King of the Ring (2008)
The 2008 King of the Ring was the 18th edition of the King of the Ring tournament produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was held as a special episode of Raw on April 21, 2008, at BI-LO Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Unlike the previous 2006 tournament that only featured wrestlers from the SmackDown brand division, the 2008 tournament featured wrestlers from all three of WWE's brands at the time—Raw, SmackDown, and ECW. The 2008 tournament was won by Raw's William Regal, who defeated ECW's CM Punk in the final. Background The King of the Ring tournament is a single-elimination tournament that was established by World Wrestling Entertainment (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). 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