King of the Ring tournament

[4] The tournament was established when the promotion was still called the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, renamed to WWE in 2002).

The first King of the Ring tournament was held by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) on July 8, 1985, at the Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

In addition to the tournament, there was only one other match during the night, in which Hulk Hogan defeated Nikolai Volkoff to retain the WWF World Heavyweight Championship.

[3] These early tournaments were held as special non-televised house shows in an effort to boost attendance at these events.

[10] In 1993, the WWF began to produce an annual June pay-per-view (PPV) titled King of the Ring.

The inaugural King of the Ring PPV took place on June 13, 1993, at the Nutter Center in Dayton, Ohio.

[6] The King of the Ring pay-per-view was considered one of the promotion's "Big Five" PPVs of the year, along with the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, up until its disestablishment as a PPV event after the 2002 event—the 2002 tournament was the first tournament (and the only until 2024) to award the winner a reward other than the title of "King of the Ring"; winner Brock Lesnar received a match for the WWE Undisputed Championship at that year's SummerSlam.

The 2008 tournament was won by Raw's William Regal, who defeated ECW's CM Punk in the final.

[14] After another four-year hiatus and after the brand extension had been reinstated in 2016, the tournament returned in 2019 and featured wrestlers from Raw and SmackDown.

[16] The tournament was won by Raw's Baron Corbin, who defeated SmackDown's Chad Gable in the final.

[8] Fightful later reported that WWE did not have plans to reschedule King and Queen of the Ring for later that year, but the event could possibly be used for a future Saudi show.

This gimmick led to several notable feuds for Race with Junkyard Dog, Hulk Hogan, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, and others, even after new winners had been crowned in the annual tournament.

In 1988, Race suffered an abdominal injury and during his absence, his manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan awarded the crown to Haku in July, rechristening him King Haku, even though Randy Savage had won the tournament by that point and Ted DiBiase would also win the tournament during this storyline.

Race eventually returned from his injury and briefly feuded with King Haku, but was unable to regain the crown at the 1989 Royal Rumble.

[28] Savage abandoned the "Macho King" gimmick upon his loss in a "Career ending match" to The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII in 1991, declaring afterwards that "the Kingdom of the Madness has been cracked in half".

Following this, only wrestlers who had won the most recent tournament, as well as Jerry Lawler (who had used a King of Wrestling image regionally in the Memphis area since the early 1970s), would use the gimmick.

William Regal won the tournament while serving as General Manager of Raw[34] and began displaying King Lear signs of tyranny and delusion.