I have been a fan of the Royal Rumble for a long time. I became a big wrestling fan just after the first event on pay per view back in 1989 and watched the event grow and change since then.
And honestly, the event hasn’t done so well in the last number of years, mostly on the execution of the Royal Rumble match itself. It seems what I wanted to see happen and what the WWE had planned for what happened was different and didn’t mesh well.
And this year they started off the same way. While the woman’s Royal Rumble was decent and fun to watch, having Charlotte Flair win the match seemed kind of blah and lost me when she did. Did Charlotte flair need to win this match? Nope. She gets title shots whether she actually does anything or not. I was picking Shayna Baszler to win the whole thing myself. Word is she will probably get a title match at Wrestlemania anyway, but the WWE wanted Ric’s baby girl to win the match because they ALWAYS want Charlotte to win.
And as the moment got closer from the Men’s Royal Rumble match it seemed to be drawing closer to doing the same. Besides Roman Reigns and Baron Corbin beating each other up in that Fall Count Anywhere match ear\lier in the night, a big thing going into the match was Brock Lesnar himself picking to be the first guy of the match. And as expected Brock Lesnar was tearing through guys as soon as the came out.
I was expecting more of the same.
In watching this go on, a friend I was watching this with predicted Cain Valasquez would come out while I was guessing it would be John Cena coming back and setting up a big main event for Wrestlemania that would get all the WWE hype while the fans would boo the crap out of the whole thing.
Then that moment came when Drew McIntyre kicked Brock Lesnar in the face and eliminated him. We had the same dumbfounded look that Paul Heyman had at ringside. The thing was this happened with a lot more of the match still to happen but part of the fun is trying to guess who would actually win the rumble now that Brock Lesnar was eliminated. There were still Roman Reigns. Seth Rollins was yet to come out. Hell, Cena could come out and eliminate everyone still.
But the WWE did it again and had Drew McIntyre win the whole match.
Now there is still a lot of time before Wrestlemania and there is even the February pay per view show happening before the big event. There is still plenty of time for the WWE to screw things up and give us something we as fans will sneer at but for the Royal Rumble match itself, they did a great job and actually put on a decent show! If anything, there is that one event that they can’t screw up now.
Wish we had more of them.
