This year’s Royal Rumble had all the tools to be one of the best in a while. From all the legends involved in the women’s rumble, to a dream match of Bobby Lashley vs Brock lesnar- there was a lot to look forward to! After all, the Royal Rumble is always a good time and something a lot of fans watch despite not even being caught up with WWE. There seemed to be no way WWE could possibly mess this up! Well…
Universal Championship- Roman Reigns vs Seth Rollins:
photo credit to WWE
I think it’s safe to say this was the match of the night. Reigns and Rollins have a long history that can be explored in depth in a feud. From Roman saying he still hasn’t forgiven Seth for his betrayal and Seth mentioning Mox, there was a lot of lore and history to make for a compelling storyline.
Even from the entrances, this match looked promising. Roman did his usual 10 minute long entrance of walking to the ring, but Seth decided to do something to mess with Reigns’ head from the start. Sierra. Hotel. India. Echo. Lima. Delta. Shield.
The Shield’s old theme starts playing as Seth comes out from the crowd and makes his way down. He even came out in full shield attire with the all black combo and vest.
photo credit to WWE
This immediately got into Reign’s head. Seth had found Roman’s one weakness. The one thing that made him tick. The one thing that broke down Reigns’ walls and Rollins was ready to take advantage.
The match was great with so many references to The Shield days. Such as Seth performing a shield bomb on Roman and Seth hitting the pedigree, Triple H‘s signature move, on Roman. That was an awesome moment of Seth countering Roman’s spear to the pedigree.
These two always have great matches, but with the new depth added, this made me so invested. The near falls were great and had me on the edge of my seat everytime.
Roman did a lot of his trash talking in the ring like he usually does and Seth responds by laughing like a maniac. The dynamic here is just so good.
“I’ll always love you.” Rollins laughs as he holds out his fist to Roman.
Fed up, Roman gets Seth into a guillotine hold and refuses to let go.
“He deserves this…. He won’t allow me to let go.” He shouts.
The double meaning in this is so good. It’s Roman showing his distraught to Seth rubbing in the wound of his betrayal. Something Roman thought he finally escaped and got over is now being brought back and rubbed in his face. Despite his new don’t care attitude, this is something that has hurt Roman even after all these years.
Refusing to let go, the referee calls for the bell, meaning Roman has been dq’d.
DQ finishes can be tricky. Sometimes they're cheap cop outs. But sometimes they work when the story makes sense, and I believe this was an example of that.
Seth was successful into getting Roman’s head, but maybe too successful. His tournament caused Roman to snap and unleash all his grief and frustration on him, leading to his failure to win the title off Roman.
After finally letting Seth go, Roman goes for a chair. He then slams the chair on Seth’s back just like Seth did many years ago. Roman unleashes more shots on him.
There’s two ways you could interpret this.
One, this is a way for Roman’s and Seth’s feud to continue on. With how much history they have, they could totally extend this for another month or even to Mania! However, considering the results of matches later on, this choice seems unlikely.
Second, this could be seen as Roman’s way of making his own, sort of twisted, peace with Seth’s betrayal. After attacking him like Seth did years ago, this could be him getting the closure he never got. A nice, and again twisted, way to end this feud for now.
photo credit to wwe
I thought this match had excellent storytelling (which is why I mentioned it so much), good spots and was perfectly executed from start to finish. It was a strong start to the show and I expected that this was a sign of good things to come. Boy was I wrong!
Rating: 4/5
Women’s Rumble:
The WrestleMania Sign caught on fire after this match. If that’s not an indicator of how this match went then I don’t know what is.
Our number 1 and 2 entrants started off strong. Really strong. Sasha Banks and Melina! What a lineup, what a match up, the cool sequences they could do were endless- and Melina’s out. Melina’s entrance was 3 times longer than her time in the rumble. What a missed opportunity.
Though it seems this pattern would continue the rest of the rumble. It seemed like WWE could only afford most of the legend entrants for about 30 seconds at a time. Why bring them back and do nothing with them? Especially if they’re entering at number 2? Ivory’s segment was the only were this quick elimination worked. Seeing her still continue her promo while being man handled by Rhea was great.
Overall, this whole match felt boring. There were all these awesome women coming back and yet I just couldn’t find myself to be completely engaged.
So many things went wrong here straight out the gate. Melina’s early elimination. Kelly Kelly’s short lived Kelly go round and then lasting a minute in the match. Tamina breaking up many eliminations for no reason. Sasha Banks getting eliminated so early and by Zelina of all people. It was a mess and it never got better.
Some storylines were explored and furthered. Such as Rhea and Nikki, Summer Rae and Natalya reigniting their iconic Total Divas beef, and Sonya continuing to torment Naomi.
Sonya screwed over Naomi, which I saw coming but it was nice to see Naomi eliminate her first. Just wish we saw more of Naomi. Like why didn’t she get a reunion with her former tag partner, Cameron besides a quick interaction outside the ring? Why didn’t she get to face off against Melina? Or her former mentor on NXT, Kelly Kelly? This is just an example of just how many missed and wasted opportunities there were for exciting matchups and moments.
Sarah Logan also made her return. Her and Liv had a millisecond reunion before Sarah was eliminated. Honestly, what was the point of some of these quick eliminations? Why bring Sarah back in the first place? Especially when Jullian was backstage! Maybe a performance from her would have saved this rumble.
Though it was a real slow, uninteresting match; there were some bright spots.
Dana and Reggie had a cute moment where Reggie caught her and saved from being eliminated.
Liv and Aliyah lasted longer than I expected (especially Aliyah). It was a great showing for Liv who came in at #6 and lasted around 37 minutes.
Michelle McCool had a great showing in my opinion and showed she can still go with the new girls. Lita and the Bella Twins were also a few of the legends who got to stay in the ring longer than 5 minutes and got the chance to actually contribute to the match.
Mickie James appeared as Impact Knockouts champion with her title and impact theme! What a cool moment and I’m so glad she got the chance to do this. Also Mickie and Michelle getting to reignite their “piggy james” feud was a great throwback.
And now time to talk about the winner.
Oh boy.
Ronda Rousey made her return after 3 years of being away by entering at #28. She ended up eliminating Charlotte to win the rumble and get the chance to main event WrestleMania.
The fact she eliminated Charlotte indicates to me that will be the person she picks as her opponent. Though, Becky would also make sense considering their history and the fact they never got the chance to get their 1 on 1 match.
WWE bringing back part timers for Wrestlemania is nothing new. However, there is the argument that women like Bianca, Liv, Naomi, Rhea, Alexa and Sasha have been here and building up momentum just for Rousey to come back and get the big win.
Personally, I would have to agree with that. It’s easy to just bring a big name like Ronda and forget about building up their current roster. Again, It’s Mania season, I get it! This is the time to bring out all the big guns. But, is it worth throwing all your current talent to the side? We saw how Ronda in the main event scene worked before, and I don’t know if I want to see that again.
Take Bianca Belair for example. Her one on one rematch has been escaping her for months, and it seems like Mania was going to be the stage for this epic rematch. Maybe we’ll still get that, sure, but my point still stands. I’d rather see women who have been working their butts off the past months than see Ronda get it after being gone for some years. It’s the same if someone like Goldberg returned and won.
Yes Edge won last year after missing in action for months, but after coming back from a career ending injury and coming back at #1 to win- the payoff was worth it.
It’s too early to see how Ronda back in WWE will play out. I could be completely wrong about everything and maybe some great things will come out of this. For now, the quality of this match and the winner gave me a defeated feeling I could just not shake off for most of the show.
Rating: 2.25/5
photo credit to WWE
Raw Women’s championship- Becky Lynch vs DuoDrop:
photo credit to WWE
After desperately avoiding Bianca Belair for months, Becky got herself a match against the powerhouse DuoDrop. How would Becky handle this opponent and would she regret her decision to give DuoDrop the title match?
DuoDrop is someone fans haven’t had the chance to properly get to know yet. She’s a talented wrestler with many years of experience but now she’s on the main roster, seperated from Eva Marie and now we have to figure out who is DuoDrop as a character. With a feud with the women’s champion, this was the chance to show the world who she was.
I think the two's feud was fine for the most part. Always nice to see someone new get a shot and especially at the 2nd biggest PPV of the year. However, this match did seem to be effected by many factors.
Becky Lynch’s sole star power wasn’t enough to get the crowd fully invested in this match. To make matters worse, the WrestleMania sign was on fire due to the fireworks after Ronda’s celebrations. You could see the crowd looking off in the distance at the sign and even started chanting “Signs on fire”. I don’t blame them though! Who wouldn’t be scared or shocked to see a sign that huge catch fire!
In terms of the match, it was alright. DuoDrop absolutely beat down Becky by using her size advantage. Becky got to show off some of her ring smarts to take down DuoDrop. It was fine. There were some good moments including DuoDrop showing off her athleticism. Was it worth being on a PPV as important as this? Probably not. But I’m glad they at least got the chance.
Becky performs a man handle slam from the second rope to beat DuoDrop and retain her title for a little longer.
I found it weird Becky didn’t cheat especially with an opponent like DuoDrop. Though maybe I shouldn’t complain seeing as all of Becky’s matches have ended in dirty finishes, so it is nice to see a change for once.
Rating: 2.75/5
WWE Championship- Brock Lesnar vs Bobby Lashley
photo credit to WWE
A dream match for many WWE fans came true last night. It went about the way I expected but with a few shenanigans along the way.
This didn’t need to be a 5 star, technical classic with masterclass storytelling. It just needed to be fun, fast paced and hard hitting.
After the crowd being a bit dampered by the rumble, a safety hazard and the previous women's match, I felt this was the way to turn around the show.
Starting off, the two big meaty men locked up. Brock then suplexes Bobby and Bobby gets back up on his feet immediately. Bobby responds with a suplex of his own which Brock gets back up immediately too. Amusement fills his face.
We get lots of cool moments such as Brock suplexing some more with Bobby eating them and getting back up again and again. Bobby spears Brock twice and Brock takes it like it’s nothing. Bobby goes through the barricade and walks it off. The two men showed off their strength and endurance to the max. Both looked like superhumans.
Bobby gets Brock in the hurt lock, and in reversing this, Brock sends both men into the ref. If he hadn’t been through enough, Brock performs the F5 and sends Bobby flying into the ref, knocking him out of the ring.
Lesnar had Lashley pinned for over 3 seconds, but there was no one to count it.
In comes Roman Reigns, still filled with rage and frustration, spears Brock from behind.
Roman and Paul Heyman have a stare down as Roman asks him for the title. Surprisingly, Paull gives him the title for Roman to take out Brock. Paul leaves with Roman. It seems the plan has worked.
This feud has more twists and turns than a telenovela!
photo credit to WWE
Lashley takes advantage of all this, and pins Lesnar and gets the 3 count. Lashley with a title just looks right. So that gets no complaints from me.
The main question we’re left with is: Where does Brock go from here? Seems we would find out sooner, rather than later.
Rating: 3/5
photo credit to WWE
Edge and Beth Phoenix vs The Miz and Maryse:
photo credit to WWE
The next to last match of the night was a mixed tag match with the “It couple” taking on the “Grit couple”.
I don’t know if I have much to say about this honestly.
Both couples had awesome gears and entrances. We had some cool in ring moments. It was a decent match.
Maryse even got to show off her wrestling skills and did a sick hurricanrana to Edge. It was nice to see Maryse wrestle than just stand there while Miz did most of the work.
Miz and Maryse did great as heels and pulled many classic tactics to try and get the win. Those two together are so so good.
A double spear by Beth and Edge to Miz helped turn around the situation and get the win for The Grit couple.
Yeah, this was fine! Fun, even. It didn’t last any longer than it needed to. Can’t really say anything bad about this, it did what it had to do.
Rating: 3/5
Men’s Rumble:
photo credit to WWE
The last match of the night was the men’s rumble. After the women’s match was less than average, I’d hope this one would go a little better.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
Again, it started off strong with Aj Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura coming out at number 1 and 2.
Then it all went downhill from there.
The match overall was uninteresting, dull and predictable. Seeing as we knew basically all the entrants, there was little room for surprise entrants. The three “suprise” entrants we got were Drew McIntyre, Shane McMahon and Bad Bunny.
It’s great to see Drew’s neck healed and back in time for Mania!
Shane coming in is always a treat. He is the best in the world, after all. However, part of me feels like he was just called in to make up for the lack of legends in the match. He’s the closest we got to a male legend entering the rumble. Cesaro and Finn Balor weren’t in the match, so maybe this was the case. Part of what makes the rumble so fun is the fact anyone could show up, so when you announce 95% of your lineup and it’s mostly mid carders, it ruins the fun.
But one of the biggest highlights of this match was surprisingly Bad Bunny. He gave us an awesome showcase at last year’s Mania and he's back for the rumble! From taking out Kevin Owens and Matt Riddle, to teaming up with Rey Mysterio, and going face to face with Brock Lesnar- his time in the rumble felt thought out and fun.
Like I mentioned before, the main reason this rumble failed was the fact we already knew so many of the entrants. There were no surprises or guests to make up for that. The rumble's appeal is about the unexpectedness and it’s lost all its charm when you can’t deliver on that.
On rewatch, I caught myself skipping most of it. I could skip most of this match and miss nothing.
Johnny Knoxville’s appearance was fun for sure. I love silly stuff in wrestling and the rumble is the perfect space for chaos to happen. It sucks we couldn’t get more stuff like this in the match.
Gable gathering everyone around him to announce he has a plan to take out Omos was fun too. This works because Gable has a character he can play around with and use for situations like this. But most of the men in the ring had no personality to play around with. Which means no chance for unique characters to interact.
It doesn’t help that I couldn't recognize a lot of these themes and had to wait till the camera cut to the wrestler that was appearing or the commentators had to announce who it was. The crowd was slow to react too because of this reason.
Again, a lot of the fun from the rumble is that moment the music hits and everyone immediately knows who’s coming out.
A lot of the heart of the rumble was missing from both matches and it’s so disappointing to see.
Like the women's rumble, there were so many missed opportunities. Why did they keep teasing that Rey and Dominik would have to potentially face each other at the rumble? The two weren’t even in the ring at the same time. Also Aj got eliminated by Moss for some reason. Just so many weird moments.
Kofi also tried his annual saving himself from being eliminated spot and it failed. If that doesn’t show the state of this match, I don’t know what does.
Now, I sort of lied when I said we only got 3 surprise entrants. At number 30, Brock Lesnar came out after losing his WWE championship the same night.
photo credit to WWE
He eliminated Drew to win and secure his spot at WrestleMania.
In the same night we got two former MMA fighters and mostly part time talent (Though Brock’s being showing up weekly, so at least there’s that) win.
Brock vs Roman seemed like the plan for Mania all along, but I don’t think he needed a rumble win to get that. A segment on smackdown this week would have convincingly established that.
Though this win does mean now Elimination Chamber has a chance to go to the Raw men’s division. I don’t know if Brock destroying everyone in a EC match would have gone better for folks or not. Either way, Brock vs Roman was happening somehow.
I don’t know I can be THAT upset over. After reflecting on it, I unfortunately just see it as being inevitable. WWE probably wanted Roman and Brock to main event anyways, so this was their chance of doing it. Though it would have been cool to see Lashley and whoever his opponent is main event. I’m rooting for Big E!
But the ending definitely left a sour taste in people’s mouths after such a lame match and night. People love unpredictability, and this match and show didn’t have much of that.
Rating: 1.75/5
photo credit to WWE
Conclusion
I really wanted to enjoy this show. We had a stacked lineup of legends and surprise guests for the women, an unpredictable factor heading into the show of who would win what, and just the joy of enjoying one of the most exciting shows of the year. But instead, we got a predictable, dull and almost soul draining show.
There were some bright spots such as Roman vs Seth and some great surprise guests who did do some cool things! But I don’t believe that was enough to make up for some weird booking decisions- especially in both rumbles.
This was the first rumble in front of fans since 2020, and it sucks this is how it turned out.
I really hope the next few weeks go better, because this has been a lousy start to the road to Wrestlmania.
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