Kane says that his performance in the 2001 Royal Rumble was big in making sure he wouldn't just end up as a novelty act. The WWE Hall of Famer set the record for the most eliminations in that year's tournament and as he told for a Q&A on Undertaker's Patron, he believes that match was huge for the character's longevity in WWE. You can see highlights below, per Fightful:
On his Royal Rumble 2001 performance: "That one was a big deal. Because I also won, too. I got eliminated by Austin with the chair. I think what that did was, it helped take me from, like, being a novelty to, 'Oh, wow, this guy's actually a pretty good wrestler, too,' you know? I had the opportunity to prove that that night. It would just vary. I mean, the Rumble was such a complex match, because there's so many moving parts and so many people involved and all that sort of stuff. It would, it would just vary."
On not liking battle royals as a rule: "I don't like Battle Royals myself because, too often, they just turned into jumbled messes. Obviously, the Rumble is different, but it wasn't like, I actually didn't like, 'Oh gosh, I'm going to the Rumble. What's the cool stuff that's going to happen this year?' I was never really like that, per se; that one was, I guess, a bit of an anomaly. Also, what was cool, though, is normally, you would think of guys like Flair, Shawn Michaels, Daniel Bryan, that would stay in there forever, but they were smaller, better technical wrestlers to have a bigger guy staying there that long, I think really was different and hadn't been done."