A Tale of Two Matches: A Royal Rumble Reflection

I feel compelled to weigh in on the fallout from the Royal Rumble. The results on paper were not all that surprising: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31. The WWE had thrown a few curveballs out that suggested it might be otherwise, and that’s probably a good thing: nobody wants a wrestling show with a completely predictable outcome. The fact that the results went right back to what seemed to be the plan all along is reasonable enough when you think about it, but I can’t shake the feeling that the lead up to it was deceptive. Things were put in place, not to give fans a suspenseful show but to mitigate and manipulate reactions that they anticipated would be negative.

How do people feel when they see through tactics that are, as John Pollock succinctly put it on the LAW Radio Review-A-Raw podcast, “transparent”? Reactions ranged from fans cancelling their subscription to the WWE Network and launching a scolding hashtag campaign (#cancelWWENetwork) to reportedly impeding WWE talents’ vehicles from leaving the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

I am not here to judge any of the above reactions as appropriate or not, nor suggest what would be an appropriate level of outrage. To each his or her own. What I do want to do is explain why I think the way the Royal Rumble match was poorly devised and a sign of lack in vision currently dogging WWE programming, and in this instance leading to my most negative reaction to the end of a pro wrestling special event in some time. I think the best way to go about it would be to look at the elements that made the two principal matches on the card a smashing success and a wrath inspiring let down respectively.  Let’s start with the first.

Brock Lesnar VS John Cena VS Seth Rollins Triple Threat Match for the WWE World Championship

·      All three participants were made to look extremely impressive, highlighting their signatures maneuvers and physical attributes. All three did 1 or more moves worthy of ‘holy shit’ awe from the audience.  

·      All three participants appeared to be upping their game since previous outtings. If someone wanted to , they may be able to comb the archives and come up with footage to prove otherwise, but with a casual viewing, there was little doubt that these guys were performing at the top of their game.

·      Up until close to the finish of the match, all of the competitors had a likely chance of winning, to varying degrees. As most were going back and forth between the idea of a Lesnar or Rollins victory, the closing moments of the match had those two going back and forth for the win.

·      While all of the main participants in the match looked impressive, the eventual winner Brock Lesnar, clearly edged out his two opponents to come across as, without question, the most dominant in the match. An alternative might’ve been to have a victory by cheating, leaving a bitter taste in people’s mouth that is within the realm of the story and makes us want to see retribution. Going the other route makes sense as it will be Lesnar facing a different opponent at Wrestlemania.

While it may seem like comparing apples and oranges, a triple threat match with three wrestlers and a Royal Rumble match with thirty entrants joining the match at various times over the course of roughly an hour, there are enough attributes that they share to show how the Rumble match failed where the triple threat succeeded.

Royal Rumble Match:

·      While not all of the participants could be considered relevant – of course nobody is holding out that a Bubba Ray or Diamond Dallas Page, or even a Miz or Luke Harper is going to win. Among the highlighted entrants expected to win, though, there were hands down TWO names head and shoulders above the rest: Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns. You could even say that’s one less name to think about than in the preceding triple threat match. So, let’s look at how the two of them were treated. Bryan Daniels came in near the first half of the match and was in it for approximately ten minutes. He did a total of TWO impressive looking spots that I can recall with out rewatching. One that eliminated Tyson Kidd, a great wrestler but hardly someone with a huge name value right now, and one in which he took turns delivering kicks to a kneeling Bray Wyatt and Rusev. He was in the match at a completely uncritical moment and his removal was nothing special. In short, he stood there looking like a dork. Surprisingly and inexplicably, Reigns was not made to look all that impressive either. Other than removing Big Show and Kane at the same time, which basically came down to him pushing them out in one big tangle, I didn’t see him do anything special. I am not saying he can’t. But…he didn’t. I was looking out for this throughout the first viewing and again when the match was reshown on Raw the next night. There were no, count them NO superman punches that I can recall. No slides to the outside (all legal as long as its not over the top rope) to deliver one of those jumping drop kicks and landing on the ring apron. Not even any really significant eliminations other than Show and Kane, as mentioned, and the tossing out of Rusev, which came like an afterthought.

·      This point is sliding into my next, which is about the principal players being or at least appearing to be at the top of their games. This would appear to be especially important for new talent and those in their prime; less so than say a John Cena who is a veteran by now. So is this what happened with Roman Reigns? Couldn’t have been farther from it. The guy who had a huge streak of eliminations in his first Royal Rumble match last year didn’t top his previous record; he didn’t even come close. That could’ve been the story of the match right there. Listen to people that know far more about wrestling than myself, like Jim Ross. Matches tell a story. Wrestlers don’t get worse, not without something being up, and Reigns is certainly not unlearning anything, but just like with his promos being so obviously scripted to be uncharacteristic fluff, his performance here seemed to be totally hamstringed by people behind the creative vision of WWE. Were they afraid that a dominant Reigns would reveal to Daniel Bryan fans what’s up and cause them to jeer early on? So what? They got jeers anyway, and after a performance that could not even be argued to have been at a top level.

·      While it was only three in the triple threat, I again point to how important it is that ALL THRE looked strong going into and coming out of their match. Did Bryan Daniel look strong? No. Did Roman Reigns look strong? Still no! In a move that was insulting to audiences, the WWE brought The Rock in to mitigate disappointment, because everyone loves The Rock, right? And in some ways it made sense, as he and Reigns are blood relatives. But his role turned out to be nothing more than coddling the guy who we are supposed to see as the baddest man on the planet going into the main event of Wrestlemania. The notion of The Rock holding Reigns’ hand through matches and turns on the mic, the latter being his real weak point, is sickening. I go back to the idea of the motivation behind the WWE’s movies being completely transparent. To have such blatantly manipulative decisions being made right before the audience’s eyes made it all go down far worse.

·                        Lastly is the point of the results seeming to be able to go in more than one direction up to the end of the match. This might’ve meant Bryan staying in it to be one of the last competitors in the ring. Would this have lead to a major bad vibe in the audience and a terrible reaction? Maybe. But the same thing happened, maybe to an even worse degree by WWE taking him out of the match early on. It was, again, nothing more than a deliberate strategy to make us forget about him being there. This is a sad alternative to delivering a kick ass finish without compromise, just like we saw in the triple threat match. Bryan would have been capable of it. So would Roman Reigns. I think a far better WWE would be less sniveling, bite the bullet, and deliver the best possible simulation of competition and let the chips fall where they may. What we got instead was Reigns taking on two members of The Authority: The Big Show and Kane. Other than that affiliation, they are the farthest thing from significant or imposing opponents as it gets. This isn’t my doing. That’s what the WWE has programmed. While Kane used to be an imposing monster, and Big Show an un-droppable Giant, they are kept from that status by two things: 1) their age 2) the WWE booking them as nothing more than bumbling stooges. Have they had strong periods in their respective careers? Yes. But if WWE is going to lessen their value, then making them the final options for the winners of a main event match is not the kind of thing to captivate the audiences’ attention.  Wait, there was Rusev. That went by in a blink of an eye. Why didn’t they have Rusev knock Reigns around for a bit and make it a close 1 on 1 bout between two impressive wrestlers before Reigns got the win? Why didn’t they let Reigns fend for himself during the match, and have The Rock come out afterwards to congratulate him?

If the answer to one of the above questions is that they feared Rusev would get more cheers than Reigns than that is sad. That is a SERIOUS wake up call to WWE to evaluate their direction. It doesn’t mean Reigns is not the guy to put in the top spot. Though maybe not yet? And maybe not the way they…or is ‘they’ essentially Kevin Dunn and Vince McMahon??....insist on doing it. Reigns was on fire last year. Wrestlers like that don’t suddenly become untalented. Forcing him into a squeaky clean please all persona that doesn’t fit him, and trying to bury a fan favorite wrestler like Daniel Bryan in relative obscurity is not going to work. The audience is too smart for it.  

Mondo Pro Wrestling on Twitter: @MondoCurryMark

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