The Royal Rumble is always one of the best WWE PPVs of the year, and the WWE is a company that knows how to do PPV, even if the TV leading into it is lackluster. Both of those things portended an excellent PPV, and it did deliver. Oh boy did it deliver.
After the jump...The show opened with Ezekiel Jackson taking on Christian for the ECW Championship. The broadcast booth for tonight is the standard PPV crew, Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and Matt Striker. Cole was actually tolerable most of the night, but was carried pretty heavily by Lawler and Striker.
Anyway, Regal came out with Zeke dressed all managerial-like, but he was tossed midway through the match for shenanigans. Zeke handled Christian pretty well throughout the match with his big man RAWR strikes and stuff, and Christian had some good comebacks. It looked like Zeke was going to win, but Christian, who tried to hit the Killswitch three other times during the match, finally nailed out countering a clothesline in the corner into his finishing move. Good opener. Zeke isn't terrible, but he's not terrific yet. Christian did an incredible job reining him in. I wonder where he goes from here though. Another program with Regal? Zack Ryder? Vance Archer *shudder*? Time will tell, I guess.
Next up, we get to a couple of backstage segments. First, Cryme Tyme was trying to angle getting both members into the Rumble instead of just JTG with Teddy Long and Tiffany. They tried getting Khali to give up his spot in exchange for a kiss from a very reluctant Tiffany. Long responded by singing Pants on the Ground. Two wrestling events, two renditions of Pants on the Ground. Eh, I liked Dunkerton's version at Chikara better, but hey, I give the WWE credit. At least the reference they pulled out wasn't too dated; they could have gone with William Hung. Miz came in to break up the sewing circle and got a US Championship match for his troubles. All in all, it was a filler segment, no more, no less, but it was important in setting up not only the match but an important Rumble angle.
Next up, another segment, this time, with Cody Rhodes trying to weasel out Ted DiBiase to Randy Orton. It didn't work as Orton told Rhodes to bugger off and not interfere in his match with Sheamus.
US Championship match was next. I'm glad that they put this feud on PPV, because it's the best thing they have going on the RAW side right now, and PPV exposure should be used as a reward for good performance. It was a pretty decent match. MVP took control through most of it, with the best sequence coming at the end. MVP kept flustering Miz with a bunch of pinning combos, and Miz tried to find shelter in the ropes. MVP came after him, and Miz pinned him with a roll-up. After the match, Miz threw the win in MVP's face, and MVP hit him with the least-effective looking finisher in all the land, the Playmaker. The color annoucers put it over as poor sportsmanship, which makes me wonder whether they're turning MVP or not... well maybe not, since both Lawler and Striker were heeling it up at parts during the night.
Before the WWE Championship match, we got another segment with DiBiase doing to Rhodes what Rhodes tried to do to DiBiase earlier to Orton. Really playing up the Legacy break-up angle here. Orton again told DiBiase to bugger off. Ginger vs. Gay Viper was next. It was a fairly decent match. They had Orton work over Sheamus' leg and the announcers sold that it was really the first time that Sheamus had to wrestle a match with a body part injured. I don't really remember if this is true because the feud with Goldust in ECW seems like it happened a million years ago now, but hey, I buy it since while on RAW he's barely had to sell, even for John Cena. The action spilled out to the outside, and Orton got chased back into the ring. Before Sheamus could re-enter, Cody Rhodes popped out of the crowd and way-laid him. The ref was like "What the hell are you doing?" Meanwhile, Sheamus shrugged off the hit and then ate an RKO in the ring. Orton covered, but by that time, it was already evident that it was a DQ finish. Afterwards, Orton beat up Rhodes for being a tard, then DiBiase came out to try and talk sense to both guys and got a shot to the face for his troubles. The post-match stuff was far more intriguing than the match itself, and I'm wondering if this means we'll see a Legacy explosion at WrestleMania.
Time to recap the WON winner for most Disgusting Promotional Tactic of the Year, the Piggie James angle in preparation for the Women's Title match. Yeah, some people called this good heel heat. I call it embarrassing and disgusting, especially since Mickie James is what, a size 2? Three at the most? Christ if she's fat than what the fuck am I? (don't answer that) Time for the match, and after Michelle McCool cut a promo and brought out Layla in a fat suit. Finally, Mickie came out and squashed McCool in like a minute and brought sweet, sweet closure to this great national nightmare.
Another backstage segment before the World Championship match, this time featuring Kane telling Shawn Michaels not to get too obsessed with the Undertaker, because it only leads to darkness. Good stuff, actually. Kane has always been underrated, but hey, that's his lot in life. Trips walked in after that and reiterated that Michaels would have to find a different way to get to Taker because he was winning the Rumble.
World Championship time, Rey Mysterio vs. Undertaker. This was a really good, really fun match, a good cat-and-mouse thing going on. Taker got busted open hardway during the affair, which I'm sure the folks at TV-PG land cringed at. Hey, it's PPV, you pay for that kind of stuff. The match ended with Taker eating two 619s and then countering the West Coast Pop into the Last Ride. I rag on Taker a lot for being a part-time piece of donkey feces, but at least it allows him to bring it during PPVs. He doesn't need to be Champion, but then again, maybe for the Rumble he had to be to get the story over. With the Rumble result, I think it's a possibility that he's not walking into WM the Champion.
The Rumble match itself was the match of the night. A lot of people are going to disagree with me, and that's fine. It wasn't your daddy's Rumble match. It didn't have the guy getting the Diesel push. It didn't have guys staying in the ring for really long stretches of time. I think the only time they mentioned someone being in there for a long time was when Cena passed the 25 minute mark... amateurish compared to some of the hour-plus performances that have taken place in the past. Hell, the match probably didn't even last an entire hour. There wasn't the pile of midcarders fighting with the one or two main eventers with dozens of false-start eliminations between legit ones.
It was a quick jaunt compared to Rumbles past. However, it felt like there were a lot of things going on, like they accomplished a lot of stuff in the lean amount of time they spent with the match. CM Punk was established as a major star again. Yeah, he barely lasted 10 minutes, but in that short amount of time, he was tossing guys as easily as Big Show, Steve Austin or Undertaker. He was able to have the ring to himself to cockily build heat for his Straight Edge Society. Would I have liked to have seen him last longer and not get tossed like an afterthought by Triple H? Yeah, but all things considered with the match ending the way it did, it worked.
The seeds were planted for DX dissention, and it provided an in to shake up the all-but-booked Taker/HBK match at WrestleMania. The actual elimination was so awesome too. It wasn't the predictable Triple H-and-Shawn-Michaels-last-until-the-end with one of them being the last or next to last elimination. It happened so quick, so jarringly, so opposite to how it might have played out in years past that I marked out as soon as it happened.
It gave you surprises. If you were looking for the old-school guys coming back like Booker T, Ricky Steamboat or RVD for a one-off, you might have been disappointed, but all that was made up for with the events in the match - Beth Phoenix and Edge being in the fray, Beth's AMAZINGLY AWESOME elimination of Great Khali and subsequent taking of the GTS like a champ, Miz with the belt-shot on MVP, the aforementioned HBK elimination of Trips, HBK getting eliminated and then going batshit crazy over losing his shot at Taker and the climactic Edge victory, eliminating John Cena and stamping his ticket for WrestleMania.
I think that was worth the match itself, seeing Edge win. While he's part of the WWE elite, he hasn't won a Rumble and he hasn't been a face in a good long while. The Rumble has been used to establish freshly turned heels and give them the boost going into WrestleMania that they needed, and this fit perfectly for Edge.
Also, it gives a good amount of leeway for the build towards WM. Elimination Chamber (sigh) now becomes almost must watch. Do they do the obvious and have Chris Jericho win the World Title EC? Does Shawn Michaels go to the World Title EC, win it and force the Undertaker's hand at WrestleMania? Do they run with Edge/Sheamus if they decide to change the obvious plans at the last second? Does Rey/Batista become a title match at some point? Everything seems so wide-open, which is a refreshing change from the dialed-in same-old main events we got between SummerSlam and TLC.
It's an exciting time to be a wrestling fan, and unlike what some people might have forecasted with Hogan going to TNA, mostly all of it is being derived from the WWE. Hopefully tonight on RAW, they pick up where they left off last night in terms of intrigue and build, because if they do, they have a chance to set the wrestling world on fire.
