hurricane, Carlito, Kane, and Christian, who wrestled his final match in WWE before signing with rival promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW).
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