Royal Rumble XXXVII - 1/27/2024

[Steventon]

This may be the first year where the Women's Rumble was easily better than the men's. Even with about half the women being visibly sloppy and un-polished. But it was much better paced and had much more entertaining content in the filler parts in between the big moments with Jordynn Grace showing up and doing the strength stuff with Nile, Chelsea being a delight, and the Jade debut. I am not someone who thinks Nia is completely useless, but she looked terrible (showing that not everyone who is big is also strong) but everything around Jade was a hit. 

I skipped most of the four-way because the interference and schmozz is just so tired and predictable.

Paul vs Owens was a REALLY good match with a terrible finishing sequence. Hopefully there's an even better rematch. 

Men's Rumble was a bore. Guy who commented on the entrance music all being samey is right. I'd also say most of these guys just have zero character outside of their costumes (ditto the women). Bron looked great but doing the Omos elimination as someone was making their entrance was typically awful timing. There is always one jarringly bad timing flub in a Rumble. R-Truth is a treasure and the only thing particular interesting about Judgement Day right now, I could get behind him vs Priest in some sort of comedy gimmick at Wrestlemania.

Cody HAS to win at WM now or have his whole career undermined by being the biggest choke artist ever. I am ready and here for Cody to finally dethrone Roman.

 

 

[Steventon]

10 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Anyways if you count the Women’s Rumbles, they’ve had over 40 Royal Rumbles on Rumble shows since 1988, so if you’ve watched long enough, there’s probably not a lot of good things that you haven’t seen and if they play the hits, that’ll burn itself out too.

Also having two rumbles will dilute things but they really don’t have a way out of that which wouldn’t miff some people.

2 Rumbles on one show has been exhausting since they started doing it. I think it'd be better to either do the Women's Rumble on a separate PPV later in the year (maybe do it a Summerslam shot instead?) or even give the women their own gimmick match entirely.

[Cobra Commander]

logically, yeah, it would be better to not do the same gimmick for both men and women on the same show (same for WarGames matches)

optics-wise, I could see people using that as an opportunity to say that the WWE is backsliding and presenting women as an afterthought compared to men. Although as I noted before, this year's Women's Rumble was a lot less padded than it had been in previous years

Once you do a women's rumble as establish it as an annual thing on the Rumble PPV, then it becomes hard to not do that anymore

[Curt McGirt]

34 minutes ago, Sex Machine Gun said:

Shit son, they had a DQ in a *Hell In A Cell match* during the Rollins/Fiend thing maybe, what, just over four years ago? Five? That match already pissed everyone off by looking like a Virtua Boy game, then a friggin' disqualification in what the company deemed their Final Boss match gimmick for a feud. 

Come on now. You know the only thing I remembered about that was 1. the giant box hammer and 2. the Opaque Red Cage of Doom 

[elizium]

45 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

also, did they finally run out of escape finishes for Kofi? 

He just can't do them anymore, he ate shit when he last tried a couple Rumbles ago. Time comes for us all.

It also seems to be something they're, thankfully, going away from. If you have Katana and Ricochet in Rumbles and neither of them attempt a stupid, flippy, hopping around on one foot outside spot, then they likely don't want them done anymore. I don't remember one last year either, but I could be wrong. If I became czar of professional wrestling, the first change I'd make is that you have to have part of your body still on the ring apron to be counted as still in the match.

[elizium]

1 hour ago, EVA said:

*Like Jey Uso was in the match for almost an hour, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing he did between the opening face-off with Jimmy and his elimination sequence. The guy’s whole thing is yeeting people AND YOU DIDN’T BOOK HIM TO YEET A BUNCH OF PEOPLE? The crowd was clearly ready to chant YEET all night, and instead you had him take a long nap in a corner most of the match. What are we even doing here?

Just to emphasize...dude literally did nothing of note in 50 minutes of ring time. Even the face off with his brother quickly turned into him lying on the mat. Shitass Grayson Waller came off as more important than either of them at the start.

[Cobra Commander]

I alluded to it in my post but yeah, having both Usos go out through other people as sorta afterthoughts sure was a decision

Edit: looking at Wikipedia, Jey went 50 minutes and eliminated one guy (JD McDonough), Jimmy went 34 and eliminated nobody. Some real "NBA guy getting his your cardio in" numbers

Edited January 28 by Cobra Commander

[For Great Justice]

Of all the potential directions to go in, Rhodes/Roman 2 interests me the least, but I appreciate I’m in the minority and Cody is over with the crowds. I just don’t care though.

[Cobra Commander]

while they're not going this way with Gunther, for some reason I became intrigued about the concept of Gunther/Jey Uso or Gunther/Sami Zayn in singles matches

Gunther faced Sami 7 months ago so they've done it before but I think it could be a good match on a big stage too. (And now I just realized, Ilja and Sami Zayn have some similarities, and hey, they've never faced each other)

Gunther won't face Jey Uso since they're gonna do Jey vs Jimmy at Wrestlemania. But I'll note that they haven't run Gunther/Jey on TV (they ran it once in a dark match) and they once ran Imperium vs Bloodline (Usos/Solo) in Germany. So it's a fresh matchup at the very least.

At this point, they might as well do the "get sacrificed to Gunther at Wrestlemania" tournament to find the next challenger.

Or heat up Omos so he can lose to Gunther.

[Log]

15 minutes ago, For Great Justice said:

Of all the potential directions to go in, Rhodes/Roman 2 interests me the least, but I appreciate I’m in the minority and Cody is over with the crowds. I just don’t care though.

Anecdotally, it seems that kids are really into Cody. You did hear the crowd perk up when they teased him eliminating Punk a couple times before it happened. 
 

In regards to the crowd, I think WWE may have the same issue a lot of sports have. The expensive seats that are close up and on-cam don’t get filled with the passionate fans. They’re the people who are there for status. I haven’t watched a WWE PLE in a couple years, but I tune in last night and there are the same dorks down front in their same stupid “trademark” shirts or whatever and they’re on their phone the whole time or trying to make the right reaction face to go viral, but not really getting into the matches. I went to Smackdown a few months ago, and the kids in the crowd were living and dying on every move in the dark matches even. They 

[Cobra Commander]

WWE hard cam fans took one lesson from ECW Arena front row fans and it wasn't in volume or passion (probably a good idea that WWE hard cam fans don't share some habits with ECW Arena fans)

[Curt McGirt]

1 hour ago, elizium said:

Ricochet

Yeah... he just decided to attempt to kill himself during his loss instead.

[Casey]

3 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

That was clearly a bait comment, no one here was wishing Punk got hurt and mentioning after a wrestling show "so and so may have been injured" is a rather normal thing we do after every event. I had the same concern about Orton, anytime a wrestler is "selling" an injury that didn't seem to be part of the storyline, AND the commentators don't acknowledge it, I am concerned its legitimate. Course it could be anything from a bruise to a tear, since wrestlers don't react to bad injuries as a normal human does. Hopefully both just got hit funny and nothing serious happened.

Yeah I guess @Lawful Metal wishing Punk got injured wasn’t a thing that happened right.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Having read the articles around Dwayne's behaviour for the promotion of Black Adam, in calling audibles without consent from WB, and failed powerplays with the studio, is it unreasonable to suggest that perhaps the same behaviour is occurring here with the Roman match?

Was the head of the table line planned, given they'd presumably decided on Cody winning the Rumble at this point and knowing that having such a line would only undermine Cody as a WrestleMania main event prospect and promise a match that they had no intention to deliver other than Dwayne himself? 

Given they've barely paid any attention to it on the weekly programming since, and the subsequent appointment to the TKO board would somewhat explain his appearance...worth considering.

[Lawful Metal]

12 minutes ago, Casey said:

Yeah I guess @Lawful Metal wishing Punk got injured wasn’t a thing that happened right.

I guess you can take it that way. It was more of it looked like he got hurt, but what if the script was he was supposed to win it, and then had to do a press conference where he’s hurt and he has a list of grievances about people who couldn’t manage a Target (I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to gang rape your employees at a Target)

I think I was actually concerned that he got hurt, not wishing for it. Just wishing for chaos.

On a different note, WWE really needs an Undertaker character, where the gong goes off the crowd goes nuts and everyone in the ring freaks the fuck out. Hell I’d settle for a Kane. 

[Cobra Commander]

Rock might be the best politician in wrestling who never really gets called out for being a politician, mostly because he's in the vicinity of other guys also playing politics

[RazorbladeKiss87]

I can't go super in depth because my memory is not the best but the woman's Rumble was fun. Sloppy but fun. Jordynne Grace looked good! They gave her a lot. I've wondered for a while why she isn't in WWE and I'd say it's likely she ends up there after TNA, although her tweet makes it sound like a working relationship (I doubt that). The comedy with Chelsea Green was actually funny to me. Loved Jade's debut. Glad to see Liv back, for reasons. The commentary is really obviously not produced to the point it used to be. 

Skipped the four way. 

Most over the top facials: the red at the end of KO/Paul or the Usos at the start of the men's Rumble?

[StuntmanCrowley]

I'm sure I'll get my Punk bias attacked in short order, but good lord, has he just become lame, JAG in WWE in short order and pales in comparison to Gunther, Cody and Drew.

and ill be honest about it, i couldn't care less if the guy got injured or not, he's a persona grata other than a great entrance theme and quippy catchphrases at this point.  the main event scene doesn't need him in WWE and I honestly argue they needed him more in AEW.

Edited January 29 by StuntmanCrowley

[MrKothoga]

Here I am, watching Royal Rumble once again, like every year. The only thing from WWE I still watch although I once again don't really know why. It's not like I hate watching it but it's, well, boring. I'm just interested to see how WWE is doing. Like seeing a long lost friend but after talking a few minutes you just know why you drifted apart and don't hang out anymore.

I was bummed to see Asuka getting eliminated so unceremoniously and I thought Chelsea getting smashed by Nia and Piper was quite funny.

I still really really really hate the way WWEs commentary sounds (the whole presentation feels) like a corporate AI wrote the script with maximum marketability as highest priority.

The time between the end of the womens rumble and the start of the title fourway felt like an eternity. Really wasn't invested in the match because why would I? As if Reigns would loose the title.

Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn are awesome. I sometimes think about just watching their stuff in WWE and skip everything else. Really bummed that Owens didn't enter the rumble and Zayn was eliminated way too early.

This really isn't a WWE-only thing, but I hate all the obvious time-wasting, laying around and stupid pushing-each-other-around-the-turnbuckles. I get that booking a coherent match with so many wrestlers can/will be a nightmare but it feels like WWE just wants to push their statistics of who eliminated the most people (hence so many wrestlers doing nothing until they can all be eliminated by person x) and who stayed in the match the longest time. 

Everytime I hear the banger theme of Shinsuke Nakamura I think back to his awesome debut against Sami Zayn. 
Adrenaline in my soul, something something Cody Rhodes!
I came to see a Kofi Kingston rescue spot. What the hell? Think of something. I don't care. If he's not fit enough to do something athletic then do something clever/funny.
Pat McAfee-Spot was afwul. JD McDonagh looks like he activated a big-head-cheatcode. R-Truths hot tag was nice.

I'm really drawing a blank here but did WWE always exclude wresters from other matches in the rumble? I feel like the rumble could have used some more star power and Styles, Orton, Knight, Paul and Owens are right there. Why wouldn't they enter the rumble? Although I'm fully out of the WWE loop so maybe there was enough star power here and I just don't know. Also, I haven't watched WWE for years and I still knew Cody or Punk were gonna win the rumble ... I think that's not good but I'm not sure, maybe it's just a case of the obvious choice is the right choice.

So, Cody Rhodes never main evented a single PPV of AEW and now he wins the Royal Rumble and will be headlining WrestleMania for the second time in a row... does that mean that in kayfabe AEW is the better promotion?

Tuning into the generic themes discussion: just give every theme some distinct opening sound. Like Bret Harts screeching for Natalya so the crowd can immediately go mild.

[Hamhock]

I need to rewatch past Rumbles to see when they descended into a mandatory “new person enters and everyone rushes them one after another like a kung-fu movie fight scene and gets dropped; repeat same sequence for every entrant” cliche. So so many headscissors.

Edited January 29 by Hamhock

[Curt McGirt]

They also stole the AEW trope of "everyone drops a bomb on each other in a row until everyone is laid out on the mat". 

[Godfrey]

13 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

They also stole the AEW trope of "everyone drops a bomb on each other in a row until everyone is laid out on the mat". 

I saw that, it's one of my least favorite tropes

[username]

I maintain that WWE has to get over its history and make both the men and women's Royal Rumbles only have 20 participants. This means the old records never get touched and it'll seem less impressive in the short term, but that gets things back to where it is only 10 entrants more than the old classic 30 men only Rumble shows and I think you have a fighting shot at a decently paced show that way.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

I thought it was a pretty nice example of how much of a professional Miz is, watching him repeatedly bump and feed for Punk once he got in the ring, despite all the shit Punk's talked about him over the years.

[odessasteps]

The brief Miz/Truth reunion was a nice callback.