Picking up some overtime
By Scott Keith on 12 June 2024
If you watched the New Generation/Attitude Era Rumbles, you'd see practically every wrestler on the undercard do double duty in the Rumble, due to the thinness of the roster. Contrast that to the Hogan era, where that kind of doubling up was unheard of. However, that sometimes created scenarios where the undercard was rather barren because all the big names were in the Rumble (like in 92), or the undercard was rather loaded which meant the Rumble itself was shorn of star power (91). Might some judicious use of double duty have helped with these issues back then? Don't overdo it, like 96-2000ish, but just enough to ensure that there was star power in all stages of the show. We'll pretend that we're living in a world where wrestlers would actually agree to this and weren't eager to do their match and get out of the building to hit the pub, snort some lines, plow ring rats/Denny's waitresses, etc. when pondering this question.
PS. this influx of discussion of Batman '89 reminded me: is Superman's molecule chamber switcheroo on Zod the one time in history the babyface did the “point to his head to indicate intelligence” routine? Pretty justified in that instance, if you ask me.
Well Superman is the best, so if anyone can get away with it, it's him.
But yeah, guys working double duty was pretty commonplace at the time as well, with a battle royale at the end of a big show using all the guys from earlier in the night being a standard thing. I think Vince deliberately wanted to make the Rumble a special deal by distinguishing it, though, and that included having guys only work the one match to make it clear that the Rumble was its own thing. And then later on once it was firmly established, they could loosen up on that.