King of the Ring (2019)

The King of the Ring tournament is a single-elimination tournament that was established by WWE in 1985 with the winner being crowned "King of the Ring." It was held annually until 1991, with the exception of 1990. These early tournaments were held as special non-televised house shows and were held when the promotion was still called the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, renamed to WWE in 2002).[1] In 1993, the promotion began to produce the King of the Ring tournament as a self-titled pay-per-view (PPV). Unlike the previous non-televised events, the PPV did not feature all of the tournament's matches. Instead, several of the qualifying matches preceded the event with the final few match then taking place at the pay-per-view. There were also other matches that took place at the event as it was a traditional three-hour pay-per-view.[2]

King of the Ring continued as the annual June PPV until the 2002 event, which was the final King of the Ring produced as a PPV.[3] Following the conclusion of the PPV chronology, the tournament began to be held periodically every few years, first making its return in 2006, which was held exclusively for wrestlers from the SmackDown! brand—the 2008 and 2010 tournaments also featured wrestlers from WWE's other brands. In August 2011, the brand extension ended with both the Raw and SmackDown television shows featuring the full main roster, but in mid-2016, the brand split was reinstated.[4] On the August 12, 2019 episode of Raw, it was announced that the King of the Ring tournament would be returning for the first time since 2015.[5][6] Later that night, the competitors for the 21st King of the Ring tournament were confirmed;[7] a few days later, the 16-man bracket was officially revealed, evenly divided between Raw and SmackDown.[8] The tournament began on August 19 and occurred across episodes of Raw and SmackDown, with the winners of each brand's bracket facing off in the final. The final was originally scheduled to occur at the Clash of Champions PPV on September 15, 2019,[9] but was rescheduled for the following night's Raw on September 16 in Knoxville, Tennessee at the Thompson-Boling Arena.[10]

After winning the tournament, Corbin would dub himself King Corbin[22] and would continue to feud with Chad Gable, the tournament runner-up. At Hell in a Cell, Gable would defeat Corbin.[23] At Corbin's request, Gable was announced as Shorty Gable due to his small stature. Gable would embrace this nickname and later change it further to "Shorty G".[24] Corbin would later defeat Shorty G on the October 11 episode of SmackDown to end the feud.[25]

In December 2020, King Corbin started a faction with Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake, knighting them as the "Knights of the Lone Wolf" (with lone wolf a reference to his previous nickname), although this would be short-lived as Cutler was released by WWE in February 2021.[26] Corbin's king gimmick ended in June 2021 after he lost his King of the Ring crown in a match to Shinsuke Nakamura, who then took on a king persona, being called King Nakamura; Corbin subsequently reverted to his original ring name, Baron Corbin.[27] On October 8, 2021, just prior to the start of the 2021 tournament that night, Nakamura respectfully relinquished the crown and reverted to his original ring name of Shinsuke Nakamura.[28]