King of the Ring (2015)

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 matches 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] The King of the Ring PPV was considered one of the promotion's "Big Five" PPVs, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and Royal Rumble.^[3]

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.^[4] 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 April 2011, WWE ceased using its full name of World Wrestling Entertainment with "WWE" becoming an orphaned initialism.^[5] That August, the brand extension ended with both the Raw and SmackDown television shows featuring the full main roster. The 2015 tournament was the 20th King of the Ring tournament. It was held over two nights. The opening round matches were held on the April 27, 2015, episode of Raw, which aired on the USA Network from the Resch Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The semifinals and final were then held the following day on April 28 from the iWireless Center in Moline, Illinois before a SmackDown taping and aired live on WWE's livestreaming service, the WWE Network, which launched in February 2014. It was the first King of the Ring to have a separate dedicated event since the 2002 PPV, as well as the first to air on the WWE Network.^[6][7]

Raw (Quarter-final matches) – April 27

WWE Network event (Semi-final and final matches) – April 28