One the Road to WrestleMania XX Chris Benoit won the 2004 Royal Rumble match, and he earned the right to challenge for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the main event.
At the time Triple H was the World Heavyweight Champion, and he was also wrapped up in a major feud with Shawn Michaels. In the weeks leading up to the Show of Shows HBK ended up getting added to the main event to make it a triple threat.
During a recent episode of Grilling JR the topic of WrestleMania XX was discussed by Jim Ross and Conrad Thompson, and Ross explained why Shawn Michaels was added to the big title match.
“We wanted to pass the torch in the most grandiose way that we could. To sell pay-per-views you’ve got that one angle – you needed that one shot. They’re closing the show at WrestleMania for God’s sake. So adding Shawn to that mix gave it a lot more star power and everybody knew Shawn wanted to be champion again. We all had a great story going in there with Shawn and his former best buddy Triple H. That all tied together.”
“I think Vince believed that just because of the fact Benoit hadn’t got completely over, we had confidence he’s going to do really good. He’s going to become an underdog champion, an undersized champion, who had no idea how big or small he was.”
“But we had to get there, we had two guys giving Benoit the rub. Two guys that were obviously considered as major stars globally in the pro wrestling business. I think you’re right on the money there, it just strengthened the card; it made the card more attractive. It became a bigger attraction with those three stars in it. The beneficiary was gonna be Benoit.”
Benoit of course went on to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship when he made Triple H tap out to the Crippler Crossface in the main event. He held the title through SummerSlam where he dropped it to Randy Orton.
H/T Inside The Ropes
