I’ve been watching WWE for over 30 years and I’ve been to several live events, but this was the first one I’ve attended in over 20 years.
And sadly, it may be the last.
It’s kind of like going back to a restaurant you used to eat at all the time. The food was delicious, the service made you feel welcome and at home, the atmosphere was fun and enjoyable. But the more you ate there, the more you noticed…the quality of the place was slipping. The food wasn’t quite as good as you remember. The service not as warm and friendly as before. The fun atmosphere suddenly absent.
But one day, you decide to go back, thinking “Hey, maybe they’ve learned from their mistakes. Maybe things will be different this time.” So you go in with high hopes, only to walk out with every reminder of why you stopped going in the first place.
Last night’s Royal Rumble is currently the #1 Contender for Worst PPV of 2022. A complete dud of a show, one of the company’s Big 4, no less (if that even still matters anymore) in a time where they really need to swim or risk sinking altogether…WWE isn’t the only game in town anymore and they are playing a dangerous game with their booking.
Let’s start with the first match of the night…
This was built up as a classic battle for the ages (despite the fact that we’ve seen it 2 or 3x already) and I was genuinely excited for it (again, despite having seen it several times before). Both men have spent the last year or so developing their respective characters, which are both great and definitely two of the three most interesting things WWE has going for it as I write this article, and that went a long way in making this feel fresh.
The match itself did not disappoint. Rollins entered in his classic 2012 S.H.I.E.L.D. attire to a thunderous roar and tore through The Tribal Chief with every ounce of energy he had, smashing the announce table in the first match of the card. Everything was going great.
Then things took a turn for the worse. The finish of the match was a completely unnecessary disqualification finish in a match that Roman should’ve won decisively. Unless they’re building toward a rematch next month, it makes no sense for them to tease for weeks how Roman has “never beaten" Seth Rollins only to have Roman get himself disqualified in a lame finish that didn’t make anyone look good.
Let’s move on…
The Women’s Rumble Match was pretty hit-and-miss. Seeing the return of legends like Lita and the opening of the Forbidden Door for Mickie James, who even got to use her non-WWE entrance music and carry her non-WWE championship, was a hit. Seeing Naomi get revenge on Sonya after weeks of torment (all part of the show) was a hit. Watching Rhea Ripley brutalize everyone she came into contact with was a hit.
Unfortunately, the match itself relied on too many entrants from yesteryear, and not from the GOOD yesteryear of women’s wrestling either…(I’m looking at you, Kelly Kelly). Some cool spots aside, it was a pretty forgettable match and I wonder what it could have been if maybe they hadn’t wasted so many spots on past names like Summer Rae and Undertaker’s wife…
Rhonda Rousey entered at #28, surprising everyone who hadn’t already read the rumors about her return on the internet, and telegraphing the very predictable finish of what could’ve been a Battle Royale and saved everyone a lot of time…
Afterwards, the WrestleMania sign caught fire during a botched pyro display…perhaps it was an omen for what was to come later…
The Women’s Championship match (I’m not calling it the Raw Women’s Championship) followed…
I felt sorry for Becky and Doudrop (please change her name back to Piper, we’re all begging you) as they were forced to work a match that nobody was paying attention to, while everyone below the WrestleMania sign was cleared out of their $300 floor seats so the sign could be lowered, extinguished, and reset, all while the crowd chanted “IT’S ON FIRE!”
I especially felt sorry for Doudrop, however, as this was her first time to showcase her talents in a singles match against Big Time Becks (the third most interesting thing WWE has going for it right now) but instead, both women were forced to rely on rest holds and overselling in order to buy time while the ring technicians put out the WrestleMania sign, and on TV, all it looked like was a boring match that could’ve taken place on a Monday night midcard.
I really hope they give Doudrop another chance soon…and a better name to go with it…
Next up was a match that nobody ever thought they’d see…
This was another match that I was genuinely excited for. In an age where you can tune in to just about any episode of Monday Night Raw or Smackdown Live! and see the same match you just watched two weeks ago, when I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the Usos vs The New Day, when Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar is being planned for the FIFTH TIME at this year’s WrestleMania, it’s incredibly rare to see a first. A match we’ve never seen before.
Much like the Roman vs Rollins earlier, the match itself did not disappoint. It was solid, high-impact devastation from the opening bell. But also like the Roman vs Rollins match, it had a completely unnecessary finish that ruined what was an otherwise great performance from both athletes and made Lashley look weak in the process…
How many times can they use the finish where Brock knocks out the ref while doing an F-5 to his opponent before Brock starts to look like more of a doofus than he already does? Apparently match-ups aren’t the only thing WWE likes to hit the replay button on…
The interference from Roman Reigns and the further setup for his inevitable match against Lesnar at WrestleMania 38 tells me we probably won’t be getting that rematch between Roman and Rollins anytime soon…(even though we’ve seen it about 3 or 4x now)
Moving on…
The mixed gender husband-and-wife tag team match between Beth Phoenix, Edge, Miz and Maryse featured a spot where Beth Phoenix powerbombed Miz.
That…that’s about it. That was pretty much all that happened. I don’t know why I’m supposed to care about this feud or any of the profoundly predictable things that have happened in it so far, but here’s hoping they don’t drag this out to WrestleMania because every time this feud is on TV, I have to fight the urge to change the channel.
If anyone on the creative team happens to be reading this, for the love of André, give Edge something interesting to do before he retires again, please.
And now, for the final match of the night (and the one the whole event is named for)…
*SIGH*
Where the hell do I even start? Well, I’ll start where the match did…seeing AJ Styles enter at #1 and Shinsuke Nakamura enter at #2 was epic. And it was pretty much all downhill from there. Let’s go through the highlights (or maybe I should say “lowlights"…)
“Forgettable" is not the word I would’ve hoped to use to describe the 35th Annual Royal Rumble, but that’s probably the nicest thing to be said about it. Styles and Nakamura did nothing of note after their initial faceoff, and while I get that Nakamura is still nursing a broken hand, seeing The Phenomenal One AJ Styles play it safe in a Rumble match was incredibly disappointing…
Speaking of playing it safe, Johnny Knoxville got eliminated in a spectacularly underwhelming fashion, but the guy’s pushing 50 so I’ll give him credit for taking the bumps he did…I guess I just expected more, especially since they spent literally two months hyping his appearance…
The giant Omos got eliminated way too quickly in a match where they should have given him time to really stand out as an unstoppable force…
Damian Priest didn’t last very long and eliminated nobody during his time in the ring…so much for making the United States Champion of your company look good, I guess…
Big E was unceremoniously dumped over the top rope by two Wellness Policy cases, despite the fact that he held the company’s top championship just weeks ago…great way to make your championships meaningful, WWE…
Weeks were spent building up an inevitable Rumble faceoff between Rey Mysterio and his son Dominik, a faceoff we never got to see as Dominik was eliminated before Rey even entered the match. Hell, they gave more attention to the feud between Sami Zayn and Johnny Knoxville, and Knoxville doesn’t even work for the company. Weeks of storyline buildup and stringing the fans along, just to throw it all in the trash. Paul Heyman gave out better payoffs when he was running ECW…
The Final Four of the Royal Rumble is typically a Rumble highlight. It usually comes down to the four best workers in the company, engaging in quad-way combat to see who will be the last one in the ring. This year’s Final Four included a rapper who pretends to be a wrestler once a year now I guess, and the son of the company’s chairman. If WWE isn’t gonna treat its most prestigious and historic events with any seriousness, why should the fans?
And finally, in what has to be the worst booking of the decade (and think of the ground that covers), Brock Lesnar enters at #30 with no explanation whatsoever, completely overshadowing Bobby Lashley’s victory over him earlier, further weakening the finish of the match and Bobby’s overall image, and proceeds to dump everyone on their ass, predictably securing the final setup for Reigns vs Lesnar at WrestleMania 38.
Yawn.
All in all, this pay-per-v… EXCUSE ME, this “Premium Live Event" served to remind wrestling fans of everything that is wrong with WWE right now. A bloated conglomerate, too big for its own damned good, that can’t create new stars and doesn’t know what to do with its best talent.
Booking two UFC retirees who only wrestle part-time to win both the Men’s and Women’s Rumble matches on the same card at a time when they should desperately be trying to build a better brand with new stars is just another telltale sign that this company does not care about its fans or its hardest workers and will continue to bury them in favor of giving more wins to people who don’t need them.
If this is how the rest of the year is gonna go, I’m probably gonna skip WrestleMania…
