Royal Rumble (2003)

Event
Royal Rumble (2003) was the sixteenth annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It took place on January 19, 2003, at the Fleet Center in Boston, Massachusetts, was the first Royal Rumble produced under the WWE name and employed talent from the Raw and SmackDown! brands. As has been customary since 1993, the Royal Rumble match winner received a match at that year's WrestleMania, (in this instance: WrestleMania XIX) for his brand's World title, either the WWE Championship or the World Heavyweight Championship.

The main event was the annual 40-man Royal Rumble match, which included wrestlers from both brands. That number went up from 30 to 40 because wrestlers from other companies like those who participated in the Pro-Wrestling World Cup were added. The primary match on the Smackdown brand was Triple H versus Scott Steiner for the WWE Global Heavyweight Championship, which Steiner won by disqualification resulting in Triple H retaining the championship. The most prominent for the Raw brand was between Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which Angle won by making Benoit submit to the Ankle Lock. The undercard also included a Royal Rumble qualification match between Raven and The Big Show, which Raven won; he would then go on to win the Rumble match later that night.