WWE Royal Rumble 2015
WWE Royal Rumble 2015 (1/25/2015)- Philadelphia, PA
PRE-SHOW:
NEW AGE OUTLAWS PROMO- this was SOOOOO ANNOYING that for the first time in my life, I actually WANT to see the Ascension have a squash match.
BOOKER T INTERVIEWS SHAWN MICHAELS- it’s a f*cking interview! The point of it so that we can hear what Shawn has to say. I get splicing in videos, but don’t playing the f*cking background music the whole time.
KOFI KINGSTON & BIG E. LANGSTON (w/Xavier Woods) vs. CESARO & TYSON KIDD (w/Natalya, Adam Rose, & the Rosebuds)- 6/10
The crowd loved Cesaro and Tyson, and were not into The New Day at all. But we all saw that coming. Kidd & Cesaro won pretty much cleanly.
I’m sure I’ve complained about this before, but they REALLY need to stop doing commercials in the middle of pre-show matches. They have the entire rest of the pre-show to build up the rumble. Don’t do it in the middle of a damn match. I’m already paying for the WWE Network. Do they really think there is someone who will tune in for the pre-show but won’t watch the main show itself?
INTERVIEW WITH RYBACK, ZIGGLER, & ROWAN- boring
Ryback said that Hunter & Steph have no souls. Ziggler says that he doesn’t root for John Cena very often. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson about not opening his mouth by now, but I guess not. Rowan said stuff.
RENEE TELLS US THAT THE ROCK IS HERE- again: there is NOBODY watching the pre-show who isn’t going to watch the PPV, so why spoil such a HUGE surprise?
MAIN SHOW:
THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS vs. THE ASCENSION- 2.25/10
Apparently someone told Billy how old he looked on Monday, because in the past six days he has both gotten a haircut and dyed his hair. Ascension win. It wasn’t very good.
They plug Austin doing a live podcast with Hunter after Raw on Feb 2.
HUNTER & STEPH BACKSTAGE- Hunter says that if Sting shows up again, he’ll kick his ass. Heyman shows up and offers to have Brock kick Sting’s ass for them.
I spotted a sign saying â€"Angelo Poffo for Hall of Fame.†That’s really mean. The least WWE could have done was give Lanny a seat in the first few rows.
WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Usos(c) vs. The Miz & Damien Miz-Dow- 5.75/10
Fans hated The Miz and liked the Usos, but they loved Miz-Dow. Not new, I know. Perhaps the biggest piece of news out of this is that Miz and Miz-Dow didn’t split up here. Well… there’s always the Royal Rumble.
JOEY MERCURY & JAMIE NOBLE SHILL WWE IMMORTALS- Mercury was secretly playing as Cena. Rollins yelled at them for playing games instead of focusing on his match. He said he was tired of being the future and is ready to be the present.
PAIGE & NATALYA vs. THE BELLA TWINS- 4/10
Lawler asked â€"which one is actually older: Nikki or Brie?†which is a reasonable but irrelevant question. What I heard, though, caused me to do a double take: â€"Which one is actually over: Nikki or Brie?â€
The fans chanted â€"Ole†for Sami Zayn. JBL tried to spin it as â€"a European football chant for Paige.â€
Nikki wins clean, pinning Nattie I definitely didn’t see that one coming. I guess neither Paige nor Nattie will be challenging for the Divas Title at Wrestlemania.
GUYS CUT â€"I WILL WIN THE RUMBLE!†PROMOS- it is what it is.
Reigns and Big Show were good, Rusev was great, Bryan was okay, and the Dust Brothers were bad. Miz & Miz-Dow teased dissension. Fandango’s promo was notable for two reasons: 1) Rosa was allowed to speak and 2) he said that the whole roster underestimated â€"the power of the tango.â€
I was utterly astounded that the Dusts and Fandango were allowed to talk, but Bray, Ambrose, and Barrett were not.
WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Brock Lesnar(c) (w/Paul Heyman) vs. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins (w/Joey Mercury & Jamie Noble)- 9.5/10
The crowd is singing â€"John Cena sucks.†JBL claimed that that made them â€"unique.†He clearly doesn’t know what that word means. Either that or Vince is yelling in his ear so often that he can’t hear the crowd every week. Probably the former, though.
Huge pop for Rollins. Even bigger pop for Brock.
They started off great, making use of the elements they have spent the past few weeks building up.
DOUBLE GERMAN OF DEATH TO THE STOOGES!
We had some good three-way action, but a lot more of it was one-on-one while the third guy takes a break. Brock was practically no-selling AA’s right now. BROCK WAS A MONSTER here…
Until he ate a F*CKING GORGEOUS DIVING ELBOW DROP THROUGH THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE!
They called for a stretcher for Brock, and while that was happening Rollins and Cena traded CRAZY false finishes until Rollins hit a PHOENIX SPLASH… but Brock showed up to hit the F-5 on hit and win! This match was AWESOME!
2015 ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH- 5.5/10
The story of the match was that the ring got fuller and fuller as the match progressed, generally staying at three to four people until about half way in, which was kind of a new story. Aside from that, though, this rumble really had very little going for it. There were some good spots, but really no interesting stories, and once Bryan was eliminated, the people crapped all over it, again. More on that later. First, though, here are my semi-stream of consciousness thoughts, later edited together to hopefully make them easier to read.
Miz is first. Truth is second. Miz is not impressed by Truth’s singing.
BUBBA RAY DUDLEY! (I guess New Japan wasn’t interested in booking Dudley Boyz vs. Bullet Club)
The whazzup spot with Truth was very clever. The 3-D was excessive. It made Truth feel like Replacement Devon.
Bray and Harper work over Bubba. Fans want Devon. Bubba just got eliminated though, so I guess they won’t get him. The fans wanted to see Harper and Wyatt face off, but they made an alliance instead.
Erick Rowan jumps Curtis Axel then Harper pretends to turn on Bray to team with Rowan against him, but it’s all a trap that everyone but big dumb Rowan saw coming. Isn’t this guy supposed to be a genius? This whole thing winds up with him and Harper both getting dumped at the same time by Bray.
The Boogeyman? Really? Why? Was literally everyone else in the wrestling business busy tonight?
Big pop for Ryder.
HUGE pop for Dragon. AIRPLANE SPIN!
Tyson Kidd got a good pop.
Barely any reaction for Stardust.
The announcers keep claiming that this is â€"Stardust’s debut†in the Royal Rumble. Not only is that just plain wrong, but even if we pretend that Stardust and Cody Rhodes are supposed to be kayfabe different people (which they’re not), then this would still be inconsistent because WWE counts one elimination that Isaac Yank’em got in Kane’s total.
DDP! He’s done wonders with Jake, so maybe he can help get Cody off of whatever he is smoking.
DIAMOND CUTTERS ALL AROUND!
Rusev eliminates DDP (and Fandango, but no one really cares about Fandango).
BRYAN IS OUT! WHAT THE F*CK?! ARE THEY CRAZY?!
And the booing begins.
Cody turns on Goldust. The people care for a moment, but then the â€"DANIEL BRYAN†chants start up.
It’s a constant buzzing of boos at this point.
Adam Rose at 18. Mandy Leon is front and center with him. The Rosebuds save Kofi because they’re dumb. Then Kofi gets eliminated a minute later, so what did it matter?
Roman Reigns at 19. He gets pretty roundly booed.
Reigns eliminates both Dusts, so I guess they’re not actually turning on each other, which would be about twenty-eighth time this team has teased a break-up in the sixteen months they’ve been together.
Miz-Dow actually got them to cheer. A huge accomplishment at this point.
Miz comes out and says he is taking Miz-Dow’s spot. Miz gets knocked out by Reigns, so Miz-Dow comes in and runs wild! That was a great spot. Then he gets eliminated by Rusev a few seconds later. Miz-Dow is then back to imitating Miz on the outside… so in other words, nothing new happens.
Good pop for Swagger, but then the boos return.
Boos for Ryback. Also, â€"CM Punk†chants.
KANE! (That’s me being excited. The crowd booed him, too)!
Huge (almost Bryan-level) pop for Ambrose. The crowd soured on him decently quickly after that, though. Ziggler got a similar reaction.
Titus was supposed to be the super-quick elimination, but Reigns and Ambrose couldn’t get him over the ropes on the first try.
Not much of a pop for Cesaro, especially considering how loved he was earlier on.
Big Show comes in and everyone gangs up on him. He does a roars. No one cares.
Kane & Big Show up to eliminate Ryback, Dolph, and Bray, reclaiming the record from HBK! Hooray for Kane!
Reigns & Ambrose vs. Kane & Big Show faceoff was good, but the people booed it. They really should have seen this coming.
Ambrose is out. Now we’ve got â€"BULLSH*T!†chants. Reigns’ comeback is getting booed.
â€"WE WANT REFUNDS!†chants.
NO ORTON?!
Reigns dumps Kane and Big Show a the same time after they turned on each other and were trying to eliminate each other. The people sh*t all over it. The spot also looked bad. If they want to make Reigns look good, why not have him clothesline them both over the top rope and look dominant, not like some punk who got lucky because the two big man had already gotten each other over the top rope?
Beatdown of Reigns by Kane and Big Show right afterwards. The people are chanting for Rusev for some reason. Then THE ROCK SHOWED UP… and even HE is getting booed!
Apparently Rusev is still alive. Well… not for long. Reigns eliminates him, too. The people still boo.
Rock gets in the ring and raises Reigns’ hand. The people still boo. I guess they’ve figured out that this was the entire purpose of The Rock’s appearance here: to get them to not boo Reigns. It didn’t work. Nice try, Vince, but we’re too smart for you!
Actually, now that I think about it, the match should still be going on, because Reigns stepped between the ropes when he left the ring after his celebration, and Curtis Axel never made it to the ring, so he was also never eliminated! A TIE!
POST-SHOW:
CENA & RUSEV PULL-APART- good.
PANEL DISCUSSION- complete with incessant booing and â€"DANIEL BRYAN!†chants in the background.
THE NEW INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWS ROCK AND REIGNS- Finally they get smart enough to go somewhere where we can’t hear the booing. Rock’s promo SUCKED. Reigns was pretty good, though.
Sooo… let’s talk about Daniel Bryan not winning, shall we?
It’s been pretty clear since Reigns came back the people aren’t as into him as they should be for a top babyface. Both Ambrose and Ziggler have been both getting bigger pops and putting on better matches. Then, when Daniel Bryan came back, it became abundantly clear who needed to win the Royale Rumble. It’s not like it would take much work. There is already a story built in with Bryan trying to climb his way back up to the top to regain the title that he never lost. He could beat either the big scary dominant beast Brock Lesnar, or he could beat The Authority’s chosen one, Seth Rollins (he never actually beat Orton last year: Batista was the one who tapped). Either way would work fine (and if you still want to have Reigns be the guy who gets the win over Brock, you could have Cena pin Rollins here, then have Rollins cash in on Cena to get the belt on him so that you have Rollins vs. Bryan for the title and Brock vs. Reigns at Mania).
But WWE decided to go with Roman Reigns instead…and seriously: HOW THE F*CK COULD THEY NOT SEE THIS HAPPENING?!
Last year they were in Pittsburgh, which isn’t known as an overly smarky city, and the crowd told them exactly what they wanted. This year they to PHILADELPHIA, and the world capital of indy wrestling... and they expected something different? That’s like burning your tongue on the food, but then assuming that you won’t get burned if you stick your tongue in the fire on the stove.
The moment Bryan was eliminated- in a completely unspectacular or notable fashion, just like the many random midcarders in the match- all of the life was sucked out of the crowd, and as a result, of the match as well. It was all just bland. Nothing felt exciting. None of the eliminations and none of the teases felt like they meant anything, (and the way that Ziggler and Ambrose were eliminated- just being dumped over the top rope without a fight- didn’t help, either), and nothing came anywhere close to feeling special like a Royal Rumble should. Oh look: Roman Reigns overcame the odds and again and beat Kane and Big Show… just like he does every week on Raw.
They tried brought The Rock in to have him endorse Reigns at the end, hoping that that would get the people to cheer, but they forgot two important things: 1) even The Rock got interrupted by â€"YES!†chants the night of the first big pro-Bryan crowd protest (the Raw after WrestleMania XXVIII), and more importantly, 2) the moment that Rock gets in that ring and raises Roman Reigns’ hand, he ceases to be The Rock, and he just becomes some guy telling the fans that they are supposed to be cheering for Roman Reigns… and they’ve made it quite clear that they don’t want to do that.
So WWE has taken that first major step to crowning Roman Reigns as their new top guy… and while it’s happening, the fans are booing loudly and chanting â€"BULLSH*T!†and â€"WE WANT REFUNDS!†and chanting for someone else- for the guy WWE doesn’t want.
I ended my review of last year’s Royal Rumble with the following observation: â€"Daniel Bryan and the Yes Movement are a giant snowball running down the side of a hill. Gaining size, speed, and momentum. WWE can either get behind it and start pushing it, or they can futilely try to stop it and they and Wrestlemania XXX will get crushed and buried underneath it.†And they did. But they also seem to have assumed that the snowball had reached the bottom of the hill, become as big as it could possibly get, and would start to melt once Bryan went down with his injury. From the moment he returned, though, it was clear that they were wrong. That snowball is still rolling down that hill, gaining even more size and speed and momentum, and WWE again faces the same choice. Get behind it and start pushing, or else they, and WrestleMania and Roman Reigns and their future will get buried underneath it. In Philadelphia tonight, on social media since then, and with the massive wave of cancellations of the WWE Network (enough to crash the cancel my subscription page) in just the few hours since the Royal Rumble ended the fans have made their position about WWE’s main event picture very clear: No Bryan= No Buy.
PRE-SHOW:
NEW AGE OUTLAWS PROMO- this was SOOOOO ANNOYING that for the first time in my life, I actually WANT to see the Ascension have a squash match.
BOOKER T INTERVIEWS SHAWN MICHAELS- it’s a f*cking interview! The point of it so that we can hear what Shawn has to say. I get splicing in videos, but don’t playing the f*cking background music the whole time.
KOFI KINGSTON & BIG E. LANGSTON (w/Xavier Woods) vs. CESARO & TYSON KIDD (w/Natalya, Adam Rose, & the Rosebuds)- 6/10
The crowd loved Cesaro and Tyson, and were not into The New Day at all. But we all saw that coming. Kidd & Cesaro won pretty much cleanly.
I’m sure I’ve complained about this before, but they REALLY need to stop doing commercials in the middle of pre-show matches. They have the entire rest of the pre-show to build up the rumble. Don’t do it in the middle of a damn match. I’m already paying for the WWE Network. Do they really think there is someone who will tune in for the pre-show but won’t watch the main show itself?
INTERVIEW WITH RYBACK, ZIGGLER, & ROWAN- boring
Ryback said that Hunter & Steph have no souls. Ziggler says that he doesn’t root for John Cena very often. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson about not opening his mouth by now, but I guess not. Rowan said stuff.
RENEE TELLS US THAT THE ROCK IS HERE- again: there is NOBODY watching the pre-show who isn’t going to watch the PPV, so why spoil such a HUGE surprise?
MAIN SHOW:
THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS vs. THE ASCENSION- 2.25/10
Apparently someone told Billy how old he looked on Monday, because in the past six days he has both gotten a haircut and dyed his hair. Ascension win. It wasn’t very good.
They plug Austin doing a live podcast with Hunter after Raw on Feb 2.
HUNTER & STEPH BACKSTAGE- Hunter says that if Sting shows up again, he’ll kick his ass. Heyman shows up and offers to have Brock kick Sting’s ass for them.
I spotted a sign saying â€"Angelo Poffo for Hall of Fame.†That’s really mean. The least WWE could have done was give Lanny a seat in the first few rows.
WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Usos(c) vs. The Miz & Damien Miz-Dow- 5.75/10
Fans hated The Miz and liked the Usos, but they loved Miz-Dow. Not new, I know. Perhaps the biggest piece of news out of this is that Miz and Miz-Dow didn’t split up here. Well… there’s always the Royal Rumble.
JOEY MERCURY & JAMIE NOBLE SHILL WWE IMMORTALS- Mercury was secretly playing as Cena. Rollins yelled at them for playing games instead of focusing on his match. He said he was tired of being the future and is ready to be the present.
PAIGE & NATALYA vs. THE BELLA TWINS- 4/10
Lawler asked â€"which one is actually older: Nikki or Brie?†which is a reasonable but irrelevant question. What I heard, though, caused me to do a double take: â€"Which one is actually over: Nikki or Brie?â€
The fans chanted â€"Ole†for Sami Zayn. JBL tried to spin it as â€"a European football chant for Paige.â€
Nikki wins clean, pinning Nattie I definitely didn’t see that one coming. I guess neither Paige nor Nattie will be challenging for the Divas Title at Wrestlemania.
GUYS CUT â€"I WILL WIN THE RUMBLE!†PROMOS- it is what it is.
Reigns and Big Show were good, Rusev was great, Bryan was okay, and the Dust Brothers were bad. Miz & Miz-Dow teased dissension. Fandango’s promo was notable for two reasons: 1) Rosa was allowed to speak and 2) he said that the whole roster underestimated â€"the power of the tango.â€
I was utterly astounded that the Dusts and Fandango were allowed to talk, but Bray, Ambrose, and Barrett were not.
WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Brock Lesnar(c) (w/Paul Heyman) vs. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins (w/Joey Mercury & Jamie Noble)- 9.5/10
The crowd is singing â€"John Cena sucks.†JBL claimed that that made them â€"unique.†He clearly doesn’t know what that word means. Either that or Vince is yelling in his ear so often that he can’t hear the crowd every week. Probably the former, though.
Huge pop for Rollins. Even bigger pop for Brock.
They started off great, making use of the elements they have spent the past few weeks building up.
DOUBLE GERMAN OF DEATH TO THE STOOGES!
We had some good three-way action, but a lot more of it was one-on-one while the third guy takes a break. Brock was practically no-selling AA’s right now. BROCK WAS A MONSTER here…
Until he ate a F*CKING GORGEOUS DIVING ELBOW DROP THROUGH THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE!
They called for a stretcher for Brock, and while that was happening Rollins and Cena traded CRAZY false finishes until Rollins hit a PHOENIX SPLASH… but Brock showed up to hit the F-5 on hit and win! This match was AWESOME!
2015 ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH- 5.5/10
The story of the match was that the ring got fuller and fuller as the match progressed, generally staying at three to four people until about half way in, which was kind of a new story. Aside from that, though, this rumble really had very little going for it. There were some good spots, but really no interesting stories, and once Bryan was eliminated, the people crapped all over it, again. More on that later. First, though, here are my semi-stream of consciousness thoughts, later edited together to hopefully make them easier to read.
Miz is first. Truth is second. Miz is not impressed by Truth’s singing.
BUBBA RAY DUDLEY! (I guess New Japan wasn’t interested in booking Dudley Boyz vs. Bullet Club)
The whazzup spot with Truth was very clever. The 3-D was excessive. It made Truth feel like Replacement Devon.
Bray and Harper work over Bubba. Fans want Devon. Bubba just got eliminated though, so I guess they won’t get him. The fans wanted to see Harper and Wyatt face off, but they made an alliance instead.
Erick Rowan jumps Curtis Axel then Harper pretends to turn on Bray to team with Rowan against him, but it’s all a trap that everyone but big dumb Rowan saw coming. Isn’t this guy supposed to be a genius? This whole thing winds up with him and Harper both getting dumped at the same time by Bray.
The Boogeyman? Really? Why? Was literally everyone else in the wrestling business busy tonight?
Big pop for Ryder.
HUGE pop for Dragon. AIRPLANE SPIN!
Tyson Kidd got a good pop.
Barely any reaction for Stardust.
The announcers keep claiming that this is â€"Stardust’s debut†in the Royal Rumble. Not only is that just plain wrong, but even if we pretend that Stardust and Cody Rhodes are supposed to be kayfabe different people (which they’re not), then this would still be inconsistent because WWE counts one elimination that Isaac Yank’em got in Kane’s total.
DDP! He’s done wonders with Jake, so maybe he can help get Cody off of whatever he is smoking.
DIAMOND CUTTERS ALL AROUND!
Rusev eliminates DDP (and Fandango, but no one really cares about Fandango).
BRYAN IS OUT! WHAT THE F*CK?! ARE THEY CRAZY?!
And the booing begins.
Cody turns on Goldust. The people care for a moment, but then the â€"DANIEL BRYAN†chants start up.
It’s a constant buzzing of boos at this point.
Adam Rose at 18. Mandy Leon is front and center with him. The Rosebuds save Kofi because they’re dumb. Then Kofi gets eliminated a minute later, so what did it matter?
Roman Reigns at 19. He gets pretty roundly booed.
Reigns eliminates both Dusts, so I guess they’re not actually turning on each other, which would be about twenty-eighth time this team has teased a break-up in the sixteen months they’ve been together.
Miz-Dow actually got them to cheer. A huge accomplishment at this point.
Miz comes out and says he is taking Miz-Dow’s spot. Miz gets knocked out by Reigns, so Miz-Dow comes in and runs wild! That was a great spot. Then he gets eliminated by Rusev a few seconds later. Miz-Dow is then back to imitating Miz on the outside… so in other words, nothing new happens.
Good pop for Swagger, but then the boos return.
Boos for Ryback. Also, â€"CM Punk†chants.
KANE! (That’s me being excited. The crowd booed him, too)!
Huge (almost Bryan-level) pop for Ambrose. The crowd soured on him decently quickly after that, though. Ziggler got a similar reaction.
Titus was supposed to be the super-quick elimination, but Reigns and Ambrose couldn’t get him over the ropes on the first try.
Not much of a pop for Cesaro, especially considering how loved he was earlier on.
Big Show comes in and everyone gangs up on him. He does a roars. No one cares.
Kane & Big Show up to eliminate Ryback, Dolph, and Bray, reclaiming the record from HBK! Hooray for Kane!
Reigns & Ambrose vs. Kane & Big Show faceoff was good, but the people booed it. They really should have seen this coming.
Ambrose is out. Now we’ve got â€"BULLSH*T!†chants. Reigns’ comeback is getting booed.
â€"WE WANT REFUNDS!†chants.
NO ORTON?!
Reigns dumps Kane and Big Show a the same time after they turned on each other and were trying to eliminate each other. The people sh*t all over it. The spot also looked bad. If they want to make Reigns look good, why not have him clothesline them both over the top rope and look dominant, not like some punk who got lucky because the two big man had already gotten each other over the top rope?
Beatdown of Reigns by Kane and Big Show right afterwards. The people are chanting for Rusev for some reason. Then THE ROCK SHOWED UP… and even HE is getting booed!
Apparently Rusev is still alive. Well… not for long. Reigns eliminates him, too. The people still boo.
Rock gets in the ring and raises Reigns’ hand. The people still boo. I guess they’ve figured out that this was the entire purpose of The Rock’s appearance here: to get them to not boo Reigns. It didn’t work. Nice try, Vince, but we’re too smart for you!
Actually, now that I think about it, the match should still be going on, because Reigns stepped between the ropes when he left the ring after his celebration, and Curtis Axel never made it to the ring, so he was also never eliminated! A TIE!
POST-SHOW:
CENA & RUSEV PULL-APART- good.
PANEL DISCUSSION- complete with incessant booing and â€"DANIEL BRYAN!†chants in the background.
THE NEW INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWS ROCK AND REIGNS- Finally they get smart enough to go somewhere where we can’t hear the booing. Rock’s promo SUCKED. Reigns was pretty good, though.
Sooo… let’s talk about Daniel Bryan not winning, shall we?
It’s been pretty clear since Reigns came back the people aren’t as into him as they should be for a top babyface. Both Ambrose and Ziggler have been both getting bigger pops and putting on better matches. Then, when Daniel Bryan came back, it became abundantly clear who needed to win the Royale Rumble. It’s not like it would take much work. There is already a story built in with Bryan trying to climb his way back up to the top to regain the title that he never lost. He could beat either the big scary dominant beast Brock Lesnar, or he could beat The Authority’s chosen one, Seth Rollins (he never actually beat Orton last year: Batista was the one who tapped). Either way would work fine (and if you still want to have Reigns be the guy who gets the win over Brock, you could have Cena pin Rollins here, then have Rollins cash in on Cena to get the belt on him so that you have Rollins vs. Bryan for the title and Brock vs. Reigns at Mania).
But WWE decided to go with Roman Reigns instead…and seriously: HOW THE F*CK COULD THEY NOT SEE THIS HAPPENING?!
Last year they were in Pittsburgh, which isn’t known as an overly smarky city, and the crowd told them exactly what they wanted. This year they to PHILADELPHIA, and the world capital of indy wrestling... and they expected something different? That’s like burning your tongue on the food, but then assuming that you won’t get burned if you stick your tongue in the fire on the stove.
The moment Bryan was eliminated- in a completely unspectacular or notable fashion, just like the many random midcarders in the match- all of the life was sucked out of the crowd, and as a result, of the match as well. It was all just bland. Nothing felt exciting. None of the eliminations and none of the teases felt like they meant anything, (and the way that Ziggler and Ambrose were eliminated- just being dumped over the top rope without a fight- didn’t help, either), and nothing came anywhere close to feeling special like a Royal Rumble should. Oh look: Roman Reigns overcame the odds and again and beat Kane and Big Show… just like he does every week on Raw.
They tried brought The Rock in to have him endorse Reigns at the end, hoping that that would get the people to cheer, but they forgot two important things: 1) even The Rock got interrupted by â€"YES!†chants the night of the first big pro-Bryan crowd protest (the Raw after WrestleMania XXVIII), and more importantly, 2) the moment that Rock gets in that ring and raises Roman Reigns’ hand, he ceases to be The Rock, and he just becomes some guy telling the fans that they are supposed to be cheering for Roman Reigns… and they’ve made it quite clear that they don’t want to do that.
So WWE has taken that first major step to crowning Roman Reigns as their new top guy… and while it’s happening, the fans are booing loudly and chanting â€"BULLSH*T!†and â€"WE WANT REFUNDS!†and chanting for someone else- for the guy WWE doesn’t want.
I ended my review of last year’s Royal Rumble with the following observation: â€"Daniel Bryan and the Yes Movement are a giant snowball running down the side of a hill. Gaining size, speed, and momentum. WWE can either get behind it and start pushing it, or they can futilely try to stop it and they and Wrestlemania XXX will get crushed and buried underneath it.†And they did. But they also seem to have assumed that the snowball had reached the bottom of the hill, become as big as it could possibly get, and would start to melt once Bryan went down with his injury. From the moment he returned, though, it was clear that they were wrong. That snowball is still rolling down that hill, gaining even more size and speed and momentum, and WWE again faces the same choice. Get behind it and start pushing, or else they, and WrestleMania and Roman Reigns and their future will get buried underneath it. In Philadelphia tonight, on social media since then, and with the massive wave of cancellations of the WWE Network (enough to crash the cancel my subscription page) in just the few hours since the Royal Rumble ended the fans have made their position about WWE’s main event picture very clear: No Bryan= No Buy.