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Royal Rumble XXXV - 1/29/2022


Dolfan in NYC

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Better show than I figured.

The curtain-jerkers gave us quite the bomb-fest and Rollins comin in The Shield gear was a nice touch. I'm a sucker for stuff like that and it harkens back to my childhood when I was 35 and The Shield was a new thing. Roman got some catharsis with the chair, but couldn't beat Rollins the way he has beaten everyone else.

The women's Rumble is pretty much always more intriguing than the men's one. There were more than a few cool things, including:

-Mickie James eliminating McCool for old times sake.

-Nikki ASH going batshit on Mighty Molly for gimmick infringement.

-Summer Rae and Charlotte interacting. BFF explodes!

-Brie Bella's impromptu homage to Connor the Crusher upon entering the ring, as well as avenging her previous elimination at the hands of Nikki.

- No contact between Shayna and Ronda. Well, the winner was clear as soon as Ronda entered.

Becky vs Slopdrop ended up being one of the best matches of the evening with a clean pinfall ending. Niven's performance was really good but it's not as if she was winning.

The Mixed Tag between the It Couple and the Git Couple (or The Cousin Itt Couple) had the three way MVP battle between Maryse's outfit, Maryse and Beth's amazing hairdo! If you are one of the people who gets Peacock for free, Maryse's outfit alone was worth the price of subscription!

The Brock vs Lashley video package was amazing and the match started out really promising, but it's a very WWE thing to do, to reduce a LEGITIMATE dream match 15-years in the making into an angle advancement. At least Lashley is the champ again!

I haven't finished the Men's Rumble yet, but the highlight so far is Gable's plan to eliminate Omos actually working, eventually.

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51 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

Better show than I figured.

The curtain-jerkers gave us quite the bomb-fest and Rollins comin in The Shield gear was a nice touch. I'm a sucker for stuff like that and it harkens back to my childhood when I was 35 and The Shield was a new thing. Roman got some catharsis with the chair, but couldn't beat Rollins the way he has beaten everyone else.

 

Before going into the match with Roman,  Was Seth a babyface?  

I thought this was the best thing on the Show. I thought that this was the Rollins we should have been seeing for years. I know thus is just a side feud for Roman in between time for WrestleMania but I think It should be fun to see them Wrestle again. Seth for a while has come off pretty lame and mainly because of booking but he kinda got fresh again with the drip God deal but him in the Shield gear got him over with me again and the way he worked the match aggressively 

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3 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

Before going into the match with Roman,  Was Seth a babyface?  

I thought this was the best thing on the Show. I thought that this was the Rollins we should have been seeing for years. I know thus is just a side feud for Roman in between time for WrestleMania but I think It should be fun to see them Wrestle again. Seth for a while has come off pretty lame and mainly because of booking but he kinda got fresh again with the drip God deal but him in the Shield gear got him over with me again and the way he worked the match aggressively 

I haven't seen much of the build, but I kinda assumed it was heel vs heel, though at the end of the match Rollins sure seemed like the face to me!

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I had to sleep on it to think of where the feeling of deja vu was coming from but Brock winning the Rumble while none of the other participants get any rub or have any conceivable chance of winning reminds me of the "god is dead" feeling of that World War 3 pay per view where Nash won the 60 man, three ring battle royal by clearing his whole ring and waiting patiently before heading over to eliminate Lex Luger and Scott Hall and some other guys who absolutely did not need any kind of push by that point.

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Worst Rumble ever.

 

The opening match was moving along well and then boom DQ ending?!  Fine for Raw or Smackdown but not for one of your top "premium events"  

Doudrop vs Becky-  Did anyone honestly think Becky was going to lose?  Of course not.

Women's Rumble-  No Bayley, No Alexa, the women's legends were lucky if they lasted 2 full mins for the most part. Once Ronda came in you knew she was winning. Why book her if she wasn't going over?

Lashley-Brock- Could have had Brock win so that someone else could win the Rumble and have Lashley win the Chamber.  Not that hard to do. Raw is really light on top guys right now. If Brock feuds with Roman who does Bobby get? 

The IT couple vs the Grit couple-  Way too long and everyone knew Edge and Beth weren't losing.  They should have axed this and had Charlotte defend against Sasha. Hopefully this feud is over and we can see Edge take on some of the newer generation of talent.

The Mens Rumble-  Kofi botch and Brock winning aside this still was shit.   No big NXT names, no big surprises, Bad Bunny? Shane? Come on WWE.  Do better.  Just like with Ronda there was no doubt once Brock came out who was going to win.  

I had extremely low hopes for this event and the show ended up being even worse than I could have imagined. Keep releasing more people and it will only get worse. 

What a shit show.

 

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Came in a bit late (start of the women's Rumble) after not having watched literally ANY of Raw or Smackdown in Lord knows how long. At first it was like biting into a big ol' Snickers after a 30-day sugar detox, especially not knowing anyone's storylines or even music anymore. 

Women's Rumble was fun for the surprises and the like. I actually had to look up Ivory's age- she looked amazing for 60, even in the dopey RTC outfit. Ripley got such a superstar entrance that I was legit shocked she didn't win it all, even after Ronda came out.

Happy for Dewdrop getting a big singles match in front of that enormous crowd (guessing that's the biggest house she's ever had a match on). She was definitely up to the task and looked great.

That video package for Brock/Lashley was God-tier fantastic. The match itself couldn't possibly live up to that, but they were definitely getting there before the finish. Did they turn Lashley? He was giving out fist-bumps like Sid on the way to/from the ring, but the match and especially the finish played out like he was still a heel. Then again he went to college locally.

By the time the men's Rumble got down to the last 5-6 entrants, it was late and I'd already nodded off multiple times. In my mind I'd already called the finish (correctly as it turned out) and I had no investment in any of it, so I packed it in and went to bed. Reigns/Brock should be a fun hoss fight given enough time but I can't think of anything else from last night that makes me think I was wrong in finding other shows to watch over the past couple of years.

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1 hour ago, For Great Justice said:

The Rumble match just doesn’t have the joy in it that it used to and this year’s mens version is the bottom of the barrel. Where are the little side gags, the clever team ups, etc? Patterson is missed.

They were all in the women's rumble. I didn't catch everything, but you've got: Sasha's gear, Melina crying, Sasha doing the split after eliminating her, the Liv/Logan reunion, Sonya taking out Cameron, Sonya spoiling the Naomi spot, Bella dissension, Zelina being excited for Carmella to come out only for Carmella to hang out with Graves, Nikki ambushing Molly, Ronda's look on her face when Baszler came out 30, Ivory, Etc. There were tons of little moments like that in the women's Rumble and what felt like 0 in the men's.

I haven't seen much WWE in forever or even followed it an it's all pretty dreadful. I'm still going to put together a Mania card based on what I saw though, for both masochistic and sadistic reasons.

Reigns vs Brock for the title
Charlotte vs Ronda for the title
Owens vs Edge
Miz vs Sami (Rollins vs Sami kind of works too but Miz is a better program)
Becky vs Bayley or Becky vs Asuka for the title (With Sasha up against the other)
Alexa/Rhea/Molly Holly vs Zelina/Carmella/Nikki Cross
Sonya vs Naomi (hair vs hair)
Bad Bunny vs Sheamus (Shame Priest is the US champ instead of the IC champ or else you could loop him and faceguard guy in and put the title on the line in a tag).
Riddle vs Orton (BUT since there's no possible challenger for Lashley, which is insane, probably do...) Riddle vs Orton vs Lashley for the title.
Rey vs Dominic?

That's probably better than whatever they're going to do and it's still pretty rough. I guess that's what happens when you cut 2/3rds of your roster and don't seriously push anyone but two people for a span of years?

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So after further thought I'm even more pissed.

Look at the list of names not in the Rumble

Balor

Cesaro

Crews

Viking Raiders

Angel Garza

Humberto

 

 

And they wonder why people want a release from that toxic shithole of a promotion.  seriously I don't care anymore about how great they used to be. Vince and company are a shit show now.  People changing from face to heel so quick you can't even tell anymore.   Is Lashley face/heel,  is Brock Face/Heel, Rollins Face/Heel?      Do they even know?!

Kind of hard to grab a brass ring if you aren't even given the chance. 

 

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6 minutes ago, paintedbynumbers said:

lowes or home depot probably. 

I'm being totally serious too.  I remember marking out when Home Depot had the Mechanix gloves Sting wore in 1997 WCW

Yeah, I finally found Mechanix gloves from a hunting section of a local sporting goods store over here! Sadly, they weren't the padded ones Sting had. But I bought a pair right then and there!

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The booking is so asinine. Brock doesn’t need to win the Rumble. Reigns interfered in his title match and his manager just turned on him. He’s already got a title match. He doesn’t need to “earn” a title match.

I thought they were gonna have Matt Riddle win it in Randy’s hometown and they could do a celebration and do a “will Randy turn on him” kinda deal. Do the MMA-esque match with Lashley that Brock more or less refused to do last night. We could have fun vignettes with Randy training Riddle for his big match. 

I mean, they could’ve done anything. 

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 How do they not have Balor in the Rumble? SO many people had him as the favorite or darkhorse to win.

 

How do they have 0 guys from NXT?

How do they have Angelo/Dawkins in  but not Cesaro/Garza/Crews?? 

 

I pray that next year AEW has their own version of the Rumble and airs it on free TV to combat this shit show.  How could any wrestler WWE or otherwise see this show and say "god WWE is where I want to be"  

 

 

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I could see the WWE brain trust sitting around determining that the two biggest stars against each other in the main event of WM is the best idea, which in a vacuum certainly can't be argued. 

But good grief is that the biggest self-fulfilling prophecy that's ever been. 

 

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They should do something different. Announce 1 brand going forward.  Have a unification match for the tag belts, IC/.US belts.   Announce a tournament for the women's title and the men's title and have it all at Mania.  It's a 2 night show. It would be stacked and it would get everyone on the show to get their payday.

 

It's not that hard and I promise it's a better idea than whatever shit WWE will feed us. 

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I'm also in the camp that enjoyed the women's Rumble this year despite the predictable winner. Great seeing people like The Bellas, RTC Ivory, Alicia Fox, etc. Melina's moment, while short, was still touching because you could see the obvious emotions. Mickie looked exactly like a star. Sonya taking out Cameron and then ruining Naomi's moment was great. And an awesome moment for the Riott Squad, Summer and Nattie giving us the Total Divas slap fest tribute, newly supervillain Nikki taking out Molly, and Brie finally getting one over on her sister. Just a lot of really cool moments. I have no issues with a Ronda win as she honestly was really good during her last run and there is a lot that could be done with her. 

It would be cool if some of this stuff carried over like Nikki/Molly or Ivory as cult leader (because of course). But I'm sure it's all one and done. 

I really enjoyed Doudrop Vs Becky too. So glad to see Doudrop get to be a little more Viper/Piper 

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6 hours ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

So Lesnar knew that he would lose the title and get screwed by Heyman, entered the Rumble beforehand and drew number 30.

Would be easier to just say that Brock jumped whoever drew 30 in the entrance area and made them play his music instead.

Sorta like the Nia Jax thing from a few years ago, only not done on screen.

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Seth coming out in the Shield gimmick was clever. The show went downhill from there.

Having Mrs Undertaker and the aughts retirees instead of Dakota Kai, Raquel Gonzales, Io Shirai or any of the NXT women was classic WWE.

If Bobby got a move or 2 after the interference and before the pin on Brock would have made Lashley look less like a bitch by the finish.

What a boring, sad, predictable Rumble. Did the establish any new rivalries during the match? No Rey/Dom interaction? No Finn? No Cesaro? 

The Wrestlemania sign catching fire TWICE totally encapsulated what a dumpster fire this show was and this company is.

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