Previously at The Royal Rumble…
Asuka lost a championship, Roman Reigns won a match where you could brawl all over the arena & Daniel Bryan once again couldn’t capitalize on a title opportunity. Hey wait a second…
Surely history won’t repeat itself as it’s The Royal Rumble bay bay!!! I don’t need to preview anything. The Rumble is awesome. Let’s get into it.
(**Quick note: A little shake up for this particular review. I’m still going to rank matches from what I felt were best to worst, but for The Rumbles themselves, I’m just going to hit on the winner & then some key observations regarding what worked vs. what didn’t as opposed to trying to rank the whole match from top to bottom.)
Now let’s get ready to royally rummmmbblllleeeeeeee!!!
The Belair Of The Ball
The Winner
I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say Bianca Belair might be the most surprising Rumble winner in history. I know a lot of people think she was going to be the victor here, but if you go back & look over previous winners, most of them at the time were champions at bare minimum the midcard level. Even shockers like Asuka & Nakamura were champions in NXT first. Bianca has none of those accolades. That’s not to say she’s undeserving. She emphatically is. It’s just nice to see WWE finally pull the trigger on a newer talent, strapping a rocket to their back right out of the gate like this.
We’ll see how Mania plays out for her, but she might be one of the most impressive Rumble winners as well. She practically goes the distance coming in at number three & takes out arguably the three heaviest hitters in the match in Bayley, Charlotte & Rhea Ripley. They weren’t running up from behind eliminations either, she earned every single one of them. Combine all that together & you’re talking about one of the more credible wins in Rumble history.
Given her SmackDown status, Bianca challenging Sasha feels like the obvious & correct option. It’d be a weird move to go through Bayley & then not go after Banks. I don’t think Asuka would be in her crosshairs, especially now that Charlotte’s free & it looks like Ripley is going to land on RAW any second. I like the idea of maybe swerving & going after Io to capture The NXT Title that’s eluded her for so long, but that truthfully would feel like a step backwards. No, we’re heading into Banks Country & I think these two will put on a killer match at WrestleMania & I can’t wait to see it.
All The Rest
- Frist half MVP of the match by a billion is Billie Kay. Our poor, sweet Billie just wants a partner to go into The Rumble with as her confidence is low after being forced to break away from Peyton & more recently shunned from The Riott Squad. Her getting shut down by various entrants was comical, but a little upsetting having to watch her dejectedly walk back to commentary every time. She just wants a friend you guys, stop treating her like dirt. It’s not even like she’s a sneaky heel. She’s been trying to coach The Riotts into becoming champions instead of trying to become one herself. I’m supposed to boo that? She settles for Jillian Hall of all people & Team Billie Jilly is born. I’m from here on out unironically rooting for Billie going forward & the rest of you are more than welcome to join me on the right side of history.
- That brings me to new public enemy number one, Ruby Riott. Despite Ruby kicking Billie out of The Riott Squad last week (RIP Punk Rock Billie Kay. You were too beautiful for this world.), Billie stills saves her from a vertical suplex & even invites her to join Team Billie Jilly. If that’s not enough, when Peyton Royce comes out & Billie gets to do a tandem move on Victoria with her, Peyton starts to do The IIconics pose & Billie wants to join in only for RUBY TO YELL AT HER FOR IT. You kicked her out! Let her be happy! Even with all that, Billie helps The Riotts eliminate her new friend in Jillian to prove her loyalty & guess what happens then? Yup. They dump her over the top. Unforgiveable. Luckily hero to the people Bayley takes Ruby out with a powerbomb to the floor from the apron (deserved) to eliminate her & Peyton helps Bayley take out Liv later on. Now pump Team BayKay into my life this Friday, SmackDown!
- Loveable idiot R-Truth coming out was great, thinking it was time for The Men’s Rumble. It’s made even funnier by the fact he wasn’t even in the men’s match, so who the hell knows what’s going on in that man’s head. I’ll take Champion Alicia Fox any way I can get her & I kind of wish The Rumble turned into an over the top/Diva Driver competition as they were trying to win the match, but also become champion at the same time.
- If you didn’t get enough from the preshow & how could you, Ric Flair shows up with Lacey Evans donning his robe at 18. Charlotte knocks her through the ropes, slaps her a couple times on the outside &… that’s it. Lacey’s in for a whole twenty minutes after that & the two never interact again. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when somebody costs me my tag team title & punches me in the face with brass knuckles, slapping them in the back on the head once isn’t enough revenge. At least for me.
- We’ve officially jumped the shark with these elimination save spots. One could argue that already happened when Kofi Kingston used a chair with wheels as a pogo stick (just push yourself off the announce desk!), but this was the final nail in the coffin with Naomi’s latest rendition. If you can do something hyper athletic like walk on your hands or jump from the apron to the barricade, be my guest. When you straight up fall out of the ring & land on your ass looking like an overturned turtle, you’re being a little too pedantic with the whole “feet touching the floor” rule. It’s made even worse by the fact they screw it up the first time & try it again ten minutes later. Join us next year, when Kofi Kingston saws his foot off, hides it in the rafters & wins by a technicality.
- Another surprise return was Lana, who finally sticks up for herself by… going after Rhea Ripley & not Shayna Baszler when she enters the match? Fair enough. She does get a semblance of revenge with her elimination of Nia Jax, so that’s a positive. With Jax & Baszler as champions again, maybe they’re looking to redo the story with her getting her just due after getting put through a table for months on end, which would be nice considering the way that story ended for her was absolutely unfair.
- My favorite spot of the entire night belongs to Alexa Bliss, who comes in at the all important 27 spot, as if she wasn’t already a big enough problem. She rolls in as Funhouse Bliss & gets in a little offense, but everybody isn’t having it, so they gang up on her like you would see happen to the likes of Big Show or Mark Henry in past Rumbles. Such a great way to flip a trope on its head. That leads to her Fiendette music starting & Rhea Ripley, the only one who apparently pays attention, dumping her over the top before it’s too late. I love the smart strategy by Rhea, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see Bliss transform & start going ballistic in the match.
- Speaking of Rhea Ripley, what a performance. She lasted about forty minutes & was a dominant force through almost all of it. She knocked out a Rumble high seven participants & may have literally knocked out Dana Brooke & Dakota Kai with those brutal eliminations. Given how things have been going for her in NXT & this outing, you have to assume she’s main roster status at this point. Sending her to RAW (I know, sorry) would be a great idea with Asuka now free of the tag titles & looking for a challenger heading into Mania Season.
Tribal Chief Sitting Bullshit
Before I get to the finish, I do want to point out just how good this match was beforehand. Last Man Standing Matches are tough to pull off. There’s maybe a handful you can point to over the history of wrestling that were solid & even that might be generous. The most glaring issue usually has to do with the referee thinking every participant has buffs that grant 75% chance of critical hits, so every other move they start the ten count. Hey ref, we don’t think wrestlers will be down & out after a back body drop. Cut the melodrama.
There was thankfully none of that during this match. Reigns & Owens starting throwing bombs from the jump, while the referee counts weren’t overdone. I thought they upped the violence accordingly with Owens getting more & more sadistic trying to put Reigns through every table in sight. I bought the frustration from both guys as their opponent was able to recover from big hit after big hit. By the way, with all due respect to AEW, the golf cart spot was much better here, purely because of how completely out of nowhere it was. Everything worked with the story they were trying to tell & if it weren’t for the ending, we’d be talking about this maybe surpassing their match from TLC.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case…
There’s an NXT Championship Match from 2018 at TakeOver: Chicago II featuring Aleister Black against Lars Sullivan. This was back when Black was awesome without being banished to closets or catering & Lars looked like a massive force, mainly due to NXT’s men’s roster at the time looking like their day jobs were as horse racing jockeys. Anyway, the match is pretty great throughout until there’s an egregious botch at the end as Black attempts to hit Sullivan with a Black Mass & whiffs in practically comical fashion that Lars ends up selling anyway, making things exponentially worse. That’s all anybody remembers from that match. All the good will they built up erased in an instant with a completely horribly timed roundhouse kick.
While I don’t think this Last Man Standing Match is quite on that level, it’s a clear instance of a messed up ending taking away from everything that preceded it. If you missed it, Reigns busts out a pair of handcuffs to bind Owens to the stage, only for Owens to flip the script & attach Reigns to the base of a column, making him stuck in a sitting position. The referee counts to nine, so Reigns grabs him & tosses him into a light fixture to stop the count & then low blows Owens. So far, so good. With Owens temporarily down, Heyman rushes out with a key to free Reigns & everything falls apart.
Heyman attempts to unlock both sides of Reigns’ cuffs, but is unsuccessful with each try. While this is happening, another referee comes out & restarts the count on Reigns, getting to six before realizing they have no shot at freeing him in time, so he just straight up stops counting.
Reigns does eventually get his feet underneath him, which counts as a “vertical base” according to Corey Graves, even though he’s positioned like a catcher in baseball (that’s a squat, not a stand, Corey). The entire thing takes well over two minutes, so even if you’re super liberal with the time it takes the referee to count to ten, Owens still should’ve won the match at least five times over. Reigns then chokes out Owens to win as they promptly decide they need to get the hell out of dodge before Vince tears a quad over another botched Rumble finish. It’s a shame too because this was probably the best feud in WWE at the moment & it goes out on such a sour note. The ending hurts it a ton, but I still think it’s worth checking out if only for forklift Senton Bombs.
I wouldn’t hate it if Owens shows up Friday to call this out, but it feels like the end of this rivalry. Reigns at this point should be moving on to a new number one contender either through The Elimination Chamber or The Rumble. Speaking of which…
Rated R: For Rumble
The Winner
While Bianca Belair was a surprising winner, a lot of people still picked her despite being a relatively fresh face in the company. I don’t believe anybody had Edge even before he was announced as one of the first two entrants, let alone after. Once he & Orton were given the starting positions, you kind of figured the two of them would take each other out. The last thing that crossed my mind was that he’d go wire to wire.
He didn’t set the world on fire with his performance as far as being a dominant presence in the match, but I don’t think he had to given his age, coming in from the start & the return from injury factor. It’s definitely nice to see one of these older stars actually put their money where their mouth is & earn their way to WrestleMania as opposed to just showing up & being like “I lived through the Monday Night Wars. This badge of honor grants me a title shot.” Overall a solid outing & I was happy to see him get over on Orton at the end as well.
The obvious question now is what direction do they go with it. Drew McIntyre feels like a layup now that he’s wide open after Goldberg. The only other thing going on with him on RAW is Sheamus, which feels more like a holdover feud for a month, not a Mania match. They’ve got the added factor of playing up the talking point that Edge can go after the title he never lost (that WWE discontinued). I’m not going to sleep on the idea of him challenging Roman Reigns, however. SmackDown’s title scene is pretty stacked right now & it feels like that’ll be hashed out at Elimination Chamber, but Edge vs. Reigns has marquee match written all over it & there’s already a heel/face dynamic that isn’t there with Drew.
Either way they choose, we should be in for a pretty great outing. We still have a long way to go before Mania, so it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out.
All The Rest
- Depending on your stance, arguably the biggest pop of the night goes to a returning Christian, who’s been retired since 2014. I will fully admit that Edge & Christian’s time at the top was during a period where I wasn’t watching WWE, but I understand the significance of the two & how people are excited to see Edge back & competing on a regular basis, as well as the potential for Christian to be too. If he can’t wrestle, have him become Toni Storm’s manager in NXT & form The Un-Americans 2.0.
- As cool as it was to see Edge & Christian reunited, I’m out on all the other old guy nostalgia pops. Edge I can forgive as he’s been back & proved he’s still a valid competitor, but no thanks to the likes of Carlito (who did look like he might still have it, so I reserve the right to change my mind), The Hurricane & Kane. WWE should’ve thrown in some more NXTers to build that brand up & with no fans in the stands, there was really no excuse not to. This highlights a much more glaring issue, however. Guess how many men in this match were over forty years old. Sixteen. Now guess how many were under thirty-two. TWO. Can’t make young stars without the young stars, WWE.
- Another Rumble trope I’m officially over is a participant being taken to the back or knocked out of the ring, only for the announce team to become full amnesiacs & then get all shocked when they return at the end. The entirety of Randy Orton’s injury angle stunk. It was made even worse by the fact he pops back in last second & hits Edge with an RKO, but then just gets eliminated five seconds later. Orton’s not some plucky babyface underdog like Santina in 2011. Either dump him early or have them really duke it out at the end. I’m not advocating for a different outcome, but what a waste of everybody’s time.
- The Miz comes out at 15 & decides to destroy the DJ setup from earlier in the show because any good DJ would just leave their equipment alone for hours after they’re done with it. Of course, this draws the anger of Bad Bunny
Wait, that’s not right…
A real blown opportunity for a collaboration with MC Miz & Johnny Drip-Drip in the future. I guess songs about Booker T & yelling at Snoop Dogg in Corona commercials about beaches will have to do.
- Adam Pearce needs to come out & immediately answer for how Ricochet made this match. After weeks of insisting AJ Styles was the gatekeeper for The Rumble Match for some reason, Ricochet lost his qualifying contest to Styles, but still showed up anyway. Drew Gulak should find Pearce backstage & kick his ass.
- And where the hell was Jey Uso? He was conspicuously absent from The Universal Championship Match & then no showed The Rumble entirely, despite being the first person to declare for it in all of WWE. I thought for sure Heyman & Reigns were going to pull some strings & get him in last, giving him a real shot to go after McIntyre like he said he would. Maybe he just ended up getting blamed by Reigns after the whole handcuff fiasco since the cuffs didn’t fear him. Who knows.
- I made a joke during the show that it’d be funny given how tall Styles’ bodyguard Omos is if he could just grab somebody in the ring & pull them over the top while standing on the floor on the outside. Then he actually did it to Big E & it was decidedly not funny. E was cruising at the time too, making it all the more frustrating. I’ll take the heat for that one. Also, huge shout out to New Day’s Brodie Lee tribute gear:
- Biggest disappointment of the evening non-Last Man Standing finish division goes to Daniel Bryan once again unceremoniously being dumped out of a Rumble well before the ending. WWE should be thankful for once no fans were present as they would’ve probably eaten that alive. I guess it’s on me for talking myself into thinking he’d win, but I really thought they’d just let him have this one. Mostly because of all those passionate promos he’s been doing, but also this field wasn’t exactly stacked to the gills. All he had to go through really was Edge, Styles, a hobbled Orton, & Sheamus. What’s he gonna do? Eliminate him in eighteen secon… MOVING ON!
Some You Win, Sommelier You Lose
What I wanted to like going in, I ended up not in Carmella vs. Sasha, who probably had the worst match of their series here. Reginald gets tossed from ringside for helping Sasha Banks, which makes very little sense. So the referee thinks he’s on her side then? Huh? They seem to be hinting at a romance angle with them, so there’s something to look forward to. Maybe they’re looking to go after Jericho in the alcohol game with Boss Burgundy. Boss Burgundy: We Swear It’s Not Ratchet™.
As for the actual wrestling, a lot of spots were hokey & didn’t land, particularly Sasha’s Frog Splash & the two Superkicks Carmella hit right before the finish. For all the good stuff we saw in the previous two matches, this one looked like they had barely ever worked together. The one spot the stands out above the rest though & what I’ll remember most is this, where Carmella goes full Death Wish Sasha Banks:
Yeesh. Get her some ice from those champagne buckets, Reggie.
I didn’t dig the finish, either. After those two Superkicks, Mella gets a two count then pouts. After about twenty seconds, she then starts dragging Sasha to the middle of the ring, presumably to try to pin her again. What do you think this is? WrestleMania XIX? Sasha reverses & taps her outs, beginning the official countdown to when Bianca Belair snaps her in half come April. Certainly not a bad starting feud for Sasha’s first real title reign, but I think it’s safe to say we can move on to anybody else in a loaded SmackDown Women’s Division.
Putting The Old In Goldberg
I don’t even know what to say about this anymore. It’s the same exact Goldberg match we’ve seen since he returned a few years back. Goes under five minutes. Everybody has infinite specials. Completely underwhelming. I could spot you who won the match & bet the majority of you could fill in at least 90% of the rest just by guessing. I was worried with the antics before the bell that they were going to throw the match out & prolong the thing until the next PPV or possibly Mania, so let’s all be thankful we dodged that bullet.
I will say that while we all know Goldberg is well past his prime, it is becoming ever more evident. The guy does his entrance & is already completely sucking wind. It’s so bad, WWE does the recap video package WHILE he’s in the ring, just so he can probably take a quit hit off an iron lung. His match performance wasn’t any less concerning. I was definitely inhaling through my teeth when he got Drew up for that Jackhammer. After the match, he straight up did not look well & on the verge of passing out. It’s no longer “Haha, get this old timer outta here!” & turning into “I’m genuinely worried about this man hurting himself or others”.
Who’s next? Father Time. And he’s the heavy favorite.
The Regal Rumble Preshow
If you told me a retired wrestler was going to get involved during The Royal Rumble with brass knuckles, this is not what would’ve popped into my head.
This wasn’t enjoyable even without Ric & Lacey interfering. Both teams hardly click on their own & somehow less so when you put them all together. I’m not sure anything hit right throughout the whole thing. I buy Natural Selection as a devastating move about as much as I would a Clothesline From Hell from Kacy Catanzaro. I think if it was done to a standing opponent while Flair jumps off the turnbuckle that would make it a significantly better. The way it’s done now makes it look like the least impactful RKO since the one Orton hit on Edge to close this show.
Then there’s our finish, which sees Ric Flair & Lacey Evans keep bragging about how they’re maybe making whoopy or whatever old timers call it & rub it in the face of Ric’s daughter. Weird flex, guys. Naturally, this leads to Ric handing Lacey some brass knuckles to punch Charlotte in the face with, as any good father would do. Evans brains Charlotte & Nia Jax takes advantage for the win. If you’re wondering where Asuka was, join the freaking club. She was thrown over the announce desk about five minutes prior to all this going down & I’m going to assume just bailed from secondhand embarrassment. She hardly factored into the whole match anyway, because RAW Women’s Champion & Co-Women’s Tag Team Champion Asuka is relegated to the sixth most important person in a match involving four people.
So now we’re left with transitional tag champions Asuka & Charlotte dropping the titles to transitional tag team champions right before them, Nia & Shayna. Umm… okay then. At the very least it gets Asuka away from all of them & we can maybe give her something to do with her, you know, being champion of a major show & all. Shayna & Nia can go back to still hating each other yet simultaneously being able to defeat all of WWE’s established women’s tag teams. Fun.
The Women’s Dusty Cup cannot end soon enough.
Overall
Worth Your Time: Women’s Royal Rumble, Owens vs. Reigns, Men’s Royal Rumble
If You Have Time: Sasha vs. Carmella
Don’t Waste Time: Women’s Tag, McIntyre vs. Goldberg
Royal Rumble Challenge Results
Thanks as always to everyone who participated & made the show a little more fun in the process. As usual, a lot of things eluded us because despite watching the product on a regular basis, we might as well start pulling picks out of a hat. I’m serious. I’m doing that next time.
We’ll get to everyone’s scores, but first here’s how last night played out for the record:
Winners: Bianca Belair & Edge
Winning Numbers Drawn: 3 – Bianca & 1 – Edge
Final Four Women: Bianca, Rhea Ripley, Charlotte & Natalya
Final Four Men: Edge, Randy Orton, Seth Rollins & Christian (While Christian & Strowman went out at the same time, Braun hit the floor first.)
First Two Entrants: Bayley & Naomi; Edge & Orton (Zayn & Ali were 3 & 4. Points were given for all.)
30th Entrants: Natalya (Nia was 29th. Points were given for both.) & Braun Strowman
Most Eliminations: 7 – Rhea Ripley & 4 – Big E, Damian Priest & Seth Rollins
Surprise Entrants Women: Naomi, Shotzi Blackheart, Toni Storm, Jillian Hall, Victoria, Santana Garrett, Rhea Ripley, Torrie Wilson, Mickie James, Alicia Fox, Dakota Kai, Lana & Ember Moon
Surprise Entrants Men: Carlito, Damian Priest, Kane, The Hurricane, Christian & Seth Rollins
Total Title Changes: One (Women’s Tags)
Tables Broken: Five (Owens went through two off The Thunderdome, splashed Reigns through one backstage & then put Reigns through two more when he did a Senton off that forklift.)
Goldberg/McIntyre Match Time: 2:32
Total Points At The Mania Sign: 9 (I stupidly forgot to specify this was for Rumble winners only like years past, so this was throughout the whole show. If you want the full breakdown, just ask on The Discord.)
Total NXTers In Both Rumbles: Seven (Shotzi, Toni, Santana, Ripley, Dakota, Ember & Priest)
TIEBREAKER (Total Match Times For Both Winners): 1:57:34
The Scores
6 – Mitchinerd
12 – HGR
13 – Dark92Enigma
16 – Dave MJ
17 – Baron Von Raschke
17 – Jake Hager’s Shitty Boat
18 – Otherwise_Known_As_Tara_The_Ref
20 – EvilDucky
21 – Harry Longabaugh
22 – JohnnyIced
23 – AddMayne
23 – Dakota Kai’s Distant Cousin
23 – FeltLuke
23 – Fusionman
23 – The Real Birdman
25 – Bachur (& The Blade)
26 – Former Mr. Royal Rumble JSF
26 – Mr. Bliss
27 – dl316bh
Your winner &THE NEEEEWWWW Mr. Royal Rumble: AJ Dusman!!!
AJ just snuck by to claim victory with a score of 28 (out of 91. Lol we stink). A win is a win however, so congratulations for taking it down this year. The rest of you take a lap & think about what you’ve done. Join us again in a couple months & maybe I’ll bring back The Mania Challenge this year.
That’s your Royal Rumble & Challenge, folks. Definitely a few stumbles within the show itself, but the Rumble matches always have enjoyable parts & I think they made the right call with the winners. Owens & Reigns was still really good in lieu of the ending, but had they nailed that I think we’d be talking about this show being in contention for best of the year come December. Even still, all of this at least looks like it should be making for interesting conversations as we head into WrestleMania.
As always, let me know what you guys thought of tonight either below or over on our Discord. Elimination Chamber is up next as we’re officially into Mania Season. The Chamber Match should just be six women fighting for the chance to team with Billie Kay if we’re being honest. Join us for that as well as everything in between. Thanks for reading & I’ll catch you next time!
