Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Royal Rumble 2016

STOP RUINING THINGS.
Goddammit, WWE. It was going really well. Lots of solid matches, lots of good stories, fun spots in the Rumble match, and then IT happened. Well, let's run down the entire six hour extravaganza, because there's only two weeks until Elimination Chamber.


6 Woman Tag Match: Becky Lynch, Naomi and Nikki Bella vs. Alexa Bliss, Mickie James and Natalya. Who cares? I mean, seriously, this is the bathroom break match, which is a shame, given the talent involved. But it's just a feud mosh tag. I'm gonna give it to the heels since the only reason for a feud-mosh like this is to give it to the heels.

And of course the faces won, but at least this was in the pre-show where it belonged. I Anyway, this was a match! It happened! (0/1)

WWE Raw Tag Team Championships: Cesaro and Sheamus vs. The Clerb
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say The Clerb wins by somehow managing to cheat despite the two referee stipulation, setting up Cesaro and Sheamus as pure faces who can chase and regain for a month or three.

Look at that. One ref gets Brogue Kicked, allowing Gallows and Anderson to roll up Cesaro and grab the tights to win the belts. The match was fine, but nothing special. Nothing we haven't seen from these two teams before. No post-match breakup or anything, so looks like my call for the future is solid, too. (1/2)

Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax: For Bayley and Charlotte to keep feuding, Sasha and Jax need to keep feuding, so Jax wins in a match all about Sasha's injured knee.

It wasn't actually all about the leg, but it was enough about the leg. And Jax pretty much demolished Sasha. (2/3)

WWE Raw Women’s Championship: Charlotte vs. Bayley: This goes to Charlotte. Possibly clean, possibly through shenanigans. There are rumors of Daniel Bryaning Bayley at Wrestlemania, but I think doing it this year would actually be too soon. The Daniel Bryan thing worked the way it did because for two years, the people wanted it and the WWE refused to give it to them. Ty try to compress that into a few months when the crowds aren't even 100% into Bayley yet would be a mistake.

And Charlotte wins with a nasty looking Natural Selection on the apron in an excellent match. Bayley looked great out there. (3/4)

WWE Universal Championship: Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns, no DQ/Shark Cage. I don't care if it makes me wrong, I'm not picking Reigns here. Can't do it. Can't pick Reigns over Owens, not now, not ever. Owens retains and I'll probably be wrong.

Hooray, Owens won! Hooray, the match bordered on watchable! Boo, Braun Strowman got involved in the finish for some reason. I guess they thought he wasn't involved enough in this event. Feh. (4/5)

WWE Cruiserweight Championship: Rich Swann vs. Neville. I think Neville needs to take this and run with it for 3-4 months, building up a face who can get over by chasing and beating him - probably Cedric Alexander, but I can dream about Akira Tozawa.

And indeed, Neville takes it. No idea where he goes next. Match was decent, but the crowd was surprisingly dead. (5/6)

WWE Championship: AJ Styles vs. John Cena: OK. Here's the deal. John Cena will, at some point, tie and beat Ric Flair's record, becaue John Cena is a purely WWE product and creation. The question is, when and how? A tie at the Royal Rumble, then a loss at Elimination Chamber (maybe to Baron Corbin) and then a Wrestlemania win makes a lot of sense, but I'm going to guess instead a tie at this WM and a win at th enext one. Plus Cena went over in the final showdown on SD so that hints that AJ will retain.

Nope. Cena gets #16, tying Ric Flair's record. Which tells me... nothing, actually. Because the Rumble winner throws all the math out the window. I don't see how they can get the belt off him and back on him at Wrestlemania while accommodating the results of the Rumble. Match was solid Big PPV Cena stuff, and AJ took an AA, a top rope AA, and two consecutive AA's before finally losing. And Cena was either legit tired after the match or he actually decided to sell "hard fought match" for the first time in forever.

Royal Rumble Match

And the Rumble. It was going REALLY well for 29 entrants. We got Jack Gallagher and an impressive array of umbrella spots. We got Tye Dillinger at #10 with the place exploding as predicted. We had lots of good sequences involving Strowman and Big Show and Sami Zayn. We had Jericho making it to the final four. Kofi's save was kind of sad this year, but the triple New Day elimination followed by the double Shesaro elmination was fun.

And then Roman Reigns entered at #30 to ruin another Rumble. And then Randy Orton won it, which isn't much of an improvement. Roman Reigns is running out of ways to ruin Royal Rumbles. In 2015, he ruined it by winning it. In 2016, he ruined it by having the Rumble be all about him. And in 2017, he ruined it by being in the Rumble when we all were thinking "at least Roman Reigns isn't in the Rumble this year".  Stop giving us socks for Christmas, Vince McMahon. They're OK socks, but we have plenty and we'd like something else now, please.

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