History of the Royal Rumble with KB

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2001

I was loving the WWF at this time. 2000 was such a great year and now those new stars that helped make it so great had another year of experience under their belts. This was a strong card and I was particularly excited about this one because for the first time I was going to be on the road to WrestleMania. WrestleMania X7 was the first one I attended live and I was looking forward to seeing the build up.

I’m with you on the tag title match KB. It was nice to see two legit teams in a normal match without any gimmicks. I actually think Edge & Christian may have been a little underrated at this time. The rivalry among Edge & Christian, The Dudleys, and The Hardys was great but in my opinion Edge & Christian were the best of the three.

The IC title ladder match was awesome. I don’t know why this is a forgotten match. Everything about it was great. This is one of the best ladder matches there ever was but it doesn’t get much recognition.

Chyna vs. Ivory was ok for what it was. The whole point of this was to set up their mania match. Chyna being seriously injured was the only way anyone would believe that Ivory stood any chance against her. Turns out Chyna squashed Ivory anyway, but this setup was ok.

I’ve always liked the title match between Triple H and Kurt Angle. This seems to be another forgotten match. This was hurt a little because both were hated heels. Face vs. face works fine, but heel vs. heel is much harder to pull off. This is my concern for Sheamus vs. Orton this year. Anyway this was a very good match and much better than their match at Unforgiven a few months earlier. I loved Angle’s first title reign. He played his character to perfection. I liked how he kept ending up with questionable victories against the odds. It was also funny how Trish was throwing herself at Angle, but he was oblivious to it. I know that Austin vs. Rock was the money match for mania, but I thought Austin vs. Angle could have worked too. Angle was hated for backdooring his way into wins against the top stars. It would have been predictable that Austin would have won at mania, but I think it could have had a nice build and been a good match. I can’t blame WWF for going the way they did, and don’t disagree, but Angle vs. Austin could have been good too.

The rumble was pretty good but not great. I didn’t care for the hardcore spot in the middle. To be fair there are sixty minutes to fill with thirty different guys so filling in the gaps isn’t bad. There seemed to e a few dead points in this. I don’t have much to say as it was good but could have been better. One thing I did like was the surprise return of Haku. Let me explain. I didn’t really care so much that he was back, and didn’t expect him to stay after that night. He didn’t do anything so there wasn’t any real significance. I just like having one or two random unannounced guys showing for the rumble. It’s just kind of fun as you never know who might show up. I wouldn’t mind seeing that every year. It would have to be someone completely random though. For example not IRS or Sgt. Slaughter as we all know they work for WWE and are at all the shows anyway.

Overall I’d say this show was very good. The undercard was strong and the Rumble while not great was solid. I’m looking forward to the rest of the reviews as I don’t remember a really bad rumble since 1999. Some are worse than others but I think they're ususally pretty good. We'll see if my memory is correct.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2002

In my last post I stated how I there wasn’t a bad rumble since 1999. While 2002 certainly wasn’t bad I wouldn’t say it was very good either. It could have been good and should have been good. It just wasn’t.

The tag title match doesn’t do much for me. A year earlier we had two good teams in a gimmick free title match. Here we had another gimmick free title match, but there was a significant downgrade in one of the teams. The tag division had a brief revival in 2000, but by mid 2001 it was dead again. The random pairing of Tazz and Spike is very forgettable.

I like the IC match better. Regal goes through spurts where he is a good competitor and spurts where he is completely irrelevant. I’ve always been a Regal fan and was pleased to see he was being used. 2002 was a great year for Edge as he looked like he was about to reach the next level. His neck injury would delay that for about two years. I thought this was a good feud for these two at this point in their respective careers.

I don’t have anything to say about the women’s title match. I’m not being insulting. I simply have no memory of it. I wouldn’t have noticed if this was left out of the review.

I get the point of Vince vs. Flair, but I wasn’t very in to it. I think you’re right on KB when you say this was done just to say Flair fought Vince. The problem was Vince didn’t have the history with Flair like he did with Austin or Hogan. He didn’t have any personal ties like he did with Shane. I see why they went this way, but it just didn’t seem to click.

The title match was ok, but I’m not too crazy about it. I’m probably not being fair though. I really liked the match Rock and Jericho had at No Mercy. That’s probably the best match The Rock ever had. This was different and I was left a little disappointed. I realize different is good as I would not want to see a rerun of sorts. When I think of this feud I remember the No Mercy match and the Rumble match is an afterthought.

I liked the rumble better than you did KB, but there is a reason that doesn’t really have anything to do with the match. This year a group of friends and I started a game to play during the rumble. It’s a simple game that makes the event more fun. It requires five or six people. Let’s say you’re playing with six people. Each person puts $5 in singles into the game. Each person pulls five names out of a hat and are assigned those participants in the rumble. If one of your guys eliminates somebody you take a dollar. For example I remember drawing Chuck Palumbo as one of my guys that year. Normally I would not care about him at all. Because of the game I was watching to see what he did and was pleased that he actually eliminated somebody. It’s kind of a corny game, but it’s cheap and it adds a little bit of fun when you’re watching the event. We’ve done it every year since.

That’s why I liked the rumble a bit more at the time, however that doesn’t mean it was a good rumble. My little game doesn’t allow an event to stand the test of time. This was a poorly booked rumble. I agree with you about a lot of the quick eliminations. I don’t understand why Kane, Show, RVD, and Booker were eliminated so quickly. They were some of the bigger names in there and should have been more of a threat. There were a couple things I liked. Maven eliminating Taker was pretty cool. It was the pop of the crowd and Taker’s reaction that made that work. Also I liked Triple H’s long entrance. I understand why you’d rather he run down and get the action going right away. I like this better. The slow walk and stare down allowed the anticipation to build and I thought it worked pretty well. That should have been the WrestleMania X8 main event. I also loved seeing Mr. Perfect in this. I always like that surprise random return, but this was different. I thought Perfect looked great in there. Despite him not being in the WWF for years he didn’t look out of place and looked like he belonged in there. I love the final four of Hunter, Austin, Angle, and Perfect. Perfect just looked to fit in so well with those guys. I actually thought Perfect vs. Angle could have been a good match for mania. I should have known he wasn’t going to be used properly. There was one idea I had about Angle going into this. Going into this he was bragging about all his accomplishments in such a short time. Now he was going to add a rumble victory to his resume. The only reason he hadn’t won one was because he hadn’t competed in one. I thought it would have been great to see him enter at #1. He would have been so confident going in. We could see him draw his number and I’m sure Kurt could have given a great reaction. Then despite going in at #1 he lasts until the end. He is the last man eliminated and now has something to whine about. I just think that would have worked well for his character.

While I did enjoy the show I don’t think 2002 was one of the better ones. Overall it was a decent event, but I think it could have been much better with some different booking.

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2005
Date: January 30, 2005
Location: Save Mart Center, Fresno, California
Attendance: 12,000
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, Tazz, Jim Ross

Before I get going, this is the Rumble where the promo was designed after West Side Story. The tag line was “All the rumbling, minus the dancing and singing.” Again I say, WHAT IN THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE ON??? It’s not the scariest part that these people are agreeing to put this on, but that someone THOUGHT THIS UP and GOT PAID TO DO IT. I mean come on now. WEST SIDE STORY???

This is supposed to be one of the biggest fights of the year and it’s WEST FREAKING SIDE STORY??? ANYWAY, the rest of this show looks pretty weak other than the Rumble. Other than another year passing, we’ve seen the rise of Batista and Cena, who are all of a sudden the hottest guys in the company.

HHH is world champion in a stunning revelation and is facing Orton tonight, allegedly in his last title shot. Say it with me: HA! We also have JBL defending against Show and Angle in a match I completely don’t remember. Oh and Edge is back and an Achilles enthusiast now. Let’s get to this.

Our opening video talks about how the legacy of the Rumble continues tonight. That’s fine. We shift to an alley where we have Raw and Smackdown dressed like it’s the 1950s and singing about fighting each other, with one line being: “We’ll step into the ring and reach an understanding. When the smoke has cleared I’ll be the last man standing.” Please, I beg of you now, end my life so I don’t have to listen to this anymore!

Edge vs. Shawn Michaels

Edge has been using Metalingus for 5 years almost? Methinks this might be dubbed. Oddly enough the same band is doing the theme song for the PPV. At Taboo Tuesday, Shawn had gotten voted into the title match instead of Edge, so we get this as a result. Ross calls HBK a first ballot Hall of Famer. Who makes the ballots for that thing? I want that job. My first step: shorten the class size to like 5.

We start off fast, shocking no one. They already reference the 95 Rumble so at least they’re starting it early. To kill some time we list of some of Shawn’s accomplishments because we have to do that at least once a week. The heel heat that Edge is already drawing is really impressive. In a painful looking spot, Edge hits the Edge-O-Matic on the floor. That can’t feel good, which I think is the point. The crowd is hot tonight so that’s good.

Within maybe 30 seconds of each other, Lawler says that Edge has never gotten a world title shot and Ross says if Edge ever starts doing shampoo commercials he’ll be perfect. For those that have no clue why this is interesting, both of those things not only happened, but they both happened in 2002. Yeah I need a life don’t I? After Shawn comes back for a good while we hit the floor where Edge hits a spear.

For the love of mangoes he needs a new finisher. This is kind of an odd choice for an opening match. They’re both big names, so why not save this for a bit later? I guess because with only five matches on the card there’s no other place to put it. Edge tunes up the band but instead throws out the spear for two. Edge counters Sweet Chin Music into a SWEET electric chair that gets two. Edge is having a mental breakdown over this and his facials are still epic.

He counters a sunset flip into that weird kneeling Sharpshooter thing he would do that was always weird looking as hell. The hold looks just completely awful when you look at it for more than three seconds. Shawn is in it over a minute and doesn’t tap which is fairly cool I suppose. Edge finishes with a reversed rollup and uses the ropes for a pin. I like that ending. Edge’s reaction of completely freaking out and screaming I DID IT was just awesome.

Rating: B. It took me awhile to figure out if I liked this match or not. The ending made it for me though as Edge getting the win was a big deal. Shawn definitely didn’t need a win here while this was Edge’s biggest win of his career at this point. The ropes at the end helped a lot too to play up Edge as a heel. This was a very good match overall with the booking being especially good.

We go to the back where Bischoff and Long, who more or less is the same character that he is now. Torrie and Christy are running the number draw as Eddie and Flair come in, both dressed like kings. Eddie starts to reach in but Flair stops him. He dances a bit and says 16 times.

Eddie pulls his hand back and lets Ric go first. That was great to me for some reason. Ric is thrilled with his number and Eddie is upset. Ric brags and then Eddie hugs him. Flair shows the girls his number and realizes Eddie stole his and chases after him. That was a lot better than it sounds.

Heidenreich is in the back, talking about how he hates caskets. Snitsky comes up and says he knows Heidenreich hates caskets, but they like each other and Snitsky has an idea. There are more gay overtones here than there were with Piper and Bob Orton, and that’s saying A LOT.

We recap Taker vs. Heidenreich (Jon, because that takes too long to type) which more or less was Heyman bringing Jon in and them fighting a bit. Jon was supposed to be some big tough fighter or something but he was bland as hell and it bombed badly.

Heidenreich vs. Undertaker

This is a casket match. They actually start with wrestling stuff, shocking the hell out of me. Taker keeps using headlocks to drag Jon to the casket. That’s really smart as it freaks Jon out. Jon is kind of an MMA/street fighter kind of guy but he’s just not that good at it. In an awesome spot, we’re in the corner with Jon throwing punches at Taker. Taker grabs the ropes and throws his legs up to tie up Jon in a triangle choke while still up in the corner. That was awesome.

Tazz points out why Cole is messing up the names of the moves which Cole gets annoyed with. For some reason the fans start booing the hell out of the match. Oh Snitsky is here. They double team Taker with a double suplex and Jon somehow manages to botch that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to mess up a move like that? Kane is in the casket. This was supposed to be Taker’s match at Mania. I’m glad they went with Taker vs. Orton instead aren’t you?

The announcers are of course stunned at someone hiding in a casket, despite Taker having done it about a million times. Jon moves the casket away from the ring for no apparent reason. Taker is back to beat on him some more as we have a Christian Coalition sign in the front row. TNA is already spreading. They’re on PPV at this point so I guess it’s possible, even though Christian was still in WWE at this point so ignore me.

Apparently Taker’s knee is hurt or something like that. Jon pulls back the mat as this match is a train wreck at this point. With Taker laying on the floor, Jon gets a running start with the casket to ram it into Taker. Granted he was almost under the ring so it actually would have been easy to get out of the way so there we go. Jon goes to his finisher: a cobra clutch. Are you starting to see why this guy was such an epic failure?

Naturally as Taker is put in the casket, he gets an arm out. This needs to end, like NOW. Jon uses a Boss Man Slam which Cole says Taker nailed him with. Yeah they botched the hell out of that call. The crowd really isn’t that interested either. Jon rolls him to the casket and in the EXACT SAME SEQUENCE, Taker gets out. After a REALLY bad chokeslam, the tombstone finally ends this.

Rating: D-. This was just bad on a lot of levels. There were all kinds of blown spots and the Snitsky and Kane run in was completely pointless. What’s the point in booking Taker in these matches if he never loses them? Jon was supposed to be Taker’s arch rival. That’s just funny. At least this finally ended this awful feud so we don’t have to put up with it anymore. This was really bad.

Ad for Mania.

In the back, Long wants Eddie to give back the number. Eddie’s face is priceless on this. Evolution shows up and demands it back, but Eddie gives it up. He’s also made to give back Flair’s wallet which Flair didn’t know about. Why aren’t these guys ever sued? Anyway, Batista says he needs to go get his number and he’ll be right back. HHH says they have to plan something. Batista says it’ll only take a minute and HHH orders him to stay. This doesn’t go well. Well at least they didn’t try to be subtle.

Christian and Tomko are ready to pick their numbers. He’s happy with it until Cena comes in to a huge pop. They have a battle rap that goes nowhere. The best part is when Christian asks Tomko for a beat and Tomko just says no. Cena makes gay jokes and the crowd pops for no apparent reason.

JBL is champion. Angle wants to be champion. Show wants to be champion. If that’s not validation for a triple threat I don’t know what is.

Smackdown World Title: Big Show vs. Kurt Angle vs. JBL

Angle and JBL had a last man standing match on Smackdown apparently so they’re both sore. JBL with the limo was always cool. Show is the odds on favorite apparently. They did a double knock out on Smackdown. This is in the middle of JBL’s reign of doom where he held the belt for almost ten months. They need to get that belt back. It just looks awesome. Apparently there’s a petition to get rid of Teddy Long.

Angle hides on the floor which is a smart idea. They’re broadcasting in New Zealand apparently, so there you go Shadow! Show chops people quite a bit. Show is more or less dominating here. We have steps set up leading to the table which is a bit odd. Show sets for a chokeslam on JBL through it from on top of the steps, but Angle low blows him and a monitor shot puts Show through the table so it’s Angle and JBL at the moment.

The two of them fight it out in the ring to kill some time for Big Show to get back. Geez Show is huge compared to when he was the Giant still. That guy could have carried a company but he had to get all big and fat and slow and it didn’t work at all. Show gets back in and beats both guys up again and looks ready to win, more or less guaranteeing that he won’t. Just as I say that, the others team up to put him down with a combination Clothesline From Hell and chop block.

Show hits a chokeslam but JBL gets the foot on the rope. Show is actually moving with something resembling speed. And there goes the barricade as Show puts JBL through it. We cue up the run ins as Jindrak and Reigns come in to take out Big Show while the Cabinet gets JBL up and gives him a chair.

It isn’t used though as Angle walks into the Clothesline From Hell for the pin to keep the title as the fans boo the hell out of it. They don’t have much to boo about as he got a clean pin. Show got robbed apparently and would get a barbed wire cage match the next month that had a cool ending.

Rating: B. While I hate triple threats, this was pretty good. There was a flow here that you don’t often see in them as they kept one guy down for a good amount of the match in Big Show, which is definitely a good idea given how big he is and that he was the favorite. While it’s no classic, I like this one I think. It’s better than most I’ve seen if nothing else.

Batista won’t get rid of Long via the petition. He threatens Carlito who swallows the apple. In a continuous camera shot we go to the place where numbers are drawn and the GMs are arguing. Apparently Evolution is barred from ringside in the next match and Batista wants to tell HHH. You can see the turn a mile away.

Promo for Mania. It’s the Hollywood one this time.

Ross and Lawler talk about the PPV theme song and the Raw main event for no apparent reason.

We recap it as they had been feuding for months yet they kept going at it anyway. Who would have seen that? Orton allegedly wasn’t allowed to have another shot but of course he’s getting it again here. Orton got cheated out of the title at New Year’s Revolution by Evolution so he gets the shot here. I love how these guys have been feuding for almost five years over a team that existed for all of two years.

Raw World Title: Randy Orton vs. HHH

Orton is the somewhat over face here. He was far more over about 4 months ago but because he was over, HHH was clearly the better choice for the belt than the young, over hotshot that was getting better and more popular every time he got in the ring. Orton goes for an RKO and HHH throws him over the ropes. Why couldn’t it injure him like it did in I think their second last man standing match? Orton used to have this weird style of punches that he’s using here.

I’ve never been able to get into it either. Oh and Orton has a bad knee of course. He says shit about 7 times in 5 seconds in a nice touch. Why does something tell me that this will be by far and away the longest match of the night outside of the Rumble? HHH is already using the figure four because he has to be the new Ric Flair in every single way he can be. So we start fast and now HHH has decided to slow things down.

Did I mention that I really hate this match and rivalry? If there’s ever been a guy that has changed so completely over the years, it’s Orton. He’s almost unrecognizable both as far as looks go and the way he works in the ring. It’s a total contrast. Orton is bleeding badly from the lip and looks a lot like Ted DiBiase in that shot. He counters a Pedigree as I just couldn’t care less about this match.

There’s just something that’s always been missing between these two when they got at it and it’s always hurt this match. Granted this is better than most of their future matches, but the problem is already coming clearly here: they want this to be some epic encounter but at the same time, nothing ever comes of it and that’s not a good thing at all. Orton takes a shot to the head and looks like he has a concussion that I think is faked as they keep getting shots of it.

Damn it the referee went down. This match just needs to end and it needs to do so now. It’s hammer time as I’d advise you to make your own jokes. We’ve hit the part of the match that always happens between these two. There comes a point where it’s always about the damn hammer and not about the wrestling at all. This is where these matches lose it for me as I just freaking don’t care anymore about them.

Why does everything have to follow the same formula of a long match leading up to one moment where the hammer is the key to the whole thing while the referee is down? It always comes to this and it’s just boring as hell to say the least. Also, get some referees that can take a freaking hit. HHH gets the Pedigree and the academic pin to thankfully end this with HHH STILL having the belt.

Rating: D+. This was the same match you’ve seen from these guys a dozen times but with Orton as the face. HHH was clearly going to win and it was to have a title match on the show and nothing more. There was no point to this at all and it just wasn’t interesting whatsoever. HHH and Orton simply can’t have a great match and they need to stop trying like they seem to have done.

Nunzio gets a spot in the Rumble and Angle steals it from him and says it’s his unless Nunzio wants to fight for it. Ok then.

JBL and the Cabinet come into the drawing room celebrating with champagne and Long says there’s a barbed wire cage match at No Way Out. JBL’s face is great here.

Ross and Tazz are doing the commentary for the Rumble again.

Royal Rumble

Eddie is number one and Benoit is number two. Not a bad way to start. Benoit is rocking the teal here. Damn Benoit has bad luck as he was first last year. This is borderline chilling when you think about it. Naturally, this is a technical showcase which is what it should be. Daniel Puder, perhaps the most worthless wrestler in a long time, is third. His theme song is Getting Away With Murder. Talk about chilling.

It should be noted that the runner up in the Tough Enough show that Puder won was the Miz. Talk about two different career paths. Geez. Puder gets on the mic and says he’s great. Was there something in the water at that Tough Enough show? Naturally the two former world champions beat the living hell out of him. More or less they just spend the 90 seconds chopping and suplexing the hell out of him as Holly, the rookie hater, is 4th. This should be great.

He gets in and asks if he can have some fun with Puder too. He’s had zero offense. This really is quite funny. Even Holly is over because of this. Think about that for a bit. Holly throws what’s left of him out as Hurricane is 5th. Benoit and Guerrero throw out Holly since he’s useless again to get us down to three. They team up and Eddie tries to throw Benoit out and they’re at it again. Hurricane is out as Kenzo Suzuki, another completely worthless human being is number 6.

This Rumble feels like it hasn’t even gotten started yet and since we’re 1/5 of the way through, that’s not good. Again they double team the other guy until Benoit tries to throw Eddie out. Edge is in at seven. Rey is eighth as nothing at all is happening. Kenzo is out almost immediately. It’s not a good sign at all when you have four world champions in the ring and there’s just nothing going on at all. I mean it’s just boring for some reason.

The Guerrero vs. Mysterio feud was coming soon and it would be Eddie’s next to last major one. Shelton Benjamin, the IC Champion, is number 9. He hadn’t had his big match with Shawn yet to really get him over but it was coming. At this point he was just a guy with untapped potential rather than now as a guy that no one takes seriously with untapped potential. He would finally break out soon after this at MITB at Mania.

Booker takes us to ten as the least successful wrestler out of the 6 in there is Shelton Benjamin. They’re blowing their load too fast here as Tazz messes up by saying that Booker vs. HHH was last year. Benjamin might have gone out but we’re looking at Bischoff who just showed up for no apparent reason. We continue the insane star power in there with Jericho at 11th. He’s WAY over with a huge Y2J chant.

Hey looks here’s Teddy Long as Vince continues the theory of keep pushing the Brand Split until people accept it so you can say it was a good idea. Luther (for admin) Reigns comes in at 12 to break that streak. There are way too many people in there right now. Now we throw every man for himself out the window as Raw and Smackdown get on different sides for four one on one matches that consist of Rey vs. Jericho, Benoit vs. Reigns, Booker vs. Edge and Eddie vs. Shelton.

This is kind of cool but kind of stupid as it’s turning the Rumble into an even bigger gimmick match than it usually is. Muhammad Hassan, the most controversial wrestler perhaps of the millennium, is number 13. Everyone stops cold for this. His manager is more commonly known as Sheik Abdul Bashir in case you didn’t know that. In a humorous bit, everyone jumps him at once to a great pop. Rey gets 619 and then almost everyone picks him up and throws him out as a group. That was great.

Orlando Jordan is number 14 as this needs to stop being so gimmicky. Tazz tries to compare Orlando Jordan to Shelton Benjamin. That’s just amazing. In a TERRIBLE shot, Shelton is choking Jericho with his feet and Jericho has to grab the foot to move it to his throat. It looked terrible. Scotty is number 15, apparently returning from a tumor in his balls or something. Hassan keeps up a tradition of beating up Scotty on his way to the ring. That has to be what, three times?

So for another year, Scotty doesn’t get into the match. Charlie Haas is 16th. How in the hell did he get a chick like Jackie Gayda? Booker throws out Luther (for admin) and Orlando with ease. Booker goes for a spinaroonie but Eddie jumps him to put him out. We have Benoit, Guerrero, Shelton, Edge, Jericho, Haas and Rey in there at the moment. In yet another chilling line, Ross says Benoit and Guerrero are still alive.

Rene Dupree and the poodle is seventeenth to insane heat. The World’s Greatest Tag Team reunites for all of a second with Shelton then going for a Stinger Splash, actually called that by Ross, and Edge dumps him. Simon Dean is 18th as the Rumble is legal. While he’s warming up on the floor, Edge throws out Eddie to great heat. Shawn is 19th. He hammers Edge before casually turning around to clothesline Dean out. Eddie gets a huge chant as he leaves.

Ross says that Edge is trying to corner Rey in a corner. Shawn throws out Haas which gets no recognition as Ross thinks it was Dupree. Angle is 20 and he comes in and stays insane since saying going insane wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Shawn misses a superkick but hits the second to put Angle out in a shocker. Angle is PISSED. Currently we have Benoit, Edge, Rey, Jericho, Dupree and Shawn in there and they’re joined by the Coach of all people at 21.

This is the thing I hate about rumbles like these: what’s the point of putting him in there? Was there no one else on Raw that could have gone in there at all? I mean you couldn’t throw Lawler in there who at least was a wrestler? Rey almost puts Jericho as Jindrak comes in at 22. Angle runs back in and beats up Shawn and throws him over the top. Shawn is bleeding and apparently is out now, setting up their Mania 21 classic.

Number 23 is Viscera who still has no one that cares about him. At least he’s got a shirt on here. Paul London is 25th and he slides in so fast that he almost goes out the other side. Dupree does that stupid French Tickler dance and Jericho puts him out for it. Cena is 24th to a MASSIVE pop. Tazz likes him way too much.

He was just about to shatter the glass ceiling as he would win the world title at Mania from JBL. He manages to backdrop Viscera to eliminate him. I don’t care if you like Cena or not: he has SCARY strength.

Snitsky is 26th. London jumps him and in a video that’s become popular on the internet for obvious reasons, Gene clotheslines him so hard that London got spun backwards which I don’t think was planned. Kane is 27th, causing Tazz to freak over the way that Ross has to put up with these explosions. As someone that’s been surprised by his pyro, I feel his pain. Kane cleans house of course and there goes Jindrak.

A shirtless Coach tries to jump him but Snitsky saves him. London goes out on a stretcher. Batista is 28th and the pop is epic. They were pushing him to the moon around this time and it clearly was the right decision at the end. There goes Snitsky. Kane continues his tradition of getting beaten up by Batista, this time taking the powerbomb. Batista puts out his third guy by throwing out Jericho.

Christian is 29th, finally with the Just Close Your Eyes theme whose current version I’m completely addicted to. Cena goes off on Edge to show off their future great feud. Cena gets a half F5 half FU to Kane to put him out. Flair is number 30, making the final group Benoit, Edge, Coach, Batista, Cena, Christian, Rey and Flair. So other than Coach, all world champions in some company. Not bad at all. Flair throws Coach to Batista for a spinebuster and Flair throws him out.

There goes Christian. He and Edge were both wearing purple. Benoit and Flair have a chop off. Flair and Batista do the same thing to Benoit that they did to Coach. Flair tries to throw out Batista and it doesn’t go well. Rey and Edge knock Batista down with a double dropkick. Edge puts Flair out and your final four are Edge, Rey, Cena and Batista. Not bad at all. Edge hits a spear on Batista and Cena but Rey avoids it.

619 hits but Rey goes too fast and goes over and a spear puts him on the floor. Batista and Cena put Edge out to get the dream match for the final two. The crowd reacts to this in a great way. This has to headline Mania someday. Cena gets him up for the FU but Batista gets out. Cena is put up for the Batista Bomb but they go out at the same time in an homage to the 94 Rumble. Screw the homage part. It’s the same finish, but to be fair that was 11 years ago so I think it’s ok.

The referees argue over it until Vince comes out. He slides into the ring and hits his legs on the apron, ripping his quads and knees apart. He tries to stand up and just crumples to the ground in agony. Instead of screaming in pain or whatever, he sits on the mat leaning against the ropes and does his thing. Batista clearly is about to lose it. Think about it from his perspective for a minute.

You’re wrestling in the main event of the Royal Rumble, one of the biggest shows on the year and you’re in an angle that’s going to send you to Wrestlemania, and your boss, a billionaire, is sitting on the mat after collapsing and ripping his legs apart, not to mention the epic adrenaline rush you must have just been on. Think about that for a minute or two. Anyway, Fink says Vince ordered the match to be restarted.

This translates into Cena vs. Batista. Shouldn’t that mean Benoit and Guerrero come out again and we do the whole Rumble over? That’s what it sounds like to me. Anyway, Batista throws Cena over and then Cena throws Batista over before this is said which is just stupid, at least from Cena. FU is countered and after a spinebuster, Batista throws him out for the easy win.

Rating: B-. I’ve seen far worse I guess. This match never really seemed to get going for my tastes. Now to be fair while it was clear that Batista was the winner before the match even started, they did have Cena out there as a potential winner along with Edge who was a new main event guy, so at least they tried.

I just couldn’t get into this as there were too many things where the match more or less stopped for something. Also having the huge rush of talent in the first third hurt later parts of the match where those guys could come out. It was good but it could have been a lot better.

Overall Rating: B-. There’s some good stuff and there’s some bad stuff here, but the good is more prolific than the bad here. This was a lot more about changing the guard by launching Batista and Cena into the next level which makes it a bit awkward but that’s ok I think. They were the right choices and this was a great way to do the change. I like the show overall, but the second and fourth matches leave a bit to be desired. Not bad, but don’t expect to be blown away.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2003

When I think back to this event I remember it fondly. After reading the review I realize there was some bad stuff here, but overall this one works for me. It starts off rough but finishes strong.

I don’t understand the point of Lesnar vs. Show. Why did this need to take place? Why couldn’t they both be in the rumble? Show sucked at this time so why put him in a singles to expose his weaknesses when it would have been far easier to hide those weaknesses in the rumble. Besides he was just coming off a brief title reign so he would have been another big name threat in there.

By this point I was really getting tired of the Dudleys. It wasn’t really their fault. The tag division was so limited I just got tired of seeing them in title matches all the time. For a couple years it was the Dudleys vs. random flavor of the month heel team. I like Regal & Storm (I liked the team of Christian & Storm better), but I just wasn’t into the Dudleys at all anymore.

Torrie Wilson vs. Dawn Marie was just awful on every level imaginable. This is one of the worst storylines of all time. That’s saying a lot. I don’t like death being brought into a storyline. If Dawn was responsible for Torrie’s father dying I don’t think Torrie would be satisfied with giving Dawn some arm drags and snapmares. Of course as time went by these two would be able to peacefully coexist without mention of this incident. It’s amazing how forgiving wrestlers can be.

Triple H vs. Scott Steiner amuses me. It’s kind of like how some people are amused by really bad movies. This is quite possibly the worst title match of all time. It’s amazing how the fans turned on Steiner during the match. He didn’t do anything to turn heel. He just sucked so much that the fans turned on him on the spot. I’m not sure I’ve seen that before. I will say I did like the build for the match. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it had kind of an old school feel for me. It’s really interesting what happened to Steiner. He had a lot of fanfare coming into the WWE. He was pretty popular until he actually wrestled. They made a big deal of his arrival and he got a nice reaction when he showed up at Survivor Series. He immediately was put into a program with Triple H. He was the new big name on the scene. Only a few months later it was time for WrestleMania and Steiner was left off and nobody noticed. It had to be the fastest fall from grace ever.

So far I’ve said we could have done without the first match. I was tired of the people in the second match. The third match had one of the worst storylines ever. And the fourth match was possibly the worst title match ever. Yet at the beginning I said I liked this event. The next match is the reason why. Angle vs. Benoit was simply awesome. This might be the best match not involving a guy named Bret or Shawn. It’s amazing how this was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of the previous match. The fans were booing the last match out of the building. In a matter of twenty minutes these two got the fans back into the show and earned a standing ovation. Can you imagine if this went first and Triple H and Steiner had to follow? They might have had to fire Steiner during the match. That would have actually been entertaining. Anyway, Angle and Benoit have had a lot of good matches over the years, but this one was their masterpiece. This saved the show and immediately turned a bad show into a good one. This match was that good where it made me forget what I saw before and rate the overall event perhaps higher than it deserves.

I liked the rumble this year. I thought there was some pretty good talent in there. You’re never going to see a jobber free rumble. Considering there are thirty guys in the match not counting people used on the undercard that would be impossible. Every year you’re going to see a Bill Demott or a Bull Buchanan. I thought this year had some good mid card talent. You know they don’t have a chance of winning, but at least they’re credible. There were more guys like RVD, Guerrero, Booker, and Mysterio than Demott and Buchanan. That makes for a better rumble. I was disappointed to see HBK eliminated so quickly. We knew he was #1 and I assumed he would last a long time. It felt almost like a bit of a ripoff when he was eliminated. Despite that I thought this was a good rumble and flowed smoothly.

So this had some good and some bad. Even though quantity wise there was more bad, I think the good outweighs the bad here. The show got off to a bad start but finished great. Angle vs. Benoit was one of the best matches of the year (second only to HBK vs. Y2J at mania in my opinion). That plus a good rumble makes this a good event in my book.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2004

This is a good example of how a strong rumble match can make a show. The Royal Rumble is the one event where one match can turn a mediocre show into a good one. If the rumble delivers I can forgive usually forgive a weak undercard. The rumble delivered in this one so when I think back to this event I consider it to be pretty good.

For the fourth year in a row the Dudleys were in the tag title match. Every year I cared about them less and less. They were just stale by the point and I was ready for them to just go away. I don’t have anything against them but the lack of depth in the tag division was just killing them. One thing I find interesting is the Dudleys had kind of a Razor Ramon/Jacques Rougeau thing going on. They were in five rumble events, but they were never in a rumble match.

Despite being probably the smallest of all the cruiserweights Rey Mysterio actually seemed out of place in the division. He always seemed like he was on a higher level than the Jamie Nobles and Nunzios of the world. There wasn’t really anything to this match as it was more about the ridiculous Nidia storyline instead of he actual match.

I was looking forward to Eddie vs. Chavo. I figured two guys that were family would go out there and work really well together. I figured they would put their best efforts into making each other look good. The match was fine, but it was too short to be anything special. I love how Angle talked Eddie into this match. Angle was still face at the time but he was obviously in the process of going heel. He felt threatened by Eddie and talked him into this match when his actual motivation was to keep Eddie out of the rumble. This was a good way to plant the seeds for what would lead to a match at mania.

At the Royal Rumble you can get away with somewhat of a weak title match. The rumble match is the main attraction so it’s not necessary to stack the rest of the card. Despite that, how the hell did Bob Holly get a title shot at a major ppv? Last year the title match was a classic showdown between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit. One year later and Bob Holly is challenging for the title? What was it about Holly that he was able to keep a job for 15 years? During his career the best he did was Hardcore Champion. To say he was out of place here would be an understatement. At least it allowed an extra big name into the rumble.

Triple H vs. HBK was ok but they’ve had far better matches than this. One match that was a lot better took place on raw only about a month before this. That’s a little bit of a problem. I just saw a great match between the two on free tv and now at the big ppv they could not do as good as they did in the free match. The ending was kind of bogus. Triple H should have gone over and gone on to defend against Benoit in a single match. I really didn’t like the triple threat idea going in to mania, but I’m ok with it now since it turned out to be a great match.

This show was all about the rumble. This was a really good one and possibly my favorite of the decade. There were a few things I liked here. I liked Benoit and Orton starting out. Orton looked great lasting a long time. Foley’s surprise appearance is a classic rumble moment. I loved that. I also liked the run in from Brock. When he came in and jumped Goldberg we knew we had a big mania match upon us. Too bad they blew it and left right after mania. I really like the finish too. The way Benoit put Big Show out was great. The crowd was getting louder and louder as Benoit struggled to get Show out. He got a well deserved pop at the end and finally won the big one.

Despite the weak undercard the rumble was good enough to satisfy me here. After this we knew mania was going to give us Lesnar vs. Goldberg, Orton vs. Foley (eventually Evolution vs. Rock n Sock), Angle vs. Eddie (not directly touched upon here, but if you were paying attention you knew it was coming), and Benoit in a title match. I liked what I saw on this night and liked what I saw being set up for the immediate future.

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2006
Date: January 29, 2006
Location: American Airlines Arena, Miami, Florida
Attendance: 15,000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Michael Cole, Tazz, Jerry Lawler,

The main changes are Batista and Cena. They’ve more or less taken over the company as the biggest things in the world. Except for Batista because he’s out with an injury. Edge is the current reigning world champion though as he had more or less stolen the title at New Year’s Revolution. He’s got his rematch with Cena tonight. On the other side, Mark Henry is main eventing the show. I give up.

The other main issue is of course the death of Eddie Guerrero, which there’s been more than enough written about already. Other than that, there’s just not a lot going on here. This more or less is the first Rumble of what would be classified as the modern era, so let’s get to it.

The intro is just a recap of the major feuds. For some reason, Angle vs. Henry gets the most hype. Naturally they push Raw vs. Smackdown again. Edge is the Rated R Champion now. Lita’s stomach is the thing that dreams are made of. I’ve always wanted to say that. For reasons that no one will ever comprehend, the theme is Roman or something, which meant nothing and no one wanted to see. Stephanie in Roman clothing was nice though.

Cruiserweight Championship: Cruiserweight Open

This is the standard thing they were doing back in the day as they had completely given up on having any kind of storylines or flow to the division, so they just said fuck it and threw everyone into one massive match where everyone is legal at once. In this, you have to be either the current Champion or a former champion. The participants are Kid Kash who is the champion, Paul London, Nunzio, Funaki, Gregory Helms and Jamie Noble.

London is wearing a gold mask for some reason that was never really explained. Helms is a surprise here. Oh geez there’s a Roman theme again where they have guys opening the door where people from out of the back from. It’s kind of like KOTR 96 for those of you that have seen that. Helms is from Raw here so he’s an outsider or something like that. Shockingly, the match is a pure clusterfuck to start as there are no tags or anything like that. Screw that order stuff.

London’s dropsault is stupid when it’s just one person but it’s cool when there’s two. It’s completely not effective but it looks good. Hell Rock won a bunch of world titles like that though so who cares? London looks like Tajiri for some reason. This is a pure spotfest here with nothing resembling flow or a story or anything like that, which makes sense I guess. At least they didn’t try as that would have been really stupid.

In a nice spot, Funaki whips Noble in and he launches a suicide dive through the ropes to take out two guys. You can tell a lot of these spots are preplanned but that’s fine as it’s working pretty well for what it’s supposed to be. With almost everyone else on the floor, London goes to the top rope and throws a shooting star press to the floor, more or less missing everyone and just slamming into the floor.

It looked PAINFUL and the fans give him a well deserved holy shit chant. In a cool spot that I haven’t seen before, London and Helms are on the top and Helms hits a swinging neckbreaker to get us back on the mat. It looked a lot better than it sounds.

For those of you that don’t know, Kash was a fairly big deal in ECW but other than that he’s been a minor player at best. The steps in the background are orange here so it looks like a bunch of empty seats. They get really fast in a hurry but it gets cut off too fast as Helms hits a Shining Wizard to Funaki for the pin.

Rating: B-. Now before everyone jumps on me, this isn’t the same kind of grade that I would give a normal match because this wasn’t supposed to be a standard match. This was designed to be completely insane and all spots to get the crowd awake and it worked fine. That’s the point of this and it did its job, so it gets a decent grade. There is no story to something like this and there shouldn’t be. Helms would hold the belt over a year.

Vince and Teddy long are around the Rumble drawing and Vince tells Long to leave. Naturally there are three hot women there. Orton and HHH come in and draw their numbers. Orton is happy and HHH hates his. Sex jokes abound as these two continue their eternal battle that never goes anywhere. Victoria looks incredible.

Trish is getting ready to be the referee. Mickie James says she loves her, and we have a lesbian stalker angle.

Mickie James vs. Ashley Massaro

For no apparent reason, this isn’t for the title as Trish is the referee and the champion here. They would have a decent match at Mania. This is back when Mickie was not only insane but also wore ridiculously awesome skirts. Ashley was one of the biggest flops in wrestling history as the winner of the Diva search who was just awful on a lot of levels. If nothing else we have Lillian, Mickie and Trish in the same ring. That’s not bad at all.

They have a headlock and actually go to the floor without breaking it up. That’s hard to do. Ashley can’t even lock up right. That’s almost sad. What’s sadder is that Joey has to say she’s a superstar. Oh yeah this was also when Mickie would scream her head off, which I’ve always liked for some reason. Ashley tried at least so I’ll give her that. The crowd is completely dead by the way. Mickie’s ass is flat out mesmerizing.

This is so odd to see someone with so much talent like James and someone with so little in Ashley. The thing here is that Mickie loves Trish but Trish trained Ashley. There are far too many bad submissions being done here to have a coherent match too. Ashley goes on offense and while it’s really bad, she’s trying. You can tell the different between someone that just doesn’t want to be there and Ashley, while bad, is trying.

However, her offense is either so limited or the fans like Mickie so much that they completely turn on her and boo her LOUDLY. Mickie powerbombs her out of the corner and Trish is really hesitant to count it, which is either part of the angle or then just giving up and saying let’s try to save some face here and just ending it early. Either of those would be believable to me.

Rating: C-. And that’s as generous as I can be. Ashley was bad here, but she was trying as hard as she could and I can easily respect that. Now later on when she just didn’t care, screw that. The fans turning on her like that annoyed me, but I can get what their point was. This was really just to set up Trish vs. Mickie, which is fine.

We see Helms at the WWE Interactive area, which means he’s chatting on WWE.com, which WCW had about 10 years prior to this.

More Rumble drawings with Rey and Big Show. It’s preceded by Vince checking the girls’ tattoos which is just annoying and stupid. In a funny bit, Show can’t get his hand in the tumbler to get a number out. Show is pleased and Rey is…oh screw it. They’re talking about Eddie again, which draws a huge chant and gives away the ending to the Rumble. Ok, before this comes up later, let’s just get it out of the way now.

The WWE needs to understand something. No wait, actually wrestling in general needs to understand something. When a wrestler dies unexpectedly, it doesn’t make them better. Eddie was indeed a very good if not great wrestler, but based on the things you hear about him now, you would think he was Ric Flair. He’s more about the level of Randy Orton or so. However, the undisputed champion of this is ECW with Louie Spicolli.

He was the epitome of an ok if not decent wrestler that was all of a sudden great after he died from a drug overdose. He simply was not as good as people made him out to be. For all of you ECW marks out there, show me ONE very good Spicolli match. It doesn’t even have to be great.

Show me one time where he had a great match. What was my point here? Oh yeah. Eddie was very good, but he only became considered great after dying. “KB you don’t know anything. He won the world title!” Yeah well this is 2 days after TLC and Sheamus is world champion so the belt really doesn’t prove all that much does it?

JBL vs. Boogeyman

The idea here is that JBL is terrified of Boogey. Oh and Boogey bit the “mole” off of Jillian’s face. She’s his assistant here or something like that. My goodness JBL has fallen far since winning the world title less than two years before this. It continues to amuse me when someone like Boogeyman is weighed in. And now I’m annoyed. I’ve never liked the Boogeyman character for one reason: he makes a mockery of wrestling.

Now yes, there’s a lot of stupid characters and while I tend to dislike the majority of them, when they can have a decent match, it’s almost acceptable. Boogeyman couldn’t do that, so when he does stuff like eat worms, then spit them up and spit them down into Jillian’s mouth, I have no use for him at all. It continues to have stupidity attached to it as we have to hear about how disgusted the announcers are.

Seriously, the Four Horsemen are in the same business as this guy. That’s just ridiculous. Thankfully, this lasts about a minute and a half, as after a stupid brawl where Boogey sells nothing at all, JBL misses a Clothesline From Hell and somehow slams into the post in a completely awful looking spot. A pumphandle slam ends it.

Rating: F-. This would usually be an N/A, but this was just a complete and utter waste of time. Seriously, why did this need to happen? I know it took less than 5 minutes, but really, there was NOTHING else we could have used that for? I hate gimmicks like these, I truly do.

Vince hits on the girls more and you can see they hate it. Shelton’s mama shows up. This was a freaking stupid gimmick where Shelton’s mom showed up to make sure he was taken care of. It was some comedienne that no one has ever heard of in a fat suit. You figure out how well it worked. Melina shows up and gets hit on too. Mama prevents him from hitting on her.

MNM, Joey Mercury and Johnny “Morrison” Nitro show up to draw as well. Both seem fairly middle of the road with their numbers. Melina says they’ll eliminate Shawn. We finish this long segment off with more Vince hitting on the girls. They eventually became a stable called Vince’s Devils. Yeah it went nowhere.

Before the Rumble starts, we have the Spirit Squad. Now for those of you that weren’t around for these guys, they were male cheerleaders that won the tag titles from Kane and Big Show. Amazingly everyone said the only one with talent was Kenny Dykstra. The one known as Nick became known as Dolph Ziggler. What does that tell you? Lillian is jaw dropingly hot here.

Royal Rumble

Lillian flubbing her lines is somehow sexy. How is that possible? HHH is number one and Rey is number two. Well you certainly can’t say they’re using no names to start us out. This is big match that’s never happened before. Oh the intervals are 90 seconds here. Oh here we go Rey is driving a lowrider. HEY, WE GET IT ABOUT FUCKING EDDIE! I wouldn’t be so annoyed about it, but seriously, he brought up Eddie in the BATISTA feud.

Oh look he draped an Eddie shirt on the car. This is freaking ridiculous because it’s obvious Rey is going to win here for the sake of “honoring Eddie.” Rey’s entrance reaches Taker levels of time. He does the ten punches in the corner and looks up before he does it. This is freaking ridiculous and we’re just hitting number 3 which is Simon Dean. Cole, who is doing the commentary with Lawler, FREAKS because a Smackdown guy is attacking a Smackdown guy.

They team up and eliminate him easily. Have I mentioned that I hate the Bronco Buster? Psicosis of the Mexicools is 4th. They were a team of Mexican stereotypes who rode lawnmowers. I wish I was making that up. Rey counters a Razor’s Edge to put him out with ease again so we stay with those two guys. Number 5 is Flair of all people. He trips coming into the ring as Rey is down for no apparent reason.

Flair and HHH hammer on each other for awhile as I think HHH is a heel here. Oh yeah he would be. That was a stupid comment. He and Flair feuded over the IC belt of all things in some decent matches. You know for a guy that was allegedly the biggest ladies man ever, he used a lot of testicular claws. He’s gone soon after and we’re back at 2 people. Big Show is 6th so hopefully we get people in here for awhile.

He’s mad at HHH also, which is still going on today, which works as it’s been less than five years ago so a feud can easily go on that long. Naturally Show dominates here. With an eyeroll from me, Coach is number 7. Why did he always get spots in the Rumble? Show puts him out in about 30 seconds. Show demonstrates his intelligence by having HHH above his head twice and not even getting close to the ropes.

The announcers say that Coach might have set a record for shortest time in the Rumble. That’s so stupid I’m not even going to bother making fun of it. Lashley is 8th and they say he could be a dark horse. Can I get a rim shot? He’s a rookie phenomenon here, meaning that his career wouldn’t mean much since Vince refused to ever pull the trigger on him, even though he tried. In an impressive move, he gets a backdrop on Show as Kane, who is currently tag champions with Show, is 9th.

He and Lashley square off in a match of two guys that will never win a world title in WWE again. In a very impressive looking spot that wasn’t really that impressive, he hits the Dominator on Kane. Rey has been down WAY too long for no apparent reason. Sylvan, playing a gay character who doesn’t actually say he’s gay is 10th. He’s the fashion consultant or something. Yeah he’s gone in about 30 seconds.

Show and Kane hit a double chokeslam on Lashley and throw him out. So HHH and Rey are more or less just laying on the mat for about 5-6 minutes at a time which is again, stupid as hell. HHH puts Kane and Big Show out, thus reaffirming his theory that he could out fight God if he had to.

Carlito is 11th, as other than the first two guys, no one has lasted 10 minutes yet. I really don’t like this theory of only having a few guys in there for the majority of the match. The Rumble should have about 6-7 guys in the ring for the majority of the match. It’s just right and it allows for things to not be too boring but also not too weak. Benoit is 12th as we’re picking up a bit.

He chops and suplexes the hell out of everyone just because he’s Chris Benoit and they’re not. Carlito gets a crossface for good measure as Benoit is freaking awesome. He and HHH fight over a suplex with Benoit on the apron which was cool looking if nothing else. The Canadian fights out of that and hits the headbutt on HHH so Carlito can get back up. Booker is 13th and the US Champion at the moment.

He’s wearing long tights which looks odd indeed. He would become king in a few months. Yep Booker is gone already, naturally by Benoit as those two were eternally joined at the hip for some reason. Apparently 20 minutes or so is a long time now. So the most we’ve had is what, 5 people I believe?

Mercury of MNM is 14th and since he brings Melina with him, he’s awesome. I love the way they carried the belts as they hung them from their pants so they swung between their legs. It’s original if nothing else. Mercury really is underrated in the ring. He’s a lot better than people realize. Cole brags about setting ratings records on UPN. That’s just hilarious. Tatanka is 15th to ZERO reaction.

He returned for a few months and no one, I mean NO ONE cared at all. His offense has somehow gotten even more generic if that’s possible which I didn’t think it was. The fans do the Florida St. Seminole chant to try to validate his entrance. Nitro is 16th. More commonly known as John Morrison if you’re not familiar. Tatanka beats on him, which somehow validated Matt Hardy and Tatanka vs. MNM on PPV in a non title match. You read that right.

The fans chant Eddie to just tick me off even more. Only Vince would manage to use death to push storylines. Trevor Murdoch is 17th. To recap we have HHH, Rey, Carlito, Benoit, Mercury, Nitro, Murdoch and for some reason Tatanka. Cole takes a lull to mention that Rey is dedicating this match to Eddie. Eugene is 18th, and is booed out of the freaking building. He’s a classic case of a comedy character being used badly.

Rey hurts him to get a solid pop. For the love of hell Animal of the LOD is 19th. Seriously, who picked these people? Oh apparently the new LOD are the long time rivals of MNM. You know, the team that’s been around for a few months. There are WAY too many people in there right now. RVD is 20th to a HUGE pop. Thankfully for the first time in history the company listened to the pop and made him world champion in June before he smoked his way out of the main event.

Oh yeah this was the summer that ECW returned. He cleans house of course. MNM is doing the Demolition thing of teaming up on everyone which is smart. Animal is out thank goodness. Orlando Jordan is 21st and I somehow manage to lose even more interest in this match. There are FAR too many people in the ring at the moment. Chavo is 22nd. Ok, him I have no problem with doing the pointing thing. There’s your difference between Chavo and Rey.

Chavo won a match with JBL on the Eddie tribute show, pointed to the sky a few times, and started using the frog splash. He’s mentioned Eddie a few times over the years, but for the most part he’s just said that he’s a Guerrero which he would have been no matter what. He had one angle with Rey over the Guerrero name, which made sense when you thought about it. That’s perfectly fine.

Then you have Rey, who used the splash, drove a lowrider, blew one up, pointed to the sky and dedicated about a year’s worth of matches to Eddie, using him as an angle and getting the world title because of it. He still mentions Eddie for storylines 4 years after Eddie passed away. There’s paying homage then there’s just being freaking ridiculous. What does Chavo get for being more humble about it? He lasts a minute here while Rey lasts an hour.

Of course Chavo shouldn’t have won or been in the last group or anything, but would 10-15 minutes have killed anyone? Seriously, Tatanka can get a long time but Chavo can’t? Matt Hardy is 23rd. There’s like 12 people in there right now and it’s absurd. You can’t see a damn thing in there at the moment either. Tatanka FINALLY goes out as Super Crazy is 24th. What is the point of half these guys being in here?

Shawn is 25th to a nice pop. He gets pyro when he comes out which is odd in a Rumble match. He ends Murdoch to thin the ranks out a bit. Chris Masters, who is more or less a newcomer at this point, somehow gets pyro also at 26th. I’m not even bothering to try to tell who all is in there at this point. Nothing of note is happening anyway. Viscera, currently the world’s largest love machine is 27th.

He puts out the far more talented Matt Hardy, but not before giving him the Visagra, which is where the other guy is on his stomach and Viscera gets on top of them and gyrates his hips. Yeah it’s worse than it sounds. Shelton is in next along with his mother. This is somehow stupider than I thought it was going to be. Eugene is gone, leaving a huge pool of sweat on the mat beneath him.

They’re really speeding up the intervals here to get through this. Goldust, who is returning for like the 12th time is 29th. That leaves Orton as number 30. Rey puts Crazy out as Orton comes out last. Ok, so your final group is Rey, HHH, Carlito, Benoit, Mercury, Nitro, RVD, Jordan, Shawn, Masters, Viscera, Shelton, Goldust and Orton. Yeah that’s not too many people at all. Screw the sarcasm. YES IT’S TOO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE!

Geez do you think 14, or just under half of the people being left at the end is enough? Why don’t we just get rid of the whole unique aspect of the freaking match and make it a regular battle royal like the classic World War 3 series that WCW used to do? Those things went great didn’t they? Damn it Vince how hard is it to book a freaking Rumble? You have about 7-8 guys in at the end, 5-6 of them are big names and two or three jobbers.

Three are legit contenders, three are dark horses, and two are jobbers. There, that took 8 seconds to come up with. Orton puts Benoit out which Cole says is a rematch from Summerslam two years ago. More like a year and a half but who cares about facts? Carlito and Masters put out Viscera and then Carlito throws out Masters. Goldust takes forever to set up Shattered Dreams but at least manages to kick that turnbuckle really well.

RVD puts him out just before Orton puts out Jordan. Shawn and HHH go at it to keep the balance of the universe in order. Shawn puts out both of MNM within 5 seconds of each other to further kill the tag division which HHH and Shawn are the current champions of as of this being written. Sweet Chin Music puts out Shelton as Shawn is on a roll. Vince’s music hits as he and Shawn were feuding at the moment. He distracts Shawn so Shane can put Shawn out.

That leaves us with Rey, HHH, Carlito, Orton and RVD. Well I’m glad they took their time getting rid of the people. Shawn goes after Shane but HHH stops him but gets chin music. HBK chases the McMahons out because he’s a face and they’re heels. Van Dam puts Carlito out to give us our final four of Rey, HHH, Orton and RVD. RVD was returning so he wasn’t going to win.

HHH and Orton were possible and Rey was the clear winner so there we go. They split off with HHH vs. Rey and Orton vs. RVD. The faces hit some nice double team stuff to hurt the heels. Van Dam shows how stupid he is by going for a Five Star and gets put out. Orton and HHH get together for no apparent reason other than to beat up a guy that’s 5’5. However, Rey is empowered by the memories of a guy that he feuded with so he takes them both down.

Orton fights HHH. In other news, girls have boobs. Rey puts out HHH and it’s officially inevitable. Rey gets beaten up by HHH to just further make us take note of how awesome Rey is. Orton acts cocky and yeah Mysterio is going to Mania. Orton would get in and make it a triple threat where Rey would win the title and of course, dedicate it to Eddie since that’s all he’s allowed to do.

Rating: D. Eddie oversaturation aside, this Rumble sucked and it sucked hard. The booking was way off here as there were far too few guys in the ring at first and far too few in the end. The Rey thing annoys the hell out of me as people like to say RIP Eddie, yet they have zero problem with his history being exploited for the sake of bad storylines. Rey was passable as champion, but let him get there on his own and not because a guy died. That’s just stupid.

Other than that, WAY too many jobbers and fillers in there, which kind of reflects on the company as a whole. Seriously, why did Booker and Lashley stay in there for just a bit? To be fair, Booker was hurt so that might explain it. Either way, this match was awful in a lot of ways and I hated it quite a bit.

Rey is happy with his win.

We recap Cena vs. Edge, which was a result of the first cashing in of the Money in the Bank in a truly shocking moment. This was a huge thing as Cena was completely dominant and everyone was PISSED when he held the title again after the Elimination Chamber.

But when Vince’s music went on, everyone knew what was coming and it was awesome. Naturally Cena insisted on a rematch and talked about respect and having the title mean a lot to him. This was also the reign with the live sex celebration that apparently made Edge’s career better than Taker’s.

Raw World Title: John Cena vs. Edge

So the scaffolds from the ceiling begin to lower. Smoke and lights and pyro go off. Styles says it looks like a spaceship. Yep, Cena is getting a special entrance that of course looks awesome. More or less his feet are where the top of his head would be if he was walking normally. Yeah there’s nothing at all that’s being implied about who wins here at all. Lita of course looks completely amazing. If nothing else I’ve heard Edge’s theme live so that’s cool.

For the love of hell, change the spinner belt. The W is spun almost halfway around and it just looks stupid as fuck. It starts off with their standard stuff which is traditionally good. Cena starts off in control but thanks to Lita Edge hits a spear into the steps, which more or less proves that he desperately needs a new finisher. We go into the crowd for just a bit but it goes nowhere. Cena dives in to beat the ten count which if nothing else looked cool.

Edge goes old school with his spinning heel kick. Why is Joey Styles the only commentator that mentions the referee’s names consistently? Cena can sell really well if nothing else. Good night Lita’s chest is amazing. The announcers get into an interesting argument: who is the better technical wrestler? That’s a most interesting question that’s going to get a thread soon. Edge’s facials remain awesome as ever. The crowd is fairly loudly booing John here.

Edge chokes Cena so of course despite being put in a hold that should kill him or would end any MMA fight, he gets up with ease. Both guys are down so we get another few shots of Lita’s chest to fill time. Following some botched interference from the hot chick, the FU and STFU give Cena the belt again. That was abrupt.

Rating: B. Eh, this was what it was. Cena and Edge work together just fine so their matches are almost always passable. Edge was more or less given the title as a test run and that’s fine. He got his name in there and that’s what counts. Cena was definitely the right choice to have the belt going into Mania so I have no issues with the booking here. The match was fine and it came off well. It’s nothing great but it’s fine for a title change that goes 15 minutes.

In case you were wondering, Rey is still happy that he won.

We do a very quick, as in about 10 second long recap of Angle vs. Henry, which consists of Henry breaking the ankle lock, which had been done by about 15 people up to this point, but it’s impressive here because of POWER. Angle was a transitional champion if there ever was one.

He took over when Batista got hurt (shocking isn’t it?) so he’s held the title less than three weeks at this point. Angle does his usual solid promo and then comes back to tell Henry he sucks. That’s what makes Angle better than most. He would head to TNA later in the year and be a huge coup for TNA.

Smackdown World Title: Kurt Angle vs. Mark Henry

So Daivari used to hang out with Angle but he dumped him for Henry for no apparent reason. Soon after this Khali would show up. Yeah Angle is introduced as the new World Heavyweight Champion here. That’s the beauty of having guys like Angle or Shawn on your roster.

If something like an injury happens, you can throw the title on them for a quick fix and because they hang around the upper midcard with occasional main event matches, it’s perfectly believable to put the belt on them and no one really had a problem with Angle as champion. We get a fairly long feeling out period, but Henry catches Angle in position for the World’s Strongest Slam. Naturally though instead of slamming him though, he throws him to the floor.

More or less Henry beats the hell out of Angle for awhile as you would expect. Good night Henry you’ve been in the company ten years at this point. Don’t you think it’s time you learned some new offense? I mean really, we know you can slam, club, punch and squeeze. LEARN ANYTHING NEW. Angle gets a bad German, but to be fair, look what he’s working with. Angle Slam gets two. Henry powers out of the ankle lock using the same counter that everyone else uses to knock the referee down.

Angle gets a bad chair shot to Daivari and takes it into the ring. The chair is bent which always looks cool. Angle goes Hogan and cheats but remains a face. Two decent chair shots put Henry down but the fans are more or less dead here. They of course get two which gets a decent pop. I really don’t get the point of the chairs this early in the match. Angle pulls the turnbuckle pad off the middle turnbuckle and sends Henry’s head into it on a reversal for the pin. Really? That’s the best you’ve got?

Rating: D-. I have no freaking clue what they were going for here, but it was just an epic failure. Henry had no business being in there but he came off looking like a far bigger face than Angle did. It was really short, and I have no idea what the point was of this main eventing the show. Oh wait. Now I get it.

A gong goes off and the lights go purple. Ok, Taker has druids and a horse drawn chariot. That makes up for the main event. He signals that he wants the belt and sets off lightning. The ropes fall to the ground and the ring collapses as Angle holds the belt to his chest as we go off the air. Ok, that was freaking cool.

Overall Rating: C-. This was a very lackluster show. I know a lot of people will love the Eddie tributes etc. but I HATED them. One or two points to the sky and some frog splashes are just fine but seriously, giving the Rumble and ultimately the world title to a guy over Eddie? That’s WAY too much. Other than that, there’s just nothing special here at all. Edge and Cena is pretty easily the match of the night.

This show really was more about setting up for the future though, as Cena had to get the belt back and Angle had to get set up with Taker, which they managed to accomplish both. This really started setting the table for Mania, so that’s fine, but the show just wasn’t that interesting. Not recommended at all really, although some people might like it.

 

[Little Jerry Lawler]

I noticed something in the 2006 Royal Rumble that I don't think anybody picked up. When Chavo went for the frog splash and HHH eliminated him, I don't think Chavo went over the top rope to attempt it? If he would have went over the top rope and than attempted it and the same thing happened, he would have been eliminated. If they would have picked up on it, they could have had Chavo and Rey be the final two. I hated how they mention Eddie every three seconds and I still believe Chavo should have gotten the push that Rey did. Chavo is a very underrated wrestler and this would have been huge and understandable since he was actually related to Eddie although I don't know if Rey is. I would have loved to see Chavo as heavyweight champion but he has done nothing of note since and that saddens me.

 

[klunderbunker]

Rey isn't related to Eddie, no.

You have to keep in mind that the rules for elimination change every year. Savage fucked up in 92 by jumping over the ropes to the floor but it didn't count yet in 97 Mil Mascaras did the same thing and was sent to the back. With Chavo not getting pushed, it's because he's not marketable. I've said this a milliion times: if wrestling was about what you could do in a ring, Dean Malenko vs. William Regal would have headlined every Mania for the last 10 years. Rey sells t-shirts, Chavo doesn't, as simple as that.

 

[Little Jerry Lawler]

Rey isn't related to Eddie, no.

You have to keep in mind that the rules for elimination change every year. Savage fucked up in 92 by jumping over the ropes to the floor but it didn't count yet in 97 Mil Mascaras did the same thing and was sent to the back. With Chavo not getting pushed, it's because he's not marketable. I've said this a milliion times: if wrestling was about what you could do in a ring, Dean Malenko vs. William Regal would have headlined every Mania for the last 10 years. Rey sells t-shirts, Chavo doesn't, as simple as that.

Still though, I would like to have seem to do something for Chavo like they did for Rey. The WHC match could have been Kurt Angle vs. Chavo Guerrero and I believe that would have been a great match because the emotion would be off the charts which really didn't show when it was Kurt vs. Rey vs. Orton. I'm sure they could have marketed T-shirts with the Guerrero name on them or something.

I do feel bad for Rey because his world championship will be the attached to the stigma that he won it because of Eddie. That is the main reason why people have a problem with him as ever being champion other than his size. If he didn't win in 2006 and let's say he won it last year, then I don't think people would have a problem and they wouldn't book his reign as a tribute to Eddie. I thought Rey didn't ask for it and deserved better than that, but by thier constant exploitation of Eddie, Mysterio seems to have more haters than he once did.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2005

I really liked the WWE in 2004/2005. There was a great mix of established veteran talent and new young future stars. Look at the roster at this time. Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, JBL, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, John Cena, Batista, Edge, Booker T, Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Kurt Angle, Big Show, etc. That’s a stacked roster and they would all be on display at the rumble.

I like Edge vs. Shawn Michaels. I didn’t at first, but I watched it again several months ago and liked it much more. I’ve come to expect so much from Shawn over the years that anything that isn’t a five star classic is a disappointment. That’s not fair and even though this wasn’t a five star classic it was still very good. I could be wrong, but I think Edge was actually using Metalingus at this time. I don’t think that was dubbed in.

I kind of liked the build for the casket match. Only because it seemed like a mid 90’s feud and I felt like I was 14 again. Other than that I didn’t think much of this. Heidenreich was just another worthless big guy on Undertaker’s long list of victims. I really thought it was going to be Taker & Kane vs. Heidenreich & Snitsky at WrestleMania. Thank goodness that didn’t happen.

I like the triple threat match. I didn’t think I would, but I did. I wasn’t crazy about it when it was announced, but they sold it to me on Smackdown in the weeks leading up to the ppv. I remember some diva search girls being used a lot in this story, but since both only lasted a couple months I don’t even remember their names. I’m one of the few people who really liked JBL’s title reign. I thought he was great in that role.

If you would have asked me two months earlier I would have told you Randy Orton vs. Triple H would be the main event at WrestleMania 21. It’s pretty amazing how Batista came out of nowhere to take the spot that was meant for Orton. I don’t know what it is about Hunter and Orton that they can’t put on a good match together. I’m not saying this was bad, but it was pretty dull. I have to say I’m not surprised that Orton’s face turn didn’t work. Not because Triple H buried him, but because he just doesn’t seem like a good face. He’s a natural heel. He just looks like an asshole. That smirk he has just makes you want to punch him in the face. He’s naturally unlikable. That’s somewhat of a compliment since we’re talking about the wrestling world.

I like the rumble match as there are a few parts that stand out to me. Puder’s initiation from three of the hardest hitting guys in the company was entertaining. The brief raw vs. smackdown battle was pretty cool as the crowd seemed to like it. I love the altercation between Michaels and Angle. I would have liked to seen them in the match a little longer, but the important thing was these two were obviously going to mania. That was one of my all time most anticipated matches. I was hoping to see this match at mania and figured they may cross paths at the rumble. To see it actually happen was great. The finish was pretty cool. Neither Cena nor Batista had reached the main event yet, but both were clearly going there soon. When it came to them as the final two it was like looking into the future. Their careers were running parallel on opposite shows and they arrived to the main event at the same time. Had one or the other already won a title this would not have been as good. Having two stars right on the cusp of the main event was cool. I don’t like recycling old ideas, but I think they should have been co winners like in 1994. Why not? There were two titles and they were on different shows. They both ended up with title shots at mania anyway. They could have been declared co winners with each winning a title shot against his respective brands champion. As I’m typing this I’m remembering something. The angle leading into mania was Triple H trying to talk Batista into choosing to face JBL at mania instead of him. That wouldn’t have worked if there were co winners so I’m not sure what would have been better.

Overall I enjoyed this show. Seeing Batista and Cena at the end left me looking forward to the new main eventers. We saw the Batista turn on Triple H coming a mile away, but that’s ok. In fact most times a feud works better that way. For weeks it built and built and it was awesome when it finally happened. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good if the turn just randomly happened by surprise one week. Anyway, between the introduction of two new main eventers and the set up for Angle vs. Michaels, this was a good show to me.

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2007
Date: January 28, 2007
Location: AT&T Center, San Antonio, Texas
Attendance: 13,500
Commentators: JBL, Michael Cole, Tazz, Jerry Lawler, Joey Styles, Jim Ross

Well, there are two main differences here. First off is ECW is back. They’re still complete and utter crap as they tried to be a legit place and not AAA, so take that for what it’s worth. The other thing is Angle is gone, having went to TNA where he still is today in a SHOCKER. That’s not hyperbole either as it legitimately was a stunning turn of events. This was the first real step for TNA to show that they were legit and it’s still an awesome moment to this day.

As for the people still on Vince’s payroll, we have Batista vs. Kennedy and Cena vs. Umaga in a last man standing match, both of which are of course for the titles. If nothing else these are perfect Rumble title matches so let’s get to this show. Also, something historic happens here which I’ll get to later on.

The intro is the standard thing about the title matches and the Rumble, with the main focus being on the Rumble and Cena. That’s fine. They do however mess up and say that the Road to Mania has been around for 20 years now. No it hasn’t, as the Mania tie in didn’t become official until 93. Look back at the first two shows: Duggan won, and wound up losing in the first round of the tournament.

In 89 Studd won and was a guest referee at Mania. This may be relatively common knowledge, but just in case someone here hasn’t noticed, Vince likes to rewrite history every now and then. This is being billed as the most star studded Rumble in history. I haven’t looked at the entrants but I’m guessing that’s not true given some of the shows I’ve seen. Oh and the ECW guys are Extremists here.

Hardys vs. MNM

Melina is amazing looking to say the least. I know I often say that there’s no real point to this feud, but in this case there really isn’t much of one. MNM had broken up as the Hardys had reunited but rather than as a team they’re more like two singles guys teaming, which I usually hate but the history together makes it ok.

The Hardys were on a Survivor Series team together so they restarted the team and for the awful December 2 Dismember show (we’ll get to that someday) they threw out an open challenge which MNM accepted. This was supposed to be a one night reunion so the next month when they teamed up again in a 4 team TLC match, Mercury took one of the sickest bumps ever which was completely by accident.

Paul London did the seesaw thing with a ladder where he jumped on one side to launch the other up and the corner slammed into Mercury’s face and completely shattered his nose and part of his eye. It looked awful and he’s still got a protective mask on. Jeff is the IC Champion here. Oh and they’re the Hardys, not the Hardy Boys. You can really see the strides Nitro (Morrison) has made here and it’s impressive. Apparently Matt has a dislocated jaw.

They actually bring up a decent point here as they say that since Matt has a bad jaw, he hasn’t been able to eat solid food and might not have his peak energy. For once, that works. Jeff’s pop is epic. The beauty of the way the Hardys fight is that even if they botch the hell out of most of what they do, it fits their style and it could be believable that they meant to do that. Melina is letting loose those screams which I actually like.

Ross says he hasn’t made a lot of women scream. I’ll leave that one up to you guys. Jeff is so spotty that it’s insane. I usually don’t notice it, but DAMN he’s bad here. This match feels like they were told to go out there and have an epic tag match rather than just having one and that’s not a good thing. MNM is ok, but at the same time this match is just sloppy as hell and that’s hurting it a lot.

The crowd is about half into this but at the same time they’re not into it if that makes sense. Ross mentions that this is a one fall match to open the show. Why don’t they have more 2/3 falls matches? Those can be fun when they’re done right but you never see them again.

Matt gets the hot tag to start completely dominating the match. The usual double finisher ends it which was really quite lackluster. Oh and apparently Matt is on Smackdown and Jeff is on Raw, completely going against the theory of the freaking brand split as it comes closer and closer to dying every year.

Rating: B-. This just wasn’t that good. I like that they were trying to have a big time tag match, but these teams just weren’t clicking. It was FAR better at December 2 Dismember, but I think here that they were trying to top that match which was just a bad idea. This match was all kinds of sloppy and the ending wasn’t anything special. This was ok at its best and too long at its worst.

We go to the back where Teddy Long and Coach are running the drawing and Kelly is there barely dressed. Edge shows up, leading to him calling Coach Coacher and Coach calling Edge Edger. Take me now. Kelly was still an exhibitionist at the time and loved to tell everyone that. Rated RKO were the tag champions here so Orton shows up. Let the gay jokes begin. King Booker shows up to make fun of them as this is just rather stupid and unfunny.

Ad for the All Grown Up Wrestlemania, which was a campaign I actually liked for a change.

Thanks to a band we’ve never heard of for a song that has no bearing on the show and won’t be heard again.

We recap Test vs. Lashley, which more or less consisted of Test “dominating” ECW and wanting a title match because of it. There was a triple threat with RVD in there somewhere too that meant nothing at all. Test is apparently an impact player.

ECW Title: Test vs. Bobby Lashley

Take a wild guess as to how this is going to go. Just take a guess. Test was a guy that Vince kept trying to push but it never worked. That might have had something to do with Test having all the momentum in the world and Vince pushing Big Show instead back in 99 when Austin left. Oh yeah Big Show is gone now too. Lashley was another guy that Vince was seemingly ready to pull the trigger on but never got to do so which kind of sucks.

Lashley does the Lesnar entrance where he jumps to the apron and the pyro goes off. That would be more impressive if X-Pac wasn’t the first guy to do it often. There’s no big match feeling here at all. This is as basic of a match as you could imagine. It’s like they were reading a book about how to have a power vs. power match.

Lashley dominates for awhile, Test sends him into the post, Lashley gets a short comeback, Test hits the big boot and Lashley kicks out, so Test walks out. Seriously, that’s the entire 8 minute match.

Rating: D-. What in the hell was the point of this? What was the point of ECW as a whole back then? When did we reach the point where ECW had a back then? Anyway, this was really weak as there was just no point to this whatsoever and the match completely failed. Lashley wasn’t that solid yet and Test didn’t help matters in the slightest. This didn’t go well at all and it showed badly here. Horrible match with a stupid as hell finish.

Cena is in the back getting looked at by the doctor. Umaga injured his ribs the Monday before. Vince comes in and says that Cena won’t be able to forfeit as Cena can’t see him. I really hate Vince at times.

No Way Out promo. My goodness that was an AWFUL show.

We recap Kennedy vs. Batista. The idea here is that Kennedy has beaten 6 world champions in a year, so he’s getting a title shot here. Kennedy won a Beat the Clock Sprint to get the shot. I’ve always liked that idea, at least to an extent. I think Kennedy stole Norcal’s shirt.

Smackdown World Title: Batista vs. Mr. Kennedy

Kennedy cuts a promo before the match saying exactly what you would expect him to say. Kennedy had no official move yet so he’s unlikely to win. I think it was a neckbreaker or a DDT or something like that but he changed it every week. JBL keeps trying to offer analysis and keeps yelling at Cole for interrupting him which gets funny. At least it’s not Joey Styles because he would have a black eye from it.

Kennedy uses a weird as hell looking leg lock. Imagine a figure four, but with the guy that’s in it on his stomach. It looked rather awesome. A knee to the leg causes JBL to declare that’s how you win a world title. I thought it was by getting a pin or a submission on a world champion in a title match but what do I know? This is mainly Kennedy working on the knee, which is smart but it’s the safe way to go.

With Kennedy being allegedly the future of the company, shouldn’t he do something that’s a bit more interesting or fresh? Batista makes his comeback, actually selling the knee (PAY ATTENTION TAKER!) and goes for the Bomb. It doesn’t work though as Kennedy shoves him into the referee.

He gets a low blow and the neckbreaker but we have no referee. There’s a very loud and very noticeable Kennedy chant, which thankfully was listened to this year as he would win MITB. However, due to about 1000 injuries nothing would come of it. Batista hits the Batista Bomb for the easy win. JBL freaking out over it is kind of funny.

Rating: B-. This was pretty good for what it was I thought. It wasn’t supposed to be a classic showdown but rather a token title defense for Batista so that he could manage to get something else under his belt and get Kennedy the title shot that he had earned. There’s nothing at all wrong with that and it worked. The match itself wasn’t that great, but the point here wasn’t to have a great match but to make Batista and Kennedy look good and that’s what happened.

Hornswoggle shows up to pick his number. He beats up Coach after getting one. Oh looks it’s Khali and Horny because that joke never gets old. He takes three of them and leaves two, allowing Kelly to make a balls joke and Ron Simmons to show up to validate his existence.

The Marine is on DVD.

Mania promo, set to Ladies and Gentlemen by Saliva. They actually mention that at their concerts. Saliva is in the crowd.

So Umaga had been an unbeatable monster that challenged Cena for the title at New Year’s Revolution but lost so naturally he gets another title match at the Rumble. The idea is that Cena could barely keep Umaga down for three so ten is impossible. Umaga crushed Cena with a splash through a table at Raw. You know, I wonder how you can have more than one last man standing match. Wouldn’t that mean there have been more than one last men standing, which is impossible?

Raw World Title: John Cena vs. Umaga

The end of the video package sounded like Taker’s music for some reason. Ok I’m back now, as Lillian with her hair pulled back and more or less wearing a swimsuit as it’s a top that ties behind her neck and one of those nearly invisible skirts she wears. Lawler says that Umaga reminds him of King Kong. You know, the guy that lost in the end. The start is of course, Cena getting his ass kicked by Umaga because he’s injured and can’t breathe.

And you know, because Umaga is a monster and Cena is the second coming of Hogan so naturally he has to be beaten down to get us to the big comeback at the end of the match. This was around three months into Cena’s year long reign that made him the most hated man in wrestling. On a completely unrelated note, Lee, Ricky and I joined the forums about three weeks before this show. Umaga puts the steps into the ring but when Cena lifts them, it’s an amazing feat of strength.

He throws them at the Samoan, but here it looks awful as the camera shows perfectly the Umaga takes it on his hands. When Kane did the same spot a few months ago, it looked and sounded great. This looked like them trying to replicate it and failing miserably. We get a bearhug, which at least makes sense here. The fans want tables. I could go for a nice lawn chair actually.

The steps are put up in the corner and Umaga does the ass ramming but misses which would actually hurt. That and a step shot gets a 7. The announcers are completely pro Cena here and aren’t even trying to be diplomatic. The formula here is Cena gets beaten up, Umaga dominates, Cena hits a big move to draw even then Umaga puts him down again. The genius that is Cena figures that the Five Knuckle Shuffle is better than slamming Umaga on the steps.

He goes for an FU but in a SICK looking spot, Umaga falls forward and Cena’s head apparently slams into the steps being crushed by Umaga’s fatness. That’s just as painful as hell looking. On a second look it might have landed on the part of the steps with nothing there but still it looked great. That gets 9 and also a LOUD Cena sucks chant. After taking another beating, Cena hulks up but takes a Samoan Drop to put him back down. I really hate the Spike.

It was just freaking stupid on so many levels that it’s unreal. Seriously, look at Umaga and the stuff he does, and then his finishing move is a thumb to the neck. That’s just freaking DUMB. Ross calls Umaga Youmaga, so maybe that’s where Regal got that from. He hits the post so Cena nails him with a monitor as Umaga decides to take a nap there I guess.

Cena is bleeding from the step crushing by the way. We hit the floor so Cena hits post. The no selling by Umaga is getting a bit annoying but it’s quite bearable. At least they have their stereotypes right here as nothing is hurting his head. With Cena draped over the announce tables, Umaga gets a running start and runs down the tables to go for a splash on Cena which of course misses.

I’m glad as if Cena had gotten up from that it would have been completely ridiculous. That gets a LONG 9 which the fans boo the hell out of. For some reason Lawler thinks you have to be in the ring to answer the ten, which is just stupid but it’s Lawler so it’s expected. Estrada gets some metal thing and takes the ring apart to hand Umaga the turnbuckle, as in the part that hooks up to the post. Of course Cena ducks and hits an FU.

Thankfully he’s up before the referee starts counting as it would have been ridiculous if he stayed down. However it gets dumber as after a metal shot puts him down, Cena puts the STFU on Umaga using the ropes to choke him out.

For some reason Umaga completely no sells the first attempt and is up almost immediately after Cena lets go but Cena does it again to keep him down for ten in what I would assume was miscommunication. That’s your lesson for the day kids: it’s ok to take a rope and tie it around a guy’s neck for about 20 seconds until he stops moving and breathing, as long as you keep your title!

Rating: C. This was about as much of a textbook example of a last man standing match as you could have asked for. What I mean by that is that it was about as safe of one as you were going to get. I don’t think anyone bought that Umaga was a legit threat to the belt so take that for what it’s worth.

The match is certainly ok, but it’s little more than that, which I guess is to be expected in something like this. It ended this rivalry though and gave Cena another successful title defense so that makes up for some stuff I suppose. Not bad, but not great at all.

Commercial for Mania.

Flair draws his number.

Royal Rumble

Lillian is amazing, period. Flair is first, continuing his horrific run of luck for Rumble draws as this is the 3rd time that I can think of where he draws in the first 3 spots. Finlay is number two which is certainly an odd pairing. History is altered again as Flair has now not made it an hour in 1992, despite according to Monsoon making it about 70 minutes that year. We have 90 second intervals here in case you were wondering.

Cole makes it sound like this is for the title. It’s not, which is why it’s a bad idea. Kenny Dykstra, who allegedly was a great talent which I never saw, is 3rd. He and Flair were feuding I think. He was a year old when the first Rumble happened. That’s just scary as Flair was like a 5 time world champion back then. Finlay is heel here in case you were wondering. Matt Hardy is 4th. Lawler, JBL and Cole are doing the commentary here.

Since there’s no JR they can actually get words in edgewise. JBL says this is the closest thing in wrestling to an endurance contest. Other than you know, the iron man match which is an endurance contest. Edge is 5th. The first five have been Raw Smackdown Raw Smackdown Raw. That’s rather odd. Flair goes through the ropes and goes to get a chair. He and Edge have been feuding for awhile too. Does no one like Flair?

Flair goes out and then Dykstra follows him as Dreamer is 6th. You know what the chant is already. Finlay knocks everyone down and oddly enough is dominating. JBL says Lawler hid for 30 minutes in 1996 because he thought there was a young woman under the ring. That actually made me laugh. Sabu of all people is 7th. Naturally he gets a table which Cole says he’s made a career out of.

That’s either a thinly veiled insult or a general observation. Given that it’s Cole, I’d say it’s the later as I don’t think he’s intelligent enough to know how to thinly veil something. He makes up for it by knowing all of Sabu’s attributes which is actually impressive. Helms is Gregory Helms, still the Cruiserweight Champion that he became last year. We have Finlay, Hardy, Edge, Dreamer, Sabu and Helms at the moment.

We get our second Sabu chant in less than three minutes which makes me shake my head very hard. Helms has been wanting to stop being a cruiserweight at the time. In other words he wants to have a career. Shelton is 9th. They tease about 4 people going through the table but no one goes through it. Lawler points out that if used right it could save someone, which is actually true.

Kane gets us to double digits and of course we hear about all of his records, including most consecutive rumbles and 11 guys thrown out. And yet he can’t get a 4 week world title reign. Dreamer and Sabu are tossed easily, with Sabu being chokeslammed through the table. Well at least they made it quick. CM MOTHER FUCKING PUNK is 11th. Good night I hate how far they’ve depushed him lately.

He was supposed to have a twenty minute war with Lashley to end the Elimination Chamber at December 2 Dismember so that both guys would be made at once. Heyman thought that up. Punk was also supposed to make Show tap out in that match in about 5 minutes. Show, who was losing the title to Lashley anyway, had no problem with that and since he would be leaving in two days anyway had no problem putting Punk over really strong on his way out.

Vince of course HATED this and had RVD pin him first, leaving the likes of Test and Hardcore Holly, you know, REAL MAIN EVENT GUYS to battle it out instead. Naturally the fans HATED this as Punk was incredibly over and no one wanted to see Holly and Test in a main event. Vince of course blamed Heyman and he was fired as a result.

Punk would get the ECW Title in October and begin the biggest launch in company history, breaking the record for fastest time to win the Triple Crown, with the ECW title thrown in as a bonus. He has since tapped to Cena in 2 minutes at the Slammies and who knows what else as we’re 9 days from Christmas when this is being written and you’ll read it in about 5 weeks.

King Booker is 12th, about ten months before jumping to TNA. He puts Helms out in about 4 seconds. Super Crazy is 13th. Nothing happens. Jeff Hardy is 14th and hopefully something happens here. The Hardys of course work together and hook a move called the Spin Cycle on Crazy before fighting Kane which I like for some reason that I don’t understand.

Sandman, to a song that sounds nothing like Metallica is 15th. He gets a great cane shot to Jeff and a few others but Booker puts him out in about 15 seconds. Thanks for that. Orton is 16th. He and Edge, the tag champions, put out Crazy and the Hardys inside of a minute. In at 17 is Benoit, in his final Rumble. He’s US Champion here because that’s all he’s ever done. The announcers talk about Punk like he’s a jobber or something.

Oh I forgot he was on ECW at the time. RVD is 18th, just about to be gone from the company. He would be gone I think in June. Kane puts Booker out so he goes back in and puts Kane out. They fought at No Way Out and that was the end of it. They fight for awhile until Viscera comes out at 19th. He’s wearing white pajamas so there we are. Nitro is 20th. Nothing of note is going on here.

More or less it’s just a lot of guys making sure that they get close to being thrown out without actually doing so. Kevin Thorn, the guy that just never got pushed is 21st. Shelton gets insanely close and keeps off the floor which is indeed impressive as hell. Oh for the love of hell Hardcore Holly is 22nd. Still, nothing of note is happening with far too many people in the ring at the moment.

Shawn Michaels, still of DX, is 23rd to blow the roof off the place. With EVERYONE else trying to get Viscera out, Shawn puts Finlay out. A superkick to Viscera allows everyone else to put him out. He puts Shelton out too. They actually imply that Holly could win as Masters is 24th. I’ve actually liked his face turn recently, and not just because I find him attractive. Nitro is out thanks to Benoit.

Oh yeah HHH is out with an injury again and wouldn’t be back until Summerslam. Chavo is 25th as this is somehow only his 3rd Rumble ever. Benoit puts Thorn out. I’ve spelled his name wrong both times I’ve mentioned him in here. MVP is 26th and he’s not quite a medium sized deal yet. He and Kennedy had been feuding with Kane and Taker. Masters is out. Every time Van Dam has been in the Rumble, he’s made the final 6. That’s not bad at all.

Carlito is 27th which is where 4 men have won from which is rather impressive. Shawn hangs on like someone that hangs on rather impressively. Khali is 28th and he’ll likely get rid of a bunch of people. Yep, there goes Benoit and Holly. He would win the world title in July once Edge got hurt…again. He chops the hell out of everyone and Miz is 29th. Good night did he ever come a LONG way since then. He has the same music too. Yeah he’s gone in 5 seconds.

Van Dam is out. Punk is the 5th in a row for him. Carlito is number 6. Chavo makes 7. They say that no one can beat Khali as Shawn beats on him to no avail. I think it’s about as obvious as possible who 30th is here, but it’s going to be awesome no matter what. Cole: “no one can stop Khali.” JBL: “we have our Wrestlemania main event.” Lawler: “if I were number 30 I’d have second thoughts. GONG! All three: “OH YES!” Taker power walks to the ring and it’s on.

Final group: Khali, Taker, Shawn, Orton, Edge, MVP.They slug it out and after a bad clothesline, Khali is out. Somehow Taker looks small next to him, and that’s just scary. Since Khali wiped everyone out, we have 5 people left: MVP, never mind he’s gone so the final four are Shawn, Taker, Edge and Orton. They really are getting good at this final four thing.

Orton pops Taker with a chair and Rated RKO double team him. Edge of course goes for the double cross and this somehow allows Shawn to take an RKO. Taker is bleeding. We get a mini handicap match with quite a few chair shots in there. Ok it’s more like two but whatever. They go for a conchairto but Shawn comes in for the save and the double elimination to set up the old school explosion.

Both guys are down though, and you know what’s coming. Taker sits up, and then Shawn nips up a few seconds later. Lawler says he isn’t sure if this has ever happened before. Oh I give up. We get my favorite Taker spot as he throws Shawn into the corner. The fans are way into this. This turns into of course a great one on one match. They fight on the apron with Taker showing off by barely hanging on much like Shawn would do.

They go back and forth with some great stuff as neither guy can keep the advantage. Shawn gets ahead for awhile but Chine Music is blocked to set up a chokeslam. Tombstone doesn’t work though and Taker gets kicked in the face. He goes for a second one, but Taker moves and puts Shawn out, to become the first guy from the 30th spot to win the thing.

That’s not great odds for the luckiest spot in the match. Taker poses for a LONG time to end the show, which is fine. The fans are uh, not thrilled with Taker putting out Shawn when he was that close to winning, and Shawn was in the main event of Mania anyway so it makes even less sense.

Rating: B. The ending makes this whole thing as they let the old guys go out there and prove that old school is better than the young guys. Having the two mini matches at the end was a nice little touch. There were far too many dead spots in there though which fucked things up.

The lineup ws good though and it was nice to see the ECW guys not really do much as they didn’t need to, other than Punk. This was fine though and the ending was great so that helps a lot. It could have been better, but I liked it.

Overall Rating: B. While nothing here is great, there’s only one bad match in the ECW Title match which at least is short. This kind of sums up the company as a whole around this time: not bad at all but nothing that jumps off the page that’s great. Taker would go on to win his second world title at Mania, ending the run there against Evolution by beating Batista.

When you think about it, you realize how freaking insane the Streak really is. Anyway, this was a pretty good show but not great. If you like the modern WWE you’ll like it and vice versa, so there you go.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2006

Just one year earlier I was liking the WWE and their stacked roster. Even though most of those guys were still around I felt WWE hit a slump at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006. Even though he was only a mid carder I was disappointed that Christian left for TNA. There were also two major losses in Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero (I’m not comparing the loss of a man’s life to someone simply leaving the company, but neither were around anymore). This event didn’t do a whole lot for me and is probably the worst Royal Rumble since 1999. For the record, even though it’s the worst since 1999 it’s still far better than 1999.

I didn’t really care for the opener. I’m not a fan of these style of matches. They come off as very lazy to me. That’s a shot at the booking, not the talent. It’s so easy to just say everyone go in there and fight. We don’t care enough about you to give a real story. It wouldn’t have been too bad if these matches didn’t always take place in the cruiserweight division.

Mickie vs. Ashley was done simply to further the feud between Mickie and Trish. I don’t have a problem with that as Mickie vs. Trish was probably the best women’s feud ever and had a six month build before the showdown at mania. Having this match at the rumble to advance the story to mania is fine with me.

I was intrigued by the Boogeyman for all of two weeks before I grew tired of him. How was a guy like this around in 2006? He seems like he would be a better fit in 1992 and even then he would be considered ridiculous. It was a shame to see JBL, who successfully defended the world title the year before, job to this no talent gimmick in about three minutes.

The rumble match was just not very good. It could have been a lot better. It was kind of backwards. Show, Kane, Lashley, and Flair were in early and all out quickly. Later guys like Tatanka, Eugene, and Murdoch came in the middle and lasted too long. Like most I didn’t care for Rey getting the win and the title at mania because Eddie died. I would have rather seen Orton win this. Rey could have wrestled Benoit at mania. They didn’t need a big story. They both inducted Eddie into the hall of fame the night before. All they had to do was say they both considered Eddie to be their best friend and were going to have a great match to honor their fallen friend. Simple as that. Two faces tearing the house down in a good clean match would have been tribute enough.

Edge vs. Cena was ok. I didn’t like it too much at first because I wasn’t sure if Edge had arrived as a main eventer or if they just threw the belt on him for three weeks to create a feud with Cena to fill the rumble. Since Edge stayed in the main event and went on to win more titles (although they probably all average out to about a month each) I like this more now than I did then.

Mark Henry was in a main event title match on a major ppv? Mark Henry? This might be worse than Hardcore Holly. Ok maybe not worse, but not much better. At least Holly didn’t go on last. I know the only reason this went on last is because of the stunt with the ring at the end. If not for that there’s no way this would have ever closed the show. Even though I didn’t like this I’m surprised these two didn’t cross paths much earlier in their careers. We know Angle was always bragging about being an Olympic gold medalist in 1996. What about Henry in the 1996 Olympics? He was a total flop. Knowing Kurt you would think he would have made mention of that at some point. Anyway this was a pretty bad match. It’s not good when I can’t wait for the main event to end.

The more I think about it after reading the review the more I dislike this event. I’d say this is easily the worst rumble of the decade and probably in the bottom all time.

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2008
Date: January 27, 2008
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York
Attendance: 20,798
Commentators: Tazz, Jonathan Coachman, Joey Styles, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, Jim Ross

You think that’s enough commentators??? Anyway, this is kind of a forgotten show other than the ending, which to be fair was completely awesome and shocking to say the least. Cena is out with an injury here and likely is going to miss everything until Mania, which sucks but that’s the way it goes. I was just starting to get into WZ around this time so that should give you an idea of what was going on back then.

Anyway, other than that we have Edge vs. Rey and Orton vs. Jeff Hardy, as he begins his year long quest for the title that truly was awesome on a lot of levels. The Rumble and the fact that this is in MSG of course are the reasons to watch the show, so let’s get to it.

The intro is as standard as you could possibly imagine, with the guys getting on a New York subway and then all of the Rumbles being mentioned, especially the big ones. Except for 04 because Benoit doesn’t exist.

Ric Flair vs. MVP

This is a career threatening match, as Flair’s next loss would be his last. This means that it’s about as obvious as the fact that Becca has balloons under her shirt that Flair isn’t losing here. Since we’re in MSG tonight, we have the altered entrance ramp. Also, we have an annoying theme as with every time the name of a guy is shown on screen, it looks like a subway going down the tracks, complete with loud sound effects.

Because you know, that’s what I need over Flair’s music: train sounds. Flair says it’s an honor to wrestle many times in MSG and that he debuted here 32 years ago. That’s just freaking scary. MVP’s music cuts him off. He’s US Champion here. Fans are clearly all over MVP. The age difference here is insane. Flair’s chops are always great for some reason. It makes me smile watching him for some reason.

To put Flair in perspective, when he first won the US Title, MVP was four years old. Flair had debuted before MVP was ALIVE. Think about that. MVP is 37 years old and 35 here, and Flair has been wrestling since before that. That’s insane. MVP actually busts out a crossface chickenwing as I’m happy already. Flair goes for the legs, which if nothing else is the one thing he’s never changed over the years.

MVP gets the Drive By and the easy pin. Wait what? Yeah he got the three, but Flair’s feet were on the ropes. You could hear the crowd just go silent in a split second which was awesome. Flair goes for a quick rollup but gets two. It amazes me that a man in his 60s has this kind of charisma.

It really is impressive as hell. Flair counters the Playmaker into the figure four for the tap out. That’s the thing here: Flair beat MVP clean, which makes MVP, a champion, look weak. That’s not good at all, but I get that Flair’s career ending is FAR bigger than his title reign.

Rating: B-. This was a fine match but like I said I don’t like the booking here. A DQ or count out would have been fine, not a clean submission though. This was really a basic match but it worked fine. It’s nice to see someone get a clean win for once after a decent back and forth match. WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE THIS ONE THOUGH? Ok so I shouldn’t be that mad, but it’s still annoying.

Vince and Horny are in the back where Vince is explaining the history their family has at MSG. He says Horny has to win as Finlay comes in. Horny gets really excited. Back up an erase that. It’s fairly obvious where this was going.

Chris Jericho vs. JBL

JBL had cost Jericho the title at Armageddon because Jericho had bumped into him. That started the feud that led to this. It included an instance where JBL more or less tried to lynch Jericho and hurt his neck and throat badly meaning Jericho couldn’t talk for awhile. This is clearly a long time ago as Jericho has only won the IC Title seven times here. JBL is freshly out of his short retirement where he was a commentator.

Jericho looks odd as hell with the long tights now which is weird as he wore those for the majority of his career. JBL had called out Jericho’s kids and said their dad was a coward to make this personal. Jericho keeps spearing JBL but the punches he throws are pathetic. Jericho works on the back which makes sense here as JBL retired earlier because of a bad back. After a brief skirmish on the floor we go back in and JBL hits the best looking Hot Shot that I’ve ever seen.

JBL has lost a lot of weight at this point and looks a lot better. The fans are rapidly getting on him though. Jericho hits the post on the floor and he’s bleeding but not terribly. This match isn’t that good. It’s like they’re trying to find a story out there and it’s just not working at all.

We’re back on the floor again and Jericho is in control now. As JBL tries to set up a table, Jericho just blasts the hell out of him with a chair to get the DQ. That was an awesome shot. Jericho pulls out a rope and gets back at JBL for trying to hang him. Bradshaw is down for awhile after it. The beating got a great reaction for Jericho though.

Rating: D+. This just wasn’t very good at all and it was a mess most of the time. I get the part about trying to beat up JBL from Jericho’s point of view, but this was just all over the place and didn’t work well period. The ending made a lot of sense as Jericho didn’t care about the win but just hurting JBL, so I’m fine with that, but this just wasn’t very good at all.

Ashley, who is in need of a cheeseburger or something like that is looking for Maria but Santino cuts her off and says she’s not doing Playboy. Yeah she is.

Smackdown World Title: Rey Mysterio vs. Edge

Rey got this shot just by winning a Beat the Clock challenge. I’m really getting tired of people getting shots over things like qualifying matches. There are no personal feuds anymore. Orton vs. HHH got close I suppose but Orton had the title match anyway. Edge is with Vickie here and oddly enough comes out first. This was around the time when there was an attempt at having a stable called La Familia and it just failed completely.

Nothing came of it and it bombed completely. Granted that could be because it was Edge, Hawkins and Ryder, Chavo and Bam Neely with Vickie Guerrero. That’s not exactly Flair, Blanchard and the Andersons. Hell that’s not Flair, Windham, Anderson and Roma. Rey is seen just standing there waiting on his entrance which hurts things a lot. Rey’s mask looks like that of a Trojan. Where does he find these things at?

His Mania masks and outfits could work wonders as a drug education program. “Kids, do drugs and you might wind up as a short Mexican wrestler with tattoos who dresses up like the Joker.” The idea of X hearing that as a kid would explain so much. The roles are messed up here as Rey is booed out of the building and Edge gets a great pop. We hear Edge’s very impressive resume to start us off. Rey botches the hell out of rana and gets booed out of the building again as a result.

Oh man the heat on Rey is great. Actually isn’t that bad? I’m not sure. The referee catches Hawkins and Ryder about to cheat and throws them out. If nothing else Ryder can go and listen to his radio. He needs an education on how to be a lackey so maybe it taught him everything it knows. It’s 315am and I’m tired. Give me a break.

Rey’s leg is hurt. It’s so weird to hear these references to recent events and hear things that you remember. This was almost two years ago. That blows my mind. Edge starts working the knee which again makes sense here so you can’t argue that at least. The referee is good here as he checks on Rey a lot but never gets in the way. That’s a nice little touch in there.

Rey’s quick stuff is just completely insane. Also he’s selling quite well here so I’m rather pleased with him here. In a nice touch, Rey kicks Edge in the face but uses his good leg. That’s very smart as he has enough to stand on the bad one, which while a bit of a stretch is believable, but he gets offense in and stronger offense than he would by using the weak leg. That’s not bad at all.

And there goes the intelligence as he goes up top and does a double stomp. Rey, your lack of intelligence disturbs me. In a cool spot he makes up for it though in a unique spot. With Edge on the floor, Rey gets a hobbling start but slides face forward so his arms go first and grabs Edge by the head for a tornado DDT. That’s very smart because he protects the leg. That my friends is psychology.

Rey hits a splash from the top after the 619 but Vickie pulls the referee out after jumping out of her wheelchair. Rey goes for another 619 but Vickie jumps onto the apron and he kicks her. This of course would put her in the wheelchair for months. Rey stops for a second to go oh shit and when he hits a springboard, Edge hits a great spear for the pin. Vickie gets the big sympathy thing from Edge as she is wheeled out.

Rating: A-. I really liked Rey here and for the life of me I don’t get the crowd. To be fair though, New York is the mother of the smark towns so that is your likely answer. This wasn’t bad at all for a token title defense. It came off pretty well with the knee being a great point to work with. Rey impressed me a lot here with some of his innovations to protect his leg. This came out very well and I liked it a lot, Vickie aside.

Flair comes out of the shower and Kennedy is waiting on him. He says he would love to beat Flair. Shawn makes the unneeded save with a great line of “kids these days”. Shawn makes fun of himself which is always great stuff. Batista shows up as does HHH and it’s awkward. I know this because they tell us it’s awkward. Shawn of course pushes his new shirt.

Orton and Hardy are getting ready.

Maria, looking mostly hot comes out for the first ever HD Kiss Cam. This goes on for like 90 seconds and is just annoying as hell. Ashley comes out for no apparent reason. Good night she’s disturbing looking and gets no reaction. The mention of Maria in Playboy draws out Santino in a JEALOUS RAGE!!! He has someone under a cover too. There’s a jobber joke there somewhere.

I love how Santino makes fun of the New York teams here but earlier this year he did the decent jersey bit. He says the Giants will choke in the Super Bowl. Considering what happened, that’s just hilarious. I’ll give him this: he can draw cheap heat like no one not named Mick Foley. Under the sheet is of course Big Dick Johnson in Patriots apparel. In other news, X is defecting to the Jets. Ashley looks like the pole she belongs on.

Mike Adamle does the intro for the video package, famously calling him Jeff Harvey. We go to the video package, and easily this is one of the best ones the company has ever put together. Instead of just highlighting the three weeks leading up to the match (it was 6-7 here so that helped a lot) they show miniature bios of Jeff and Randy and their roads to getting here, with Jeff’s set to Rooftops by the Lost Prophets and since that’s one of my favorite songs it helps a lot.

They then have a thing where they jump back and forth between two segments on Raw: Randy punting Matt while Jeff is in the ring and Jeff’s INSANE dive onto Orton off the Raw set that was a legit scary thing. The problem was simple though. As Norcal put it after that, “Man, is Jeff gonna jump off the roof at the Rumble?” That summed it up right there: how could Jeff top this? Either way, this has me way into the match that I know the ending to and took place nearly two years ago. That’s very impressive.

Raw World Title: Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton

The key to this whole match is simple: Jeff could win. That was the whole thing anyone could talk about on WZ leading up to this: Jeff could win. Jeff is IC Champion here. Orton doesn’t hear voices yet. We get the big match intros which work well here. There’s no crowd confusion here which is a plus. They do the stupid bell ringing twice thing so in other words the match isn’t going on right now but whatever.

It’s a really basic thing to start but Orton is playing to the crowd really well now that he’s in control. Jeff gets a great baseball slide and Orton hits the barrier and his head looks like it’s not attached. That looks awesome. Ross is WAY too excited over this match. Orton tries to leave with the belt as he draws great heel heat. He’s a lot better here than he usually is.

In an unintentional great visual, the belt is on the ground and Jeff is down stretching his arms out and he can’t reach it. I don’t think he knew it was there but it looked great. Orton busts out the Orton Stomp just to piss me off a bit. It’s an old Ronnie Garvin move so no wonder it annoys me.Orton’s offense has been kind of all over the place and there’s been very little flow to this.

It’s been more or less a long brawl, although to be fair we’re 8 minutes in which from what I’ve seen is about half of the match so there’s time left. And just as I say that Jeff makes a comeback and we hit the floor again. Back in the ring, Jeff takes a GREAT shoulder post shot. That might have been the best I’ve ever seen as he freaking dives for it. This just isn’t that interesting of a match.

I think the problem simply is that the buildup was so awesome and then at the end of the day, it’s going to be a Randy Orton match which means it’s likely not going to be that good. Jeff comes back with an awesome looking Whisper in the Wind, which is my favorite Hardy move. It more or less ended with his leg slamming into Orton’s head so it almost looked like it ended with a Fameasser or a leg drop.

Granted it was completely by accident but whatever. Orton gets out of the way of the Swanton a bit later but gets sent to the floor. Jeff completely misses a top rope moonsault that at least they cover up with a quick camera cut.

Jeff more or less landed next to Orton which they of course show on a replay because the camera people are freaking stupid at times. And we go back in and Orton counters a Twist of Fate into the RKO to end it. I get that the move is supposed to come out of nowhere, but that ending came out of nowhere and not in the cool exciting way but in the that felt like it was bad way.

Rating: C-. The problem here like I said earlier is the hype. The hype here was off the charts and they simply weren’t going to be able to live up to it no matter what. That’s where this match lost it and that can’t be blamed on Orton and Hardy. That being said, this just was kind of a mess.

It’s not awful, but it’s a letdown and just not very good. Hardy wasn’t ready yet, but this was a good test for him. He would chase the title all year (minus the three month suspension for being an idiot and getting high) before winning it in a SHOCKER at Armageddon.

Royal Rumble

They actually have Michael Buffer doing the ring announcing. That’s awesome. He just sounds right doing this to say the least. Taker is number one and Michaels is number two, because it’s completely realistic to think that two guys that were numbers the last two last year would be numbers one and two this year. Buffer messes up his name though. He says it right but he sounds like there should be something coming after it.

They say a few people have come in at number one and won the match but they don’t say who, obviously due to the suckitude of Rey’s win. That’s all it could be right? We’re into minute number three of Taker’s entrance at this point. BIG old pop for Shawn. Well we know they’re not going out first. Did I mention all 6 guys are calling the Rumble this year? Yes because we need two guys to scream about everything, two analysts that aren’t that good and two idiots.

Santino is number three because two Hall of Famers aren’t good enough and we need comedy. Shawn kicks him in the face and Taker dumps him out. Well at least it was the right decision. Intervals are 90 seconds this year. Shawn counters Old School because no one has ever done that before. Khali is number four to a groan. Taker jumps him as the announcers point out how he used to knock Taker around, yet neglects to mention that Taker put him out with relative ease last year.

The smart crowd of course goes into the You Can’t Wrestle chant. Taker puts him out in about a minute for the second year in a row. Hardcore Holly, who is a tag champion here along with Cody Rhodes, is number five. It’s an even numbered year so it’s time to push him again. John Morrison, just starting to get over as a tag wrestler here, is number 6. Shawn and Morrison need to be given 20 minutes one day to just tear the fucking house down.

Dreamer, who asked for his release today, is number 7. These intervals are WAY shorter than 90 seconds. Batista is in maybe a minute later. Taker and Batista have the big showdown that lasts just a few seconds before Dreamer goes after Batista and gets thrown out. They reference the clocks going fast as Horny is 9th. Oh fuck it. He goes under the ring as Batista spears Taker.

We’ve got Holly, Horny, Morrison, Shawn, Batista and Taker in there. Ok, that might have been 45 seconds this time. Chuck the stupid biker Palumbo is 10th. It was another vain attempt to make him mean a damn thing and it failed completely. He’s just turned heel and no one cared in the slightest. He was feuding with Noble of all people and couldn’t beat him. That’s saying a lot.

Taker throws Morrison but he makes a nice save to stay in. Amazingly, Noble is 11th, just after his rival Palumbo. He’s gone in about thirty seconds thanks to Chucky. Punk, who would win the world title in the summer, is number 12. He just lost the ECW Title a few weeks before this to Chavo but would win MITB at Mania. He puts Palumbo out just before Rhodes is 13th. Umaga is 14th and nothing at all is going on here.

He’s got the incredibly bright red tights on here and he puts Holly out after shouting a lot. This is just terribly boring. Snitsky, amazingly still with a job, is number 15. Rhodes and Punk almost gets him out but that fails of course as Rhodes isn’t over yet. Morrison and Punk go at it renewing the real rivalry as Miz is number 16.

Taker and Umaga, who were supposed to feud about a dozen times but never did for whatever reason, fight for awhile until the minute passes and Shelton comes in at 17. Michaels kicks him out with ease. Well ok then. After about 30 seconds, Jimmy Snuka is 18th. Seriously? That’s the best you can come up with? He looks AWFUL. This is what I don’t like about WWE.

Shelton, a young guy with talent is in there for 15 seconds and Snuka gets a few minutes. What’s the point in that? Taz says that Snuka and Miz live two complete lives. He then throws in different, which helps because I thought they were the same person there for a bit. Nice job clearing that up there buddy. In at number 19 is fucking Roddy Piper. WHY?? To be fair he gets a great pop and looks decent.

Oh good night he took his shirt off. He needs to keep that fucking thing on. Old worlds collide as Piper and Snuka fight with everyone else stopping to watch them fight. Ok, the clock might have made it 30 seconds there as this is ridiculous. Piper is awesome but not in the ring in 2008. Kane comes in at 20 and I think you know the drill. He puts Piper and Snuka out to thankfully clear out the WAY to crowded ring a bit.

It’s still way too full but that’s a lot better. We get a big clusterfuck with Shawn, Taker, SNitsky and Umaga as Carlito is 21st. Shawn might have a broken nose. 22 is…Mick Foley? Well, I guess it makes more sense than Snuka and Piper. He gets a HUGE pop. He and Horny qualified together a few weeks before this. They’re chanting his name so I can actually accept this one to an extent.

At the moment we have Taker, Shawn, Morrison, Batista, Horny (under the ring), Punk, Rhodes, Umaga, Snitsky, Miz, Kane, Carlito and Foley. See what I mean about it being too full? To be fair though, that’s a damn awesome list of people for the most part. Kennedy is 23rd to a freaking ROAR. If he could have stayed healthy and been used right, he could have been a huge deal. Ok no he wouldn’t have been but when he was hot he was very hot.

Freaking Big Daddy V brings the combined talent in the ring down about 1000% though at 24. Snitsky is put out by Taker but he turns around into Sweet Chin Music to eliminate him but before Shawn can turn around Kennedy dumps him. That was fast paced if nothing else. Taker beats on Snitsky because he’s pissed off. Kane beats on BDV who isn’t wearing a shirt and is therefore disturbing. Rhodes is thrown over but skins the cat to stay alive.

WHO CAME UP WITH THAT NAME??? Did wrestling promoters like to skin cats or something? Just a freaking weird choice for a name. Mark Henry is 25th. Miz is in trouble and Horny pops out to pull him out. Punk takes a double headbutt from Henry and V. That can’t hurt that bad as both are hollow.

And here we have the proof that the ECW Title means nothing as Chavo is number 26. He’s a world champion and can have any title shot he wants if he wins. So, could he fight himself? Edge and Orton aren’t in here, yet he is. There’s all the proof you need that the ECW Title means nothing. Kane puts Morrison out. Horny tries to do the same thing to Henry that he did to Miz and he gets pulled back in.

The two big black men try to decide who gets to eat him but Finlay jumps the gun to save him. He uses that club and gets disqualified for it which is bullshit and Horny leaves with him, as both are gone. Elijah “Deangelo Dinero” Burke, who I swear to you has talent and potential even though I’ve never seen it but everyone says he does so it HAS to be true right? Chavo puts out Punk. Don’t worry Punk fans as he would have a much better year in the future.

Batista goes under the bottom rope to the floor. HHH is 29th and so it begins, as everyone starts wondering who number 30 is. There goes Rhodes. Big Daddy V follows. He puts out Foley which is still an awesome sight. This has been way over 90 seconds as to the next entrant. Burke is gone. Umaga takes a Pedigree and there’s the clock.

In easily the biggest Rumble shocker of the all time and arguably one of the biggest shockers in wrestling history, JOHN FUCKING CENA IS NUMBER THIRTY! He had gotten hurt on October 1st and it was said he would be out until Mania at the least. This was easily the best kept secret in the company probably ever as NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE saw this coming. The LD more or less exploded at the time and with good reason.

This was EPIC. MSG has goes silent and then erupts in about 4 seconds as even New York is stunned. Everyone stops dead in the ring as I wonder who actually knew about this. Oh before I forget the final group is Batista, Umaga, Kane, Carlito, Kennedy, Henry, Chavo, HHH and now Cena. Carlito and Chavo are out in seconds thanks to Cena as the winner is about as obvious as possible now. Henry is out now and there’s your showdown as he walks into HHH.

As they fight you can see Chavo running to the back which is very odd. Batista spears the hell out of Umaga as Kennedy is put out by Batista and then he does the same to Umaga, to make the final four Batista, HHH, Cena and Kane who is put out to get us to three. The IWC was about to commit mass suicide at this point based on these three being the finalists. All three do their taunts to each other and it’s on.

Batista is put out and we’re down to two. And there it is, as Cena becomes the most hated man in New York City in less than ten seconds. Well he is from Boston I guess. In the most predictable elimination in Rumble history, Cena FUs HHH out to end it and go to Mania, even though he would lose in a triple threat that really should have just been HHH vs. Cena. Posing closes the show.

Rating: C-. And most of that is for Cena. This just wasn’t that good of a Rumble as there were too many spots near and after the middle that were just boring beyond belief with nothing of note happening. It was ok, but nothing great at all. Cena’s return is absolutely awesome though and makes the match on all kinds of levels. It’s ok, but there are far better Rumbles.

Overall Rating: C+. I liked it. It’s not a terrible show by any sense of the word, but at the same time, it’s certainly not great. There’s no truly great match on the card but it’s fine for what it is. Cena returning turned the company upside down and more or less reset the whole road to Wrestlemania.

Hardy and Orton is ok but not great at all. There’s decent stuff here, but with just five matches it’s a bit hard to get behind. Check it out for Cena’s return and that’s about all, but don’t avoid it if that makes sense.

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2007

The slump of 2006 was carrying over into 2007. I wouldn’t say things were necessarily bad, but in my opinion the company was down from two years earlier. There were some good looking new stars like Lashley, Kennedy, and MVP, but they were a far cry from Jericho, Guerrero, and Angle. There wasn’t anyone filling the void that those stars left.

MNM vs. The Hardys was ok. I like that we had an actual tag match that didn’t have to involve the titles. This would have been better if it was their first meeting. We just saw this match a month earlier which took something away from this one. After the sick hit Mercury took at Armageddon I thought this might turn into a ladder match. I could be mistaken, but I thought it was Jeff Hardy, not Paul London, who jumped on the ladder that smashed Mercury’s face.

I was really tired of Test in 2003. I was not happy to see him back in 2007. He didn’t seem to fit in. I didn’t care for this match at all and found it to be quite boring.

I liked the potential of Kennedy, but I wasn’t crazy about the match with Batista. I thought it was a little soon for him to be getting a world title shot at a major ppv. I don’t remember any storyline for this.

I’m going to have to disagree with you a little about the last man standing match KB. I liked this one more than you did. This is another one that would have worked better had they not wrestled a few weeks earlier, but it worked for me anyway. I knew Cena would win but this one had me on the edge of my seat anyway. I thought this was a good match and another example proving that Cena does not suck.

The rumble was good and is remembered for the ending. Having a showdown between Taker and HBK nine years after their big feud was a nice touch. The fans loved this and I can see why. This is one of the better finishes to a rumble match. I do have one problem with it. The winner gets a title shot, supposedly in the main event, at WrestleMania. Taker got his title shot, but so did Shawn. I don’t have a problem with Shawn getting a title shot, but Taker should have been in the main event. Maybe I’m thinking about it too much, but Shawn getting at title shot, and getting the main event spot, seems to take a little away from Taker’s rumble win.

Overall the event was average. I really liked the last man standing match and the rumble was pretty good. Other than that the card is mediocre.

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2009
Date: January 25, 2009
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 16,685
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, Tazz, Matt Striker, Todd Grisham

There are really no differences at all between this and what you see today other than a few face and heel changes. Everyone is here for the most part other than Christian I think. Yeah there’s just not much that’s changed since then other than DX reuniting. We have five matches tonight, one of which is the new Smackdown Champion Jeff Hardy in his first title defense against Edge, although someone has been trying to get him lately.

Also we have Cena defending against JBL in the token title match of the year. Other than that it’s just the Rumble which more or less was the most predictable match in history as all of one person was mentioned at all in the buildup to it. That being said, let’s get to it.

The opening video is the standard thing of all the Rumble winners and all of the logos but it’s cut off by Orton’s music and clips of him being a bastard to the insanely hot Stephanie. Vince gets kicked in the head to stun the crowd. Yeah, they’re not making it obvious at all who was going to win here.

The slow motion replay of the kick shows that it’s INSANE. There’s no pyro for the opening as it’s all serious and stuff. In other words, the fans get cheated to a special part of the show for Vince. Oh never mind there’s the pyro. Still kind of stupid though.

ECW Title: Matt Hardy vs. Jack Swagger

Jack was the undefeated rookie here, having won the title two and a half weeks ago. This is the mostly pointless rematch. Matt gets a great pop and I wonder why he’s never been pushed harder than he has been yet. It’s a shame that Swagger is being depushed, but to be fair tonight for the Little People Court Raw he had a good match with Cena so maybe the push is back. He has no pyro yet so that sucks. We even get the big match intros here.

Since it’s 2009, Swagger is a cowardly heel at the beginning. Hardy brawls for the most part as Striker points out that he can’t out wrestle him so why try? That’s a great point at least. We get a replay of a great right hand from Matt. That was sweet. Hardy is doing really well so you know how it’s going to end in case it wasn’t clear yet. Swagger works on the arm which is the one he uses for the Twist of Fate. I know because Striker told me.

See why he’s the best in the world today? Swagger is working the shoulder really hard here and uses some unique stuff, including a boot to the shoulder. That’s something I’ve seen a few times but rarely enough that it’s effective. I’m not sure if I like or dislike the big 2 signs in the front row for counts. They always disappear after the first match so I’m guessing someone takes it from them or they get tired of it.

Striker goes way too insane by saying who the last North Carolinian to win a world title in Detroit (Steamboat in 87). That’s saying a lot. This is a good match with a lot of close calls. They’re getting some time too so that helps a lot. Hardy goes into the post as it was already hurt. Swagger hits the powerbomb for the pin to retain and let us hear his awesome music. Hardy sits on the steps with his head in his hands. Remember that for later.

Rating: B. I really liked this. It was a decent length of about ten minutes and had a ton of close calls and near falls. The arm stuff was good and it played into the ending to give it some psychology. That gives it most of what makes a great match so this is easily solid for an opener.

Orton is here and no one is talking to him. They’re making this seem like the big deal that it’s supposed to be.

Raw Women’s Title: Melina vs. Beth Phoenix

Melina is gyrating like there’s no tomorrow and it’s working very well. Beth is with Santino here but it’s getting close to the end. Santina would be debuting soon enough to suck the life out of everything again. Beth is just freaking gorgeous. I love that backflip she does to get into the ring. Santino gets a massive chant, proving that no one cares about the women and care about comedy.

Thank you Vince for crippling wrestling and making the comedy more important. Beth very clearly calls a spot to Melina and then whips her in. Beth shows off her power by lifting Melina up with one arm. That’s just freaking scary. Beth’s thong is sticking out which is of course awesome. She gets a leg lock on Melina that’s in so deep that her foot is touching her head. That can’t feel good. Beth actually pulls the leg back to ram it into her head. FREAKING OW MAN!

They botch the hell out of something as Melina is trying to come back. Melina hits an INSANE move where she spins around Beth’s side to get the rollup for the title. That was awesome looking.

Rating: C-. There were far too many botches in there but the submission thing and the ending were both cool. It was your standard Diva match so that’s not saying a lot. Melina’s selling of her back was great here though and it helped the match a lot. Not bad, but still far from great due to the sloppiness. They had a submission match soon after this.

We recap the JBL vs. Cena feud, which is mainly about the JBL and HBK feud over the money or whatever. It was stupid and one of those “real” angles that never work for me. It’s like saying Shawn makes no money from wrestling or anything like that which is just ridiculous. Being conservative, let’s say Shawn makes a quarter million a year. That’s FAR more than enough to live a decent life, but he needs to be sold to JBL to make ends meet?

Shawn more or less lays down for JBL to get the pin. The problem that plagued this at the end was that it ended way too fast. It should have been at Mania instead of No Way Out. To be fair though, that wound up being the wrong choice as Shawn and JBL did what they should have done at Mania.

We see JBL and Shawn in the back and JBL says that if he wins tonight, Shawn is a free man and paid in full and can be in the Rumble. JBL leaves and Shawn looks in a mirror for awhile and then turns around to have Taker staring down at him. He says that sometimes you have to go through hell to get to Heaven. Yeah they did the right thing.

Ad for Mania.

Raw World Title: JBL vs. John Cena

Cena was kind of casually mentioned in the package. Until the Taker cameo, I would have believed a title change here. The crowd is split on Cena as always. I would have actually believed them going with JBL vs. Shawn, but Taker switched me to reality. The idea here is that Cena is off his game because he has to keep his eye on Shawn. For instance, they’re on the floor and Cena ducks a clothesline but Shawn is in front of him and Cena gets ready to duck the superkick and JBL gets a shot in.

Never mind that the kick would have cost JBL the match but whatever. JBL had lost a bunch of weight at this point and actually looked like he was in very good shape. He lost probably 40 or 50 pounds and actually had a stomach. Shawn is more or less stoic on the floor. There’s a Ram Jam sign in the crowd, which is the finisher of the main character in The Wrestler.

We cut to a shot of Shawn about once every 30 seconds as Cena is more or less a pawn in this, which is ok I guess as this was just another title match for him. Cena has the STFU but due to Shawn standing there he gets nervous and JBL can get out. The Clothesline From Hell hits but it just gets two. There goes the referee and we have a bad looking double clothesline spot. Oddly enough we can see the ECW announce table over Shawn’s shoulder and there’s no Todd Grisham. That’s most odd.

Shawn gets in the ring and starts tuning up the band. He kicks Cena and JBL begins his second world title reign. Yeah I don’t buy that either. Oh of course he kicks JBL. Ok he kicks Cena too. He lays JBL on top of Cena as Cole says he doesn’t get it. That might be because Cole is freaking stupid. Yeah it must be. Shawn leaves and shakes his head as Cole tries to figure out the complexity of this.

Have fun Mikey boy as it doesn’t exist. Another referee comes out and we get two. Both guys are out as Cena kicks out so it looks like he’s spooning JBL. DAMN that first referee has been out for a long time. He got ran into not freaking shot. Cena gets an easy FU for the pin. Oddly enough it has no name here and was called his move by Lawler in the replay.

Rating: C. Usual stuff from these two with the focus on JBL and Shawn like it should have been. That’s ok here though as it set up the big blowoff with them next month. Like I said Cena was more or less a pawn here and that’s all he should have been. This got JBL and Shawn much further along and it worked well. The match wasn’t that good but it rarely was with these two so what are you going to do.

Buy Legends of Wrestlemania and fuck up history.

We recap Edge vs. Hardy which was the result of the Stairwell “Atrocity”. Basically, it seemed like someone wanted to hurt Jeff. There was that, plus him and his girlfriend being run off the road, and him having his face burned by pyro. I went to a house show a few weeks after that and he didn’t appear because of it. I’ve never seen so many kids look so sad. Anyway, Edge denied everything as he was the obvious most likely suspect. This is Jeff’s first title defense.

Smackdown World Title: Edge vs. Jeff Hardy

Wow. Back in 2000 or 2001 who would have thought that would be realistic? Jeff is WAY over. The celebration for him winning the title was absolutely perfect. My goodness I want to freaking shoot Vickie. Oh she’s Edge’s wife at the moment. It’s no DQ now also. Edge is flanked by Chavo. Edge gets speared as the bell rings, which is stupid as he didn’t need to since there’s no DQ. The WE WANT CHRISTIAN chant starts in about 10 seconds.

Christian would debut again in 16 days and he was already done with TNA and had made it known that he was coming back to WWE. You know the more I watch these shows, the more spots I see called by guys. I wonder if that’s just because I’ve seen a lot or if it’s because it’s becoming more of an issue with these young guys. After Jeff dominates for a bit, Chavo’s interference gives Edge the advantage.

Now we get some stupid hockey jokes after Edge slams his head into the table three times. Geez there’s another called spot. And now it’s weapons time as Edge brings in a chair which doesn’t work. While both are on the apron, Jeff hits a Twist of Fate which pretty much sucked. And there’s the ladder because Jeff is the Sabu of the WWE. Chavo makes a save but gets thrown off and jumped on. Jeff jumps off onto Edge.

I use the term jump loosely as he more or less falls and the splash turns into a headbutt. It looked ok but sloppy. Passable at least. This is the referee with the hitch in his count which is annoying as hell. Edge counters the Twist of Fate into a DDT which impresses JR. Why? It’s not like that move has never been countered before. That’s why it never worked as a big time move. Think of the leg drop or the Sharpshooter or the Stunner in the earlier days of it or the tombstone.

When one of those connected, it was OVER. Jeff and Edge never had one of those, which is what makes them look weak. Vickie comes out and breaks up the pin off the Swanton. Here’s Matt with a chair and you can feel it coming. The crowd just goes silent over the chair shot and the look from Matt is GREAT.

This was an awesome moment with Edge looking back and forth with an awesome what the fuck just happened look on his face. The complete lack of commentary here helps a lot. Matt walks away stoically. This would lead to their two match series that sucked because they didn’t go anywhere near as insane as they could have.

Rating: B-. Not bad but not great here. They had their standard good match that went about 20 minutes. That’s all you need really at the end of the day. The real story here was of course Matt vs. Jeff which is fine as it was a great story that the matches couldn’t live up to. They went fine though here and that’s fine.

Ad for No Way Out, which is now just called Elimination Chamber.

Orton says he’s not worried about Vince. This was the start of the STUPID mental disorder or whatever it was. That could have worked if he never said he didn’t have it or whatever but the whole thing was just stupid. Jericho shows up and says good job on kicking Vince in the head.

We get a recap of all of the Rumbles which never gets old. This is the really cool one with the following stats, accurate as of coming into the 09 Rumble:

22 winners (in 21 matches, but remember Luger and Hart were co-winners)

598 competitors (this is odd as there was one match with only 20 entrants and I don’t think there are enough to knock out twelve people over the years, unless they’re counting all the times where a guy gets beaten up on the way to the ring)

36 people that Austin eliminated, a record that Kane will likely break someday.

11 people that Kane threw out in 2001 which is insane

11 consecutive Rumbles for Kane, which is awesome

1 woman ever for Chyna

62 minutes 12 seconds which is the official record I guess, even though if you listen to the commentary for the 92 Rumble Flair was in for about 70 or so, which was false.

2 seconds that the Warlord lasted.

3 times that Austin won, which is also a record

1, the number with the same amount of winners as number 30, which is insane when you think about it. Note that in the video for this they only show Shawn when talking about the number one spot.

27, which has had 4 winners (Studd, Yoko, Hart, Austin in 2001)

70 which is the percent that since 1993 that the winner has won the world title at Mania.

This was an AWESOME package that got me completely in the mood for a kick ass Rumble.

Royal Rumble

90 second intervals this year. Rey has number one and Morrison number two. If they had any idea what kind of a classic they would have in the fall they would be amazed. Rey’s mask makes him looking like a member of the Klan. Ross and Lawler are doing the commentary which just makes this feel right. One thing I like that they’ve got going here is they have a big Mania 25 logo in the corner of the arena and everyone keeps pointing to it.

Miz and Morrison are of course tag champions here. Rey does an awesome spinning move around John to get to an arm drag. Number three is Carlito. He’s a face here as he’s part of the Smackdown tag champions which would be unified at Mania. Oh no wait it was before Mania because we had to have a Kid Rock medley. MVP, just having turned face is 4th. Khali is 5th as not a lot is happening. He of course dominates the whole thing and chops the hell out of them all.

I hated the match he had with Rey when Rey was world champion. It completely killed Rey’s credibility for months. Kozlov, still undefeated and with a decent amount of heat is 6th. He drops Khali in about 5 seconds. MVP and Carlito are both out now so it’s Rey, Morrison who has been hiding and Vlady. It’s HHH at number 7 to a roar. After a facebuster, HHH throws him out with ease. Orton is 8th and it’s on.

The clock came up very fast for him as I’m assuming HHH was afraid of being in there with two good workers like Morrison and Rey. Morrison gets a 619 and Cryme Tyme come out and flip a coin to decide who gets in and it’s JTG. The clock is going WAY too fast here as DiBiase is 10th. Morrison and JTG both go over but hang on and kick at each other in a cool looking spot and then DiBiase and Rey do it and then HHH and Orton do it. That’s either cool or stupid.

Jericho is 11th. Well no one can say that they’re sticking with small stars in the opening. Despite the star power, not a lot of interesting anything is going on, mainly because it’s so clear Orton will win. Mike Knox and the beard of awesome is 12th. Knox would somehow manage to get into the Elimination Chamber next month which blew my mind and sucked at the same time. Miz is 13th.

He was about to start making fun of Cena and becoming the awesome character that he still is to this day. Morrison takes a sweet RKO and then so does Miz and JTG. He gets stopped by a Pedigree as HHH throws out Morrison and Miz while Finlay is 14th.

In a SWEET spot, Rey goes over the top to the floor but walks on Miz and Morrison to stay alive. That was awesome. How in the world are we almost halfway done with this? Rhodes is number 15. Rey gets a springboard and Orton takes him down with an RKO. The lights go out and Taker is sixteenth. Taker is on one side of the ring and everyone else is on the other. He beats them all up and throws out JTG with ease of course.

The crowd is way into him. That’s why he’s still getting pushed. Gold freaking Dust is 17th. WHY does he still have a job? He has no gimmick and is slipping in the ring. He and Cody have a showdown and Goldie beats him up. This is being written on December 23rd. My wish for Cody: that he makes 1/10 of the impact Goldust made. He’s got a long way to go. Rhodes puts out Rhodes and Orton is very proud. Punk gets number 18.

That pop doesn’t exist according to Vince as he deserves to be jobbed to Cena in less than two minutes. He won the IC Title about two weeks prior to this and the Triple Crown in less than a year. That’s amazing. Vince disagrees apparently. Yeah I’m a Punk mark, get over it. He hits GTS on HHH which surprises me. Henry, still a heel and not yet the Kool Aid Man is 19th.

Does anyone else think that his picture of a strongman on the back of his tights look like male genitalia? The ring is WAY too full here with twelve or thirteen people in there. Shelton, the US Champion, is 20th. Punk and Jericho are on the top for some reason and Shelton does a running double Downward Spiral to them, which is called a reverse DDT by JR because he’s an idiot. Regal is 21st and he’s the guy that Punk beat for the IC Title.

Mysterio puts Henry out which is of course perfectly fine. Kofi, still not a big deal at all but getting very popular very fast, is 22nd. Taker is bleeding which I’d assume is hardway and he throws out Shelton. Kane is 23rd. Rey is upside down and hanging on in a weird looking position. Lawler counts 12 or 13 people in there. Kane and Taker hook up for awhile for a double chokeslam on DiBiase. Punk puts Regal out. R-Truth is 24th.

There are WAY too many people in there and even more just laying around and doing absolutely nothing at the moment. That’s the problem with having people last a long time in there. They’re used to ten to twenty minute matches at most so this is the equivalent of a rest hold. Rob fucking Van Dam is 25th to an EPIC pop. The whole match stops to watch.

Something that would crack me up is if they didn’t know he was coming. He does his top rope kick to Kane who just watches it happen. I know there’s no point in having him in there as there’s no way he’ll win, but he’s a WRESTLER and a former world champion. There’s his validation. Kendrick is 26th. He manages to put Kofi out and then be thrown out in 15 seconds. Van Dam is just so ridiculously over it’s scary.

Dolph Ziggler, still meaning nothing, is 27th. He runs into Kane resulting in a quick elimination. There are at least 14 people in there and most of them are doing nothing with maybe 4 really working in there. Ross actually says they’re trying to keep up with the action. Santino is 28 and breaks Warlord’s record by being clotheslined out in 1 second by Kane who was right there. Hogan got a running start to put out Warlord which explains the time lapse.

HHH and Taker go at it which is always awesome. Jim Freaking Duggan is 29th. REALLY? This is what ticks people off about the modern WWE. Shad can’t get in there? Primo can’t? Instead we put a 50 year old jobber in there instead. Yes he’s won before but we don’t wheel Luger out to be in there also.

Big Show is number 30, so here’s your final group. You may need a pillow as this might last into the night. The group is Rey, HHH, DiBiase, Jericho, Knox, Finlay, Rhodes, Taker, Punk, Kane, R-Truth, RVD, Duggan and Show. That’s 14 people. DO YOU THINK THAT’S ENOUGH? Well since they’re all in here let’s get rid of them. Everyone stops except Duggan who keeps punching someone while everyone else stops to watch which looks really stupid.

He and Taker have their requited showdown and Kane does the required run in to stop it. Show puts out Duggan. Jericho jumps on Show which is amusing now. Truth gets thrown out by Show after a beating. Show throws Punk over three times and then knocks him the fuck out with a right hand. Punk’s selling is masterful. You know, the selling he demonstrated when he tapped to Cena in 2 minutes at the Slammies because that made SO much sense right?

Show puts out Knox and Rey as Horny comes in for no apparent reason and then Kane eliminates Finlay. Van Dam nods at a referee which I’d assume means something. Show and Taker go at it of course because that has to happen at least once every six months. Yeah Van Dam goes out soon after so I’m assuming a referee signaled that he was next out or something. I’ve always wondered how they knew when to do that.

Taker puts out Jericho and we’re down to seven. We’ve got Legacy, the big trio and HHH. There goes Kane, shocking no one as he jobs first. Legacy goes after Taker which is surprising. Taker counters with a double clothesline and a chokeslam for Orton. He doesn’t throw him over because he has to win though. Taker and Show have a boxing match or something resembling one. Taker has somehow shrunk from 7’0 to 6’11 to 6’10 to now 6’9 over the years.

Orton tries and RKO but just gets shoved off which never gets old. Taker and Show fight on the apron and Orton puts Show out who then pulls Taker out. Priceless being caught in a double choke by Taker made me imagine them in the locker room and Taker saying boys I’ve got cups older than you so sit the fuck down. That leaves us with Legacy and HHH as it’s all about him again.

This is a step down from HHH, Batista, Cena and Kane from last year. You ever notice how HHH is ALWAYS around near the end of these things? He was close in 98, won in 2002, 3rd in 2006, 2nd in 2008 and 2nd in 2009. That’s most interesting isn’t it? He of course throws out Legacy and then Orton dumps him for the completely inevitable win. Massive posing takes us out.

Rating: D. This just wasn’t that good. WAY too many people and WAY too much laying around just drained the life out of it. Van Dam coming in was great but Orton was so clearly the winner here that it sucked the life out of it. That’s something I burned Sly on once as he said that this was one of the best Rumbles ever and then slipped and said that the way you determine a good Rumble is by saying anyone could win.

I asked who else could have won in 09. I’m waiting on a reply to that and it’s been nearly a year boss. Anyway, this wasn’t interesting to me back then or now as it was just about HHH vs. the world and that’s simply not interesting. Of course, they would feud for the majority of the year and kill Raw in the process, but Vince is in love with Orton despite what ratings say so there we go.

Overall Rating: B+. Rumble aside, this is a great show. You have four solid matches with drama and title changes and storyline advancement. What more could you ask for out of this thing? I really liked it and it came out very well. The Rumble itself was pretty bad but then again so was Raw as a whole this year. As for the show, watch it but stop the DVD before the Rumble but after the Rumble package.

So that’s the Royal Rumble up til now. Since this is December 23rd, I have no idea what the 2010 card is going to look like so I have no predictions. Overall, the Rumble is the epitome of hit or miss in the company as some like 92 and 04 are classics and great matches while some like 95 or 99 make you long for a 2000 WCW PPV. It’s been able to make stars like Benoit and Shawn while at the same time some have won it and then done nothing like Duggan, Studd and that Austin guy.

It’s the most unique battle royal in wrestling and it’s the real start to Mania which is what it should be. That first three months or even four months of the year is predicated on this one match and other than one year it’s always been at least a 40 minute match so you’re in for a long one. This is definitely something special, and to think it all started so Vince could screw Crockett. Anyway, tomorrow is the Rumble and I’ll likely be pumped.

Sheamus is currently world champion and I still can’t get over that. Anyway, thanks for reading this and I hope you liked it. That wraps up the big four but I’ll be around with random reviews and some stuff from other companies so keep reading or start if you haven’t read this. Wait what?

 

[klunderbunker]

Royal Rumble 2010
Date: January 31, 2010
Location: Phillips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia
Commentators: Michael Cole, Matt Striker, Jerry Lawler

First off, love that announcing trio. Having 6 guys was WAY too much for PPVs. I’m excited for this Rumble. Yes the title matches are easy to see, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be bad. Sometimes you need predictable matches and this is one of them. The matches look good on paper and the build was all there. The Rumble winner is pretty up in the air actually. That being said the show is starting so it’s time to shut up. Actually it isn’t but you get the point.

The video is what you would expect: a look back. Basic but well done as usual.

ECW Title: Ezekiel Jackson vs. Christian

They’ve built this up great as it finally feels like the night Christian is going down. I’m not so sure though. Jackson is a freaking scary man indeed. My stream is choppy as hell so this is kind of like a fast moving slide show mixed with good audio. There goes Regal after a few minutes. Striker talks too fast at times. Cole sounds sick or something. We hit the formula based stuff which is likely the best way to do this.

Since Jackson is still limited in the ring, it’s probably best to have him be carried by the far more experienced and better Christian. We’re in our second chinlock of the match already. Seriously Striker: CALM DOWN! Christian hits the jumping reverse elbow making him awesome. And then he does those stupid claps to take that away. “Hmm, I have him down and I’ve walked around in a circle so he doesn’t know where he is.

I’ll clap since that doesn’t give him a tip at all.” Jackson hits a big clothesline and we get LARIOTO from Striker. Jackson is really limited. Like Monty Brown levels of limited. I love that slingshot kick that Christian does in the corner. Why should I care about who last won the title where? No one says a word and Striker says nothing? That’s very amusing. Sleeper time. And there’s the Killswitch out of freaking nowhere for the pin. What the fuck was that???

Rating: C+. This was your run of the mill big man vs. little man and the more I think about it the more I like the ending. Christian couldn’t hang with Zeke going head to head so he stopped trying to and got a quick win. I actually like that one.

Cryme Tyme both want to be in the Rumble but only one spot is available. Apparently they’ve managed to trade Khali’s spot for a kiss from Tiffany. Apparently not. Gender stereotype humor fails and Khali imitates Urkel. Shad is almost able to look eye to eye with Khali. This is stupid as hell. Miz comes in and Teddy, who has no authority on this show, makes the US Title match.

Rhodes sucks up to Orton and throws Ted under the bus. I’d bet on the same thing happening later with Ted,

US Title: MVP vs. The Miz

Talk about two guys that have gone in completely opposite directions. Miz used to look like a joke and is now awesome and MVP used to look awesome and now is a borderline joke. Something tells me he’s winning tonight though. MVP was US Champion what, back in 2007 and he’s still in the same place how long later? There’s a big MIZ IS AWESOME chant. Or was it AWFUL? Either one is a good sign.

MVP is all over him to start which points to Miz hanging onto the belt. Ok, we get it: MVP hung out with some chick from The View. It means nothing at all. Ah there we go. Miz is back now. He’s grown more than anyone else I’ve ever seen in the past two years. We get it also: MVP used to be in prison. Let it die already. MVP is just a failure as a face. His character is designed to be a heel but we can’t have street wise heels that look like stereotypes of course.

Ok, so MVP hits a face crusher and literally 12 seconds later the Ballin Elbow hits. Are we supposed to believe that Miz isn’t going to get up in that amount of time? Seriously? There’s a Pounce from MVP and called so much by Striker. Oh, period. Wouldn’t want to forget that.

I actually don’t know who’s going to win here which is rare in matches like these but it’s a nice plus. And Miz hits a rollup as MVP is getting back in for the pin. And that’s what he needs: wins, even by fluke, that are clean. MVP attacks him after the match and is heavily booed. Please let that be a heel turn. Cole implies it’s not. Fuck.

Rating: B-. Not bad at all. The ending was great here as it literally came out of nowhere. Miz needs more wins like these but it gives him more and more credibility every time which is what his character needs at the moment. I haven’t seen them get a character’s development much better than his in a LONG time and I’m loving it.

Jericho and Show continue their bromance. R-Truth laughs at Jericho and says it’s every man for himself. It’s better than it sounds but it’s still dumb as hell.

Orton is walking. Yes indeed he is. And there’s Ted to say he’s here for him. No Cody in sight though and I was right with my prediction.

Ad for Raw. I love that they feel the need to advertise a show that you likely would have had to see in order to buy this show.

Soldiers are here. Oh they’re from the National Guard.

Raw World Title: Sheamus vs. Randy Orton

And the champion comes out first for no apparent reason. Sheamus is another character that has gotten a solid push from nowhere and I’m liking it. It’s working bette than Bradshaw’s when they did the same thing and I think that’s because there’s nothing of his past to compare it to. Bradshaw had nothing to go off of in the main event either but we had known him for years and he sucked like hell. Orton gets a bit of a pop.

Please: give him a face title run. It could work. A heel vs. heel title match isn’t something I would have guessed on but it should be awesome. I’m pulling for the Irish dude just to prevent anything resembling Orton vs. HHH or Cena again. We get the big match intros too. Orton gets a straight up face pop. Sheamus gets heat but it’s mild. Still though, likely his best ever. It’s weird seeing Orton not being taller.

Sheamus is getting a bit of heat here. I like it. MASSIVE Randy chant. The fans Vince. LISTEN TO THEM. Yep, he’s wrestling life a face too. Sheamus is dominating here as he should. I’m glad they never went anywhere with the kick he gave Lawler. Orton goes for the knee which makes a lot of sense here. There has been talk of Sheamus holding the belt until Mania. I like it. We’ve begged for a new main event guy and we’ve gotten one.

Giving him a long reign is making him far more credible as a champion and main event player. It’s a brilliant move and I think it’s working. Orton STAYS ON THE KNEE! Oh blessed psychology how I love you! Sheamus works on the arm of all things. It’s different if nothing else. There’s the damn boo/yay thing. Fans are more or less completely behind Orton which is something Vince needs to listen to.

Sheamus goes for the Razor’s Edge but his knee gives out. See what psychology can do for you? Orton hits that elevated DDT that kicks varying degrees of ass. They’re trying so hard to have him be heel in this and it’s failing epically. The Punt, which again is more of a freaking place kick but what do I know. Vince started the XFL so obviously he’s smarter than I am. It misses of course because that never hits on PPV for some reason.

Oh wait forgot HIAC. There’s likely a reason for that one. Rhodes runs in and attacks Sheamus but the RKO hits, meaning Sheamus keeps the belt. YES! Came out of nowhere but whatever. The fans are calling for the RKO on Rhodes but they settle for a choke instead. Ted comes down and gets that ass whipped. Grr and there goes the damn stream again! Orton more or less fires them, HOPEFULLY turning face. And Sheamus kicks Orton in the head and everyone leaves him there. Not bad at all.

Rating: B. I liked this a lot more than I should have. The psychology was all working here and it played into the match later on which is nice. The DQ ending kind of sucked as I would have preferred Sheamus to get a pin but this worked just fine I think. Legacy is FINALLY over though which is the far more important thing.

We recap Mickie vs. McCool which is by far the best build to a match I’ve seen in a match where both had boobs. It’s even better than the Mark Henry vs. Viscera match. Short version: McCool and Layla were saying that Mickie was fat and it led to this. It’s a lot better than it sounds, trust me.

Smackdown Women’s Title: Mickie James vs. Michelle McCool

I’m actually pumped for this thing if you can believe that. Odds are it’s going to suck but whatever. The video had Beth in it which implies she’ll be here tonight. Sweet damn change Michelle’s music. I freak can’t stand it. McCool cuts a bad promo before the match. Mickie isn’t here apparently?

And here’s Layla in the fat suit. This was stupid Friday but cute I guess and now…never mind as Mickie is here. And it’s a 20 second match as Mickie freaking murders her. Ok then. And they bring out food and poor it on the heels. Good to know.

Rating: N/A. Not sure if I like this or not. Mickie dominating is good as it ends this quickly, but it feels flat otherwise. I think I like it though. Yeah let’s go with that.

Ad for Elimination Chamber. Yeah nothing says SPECIAL gimmick match more than two in one night baby!

We recap Rey vs. Taker, which more or less is Rey won a contender’s match and then Batista is a whiny bitch. Something tells me that’s your ending because he has muscles and therefore he’s a good wrestler, at least in Vince’s eyes.

Smackdown World Title: Undertaker vs. Rey Mysterio

They call this the biggest match in Rey’s career. Yep, far bigger than winning the title at Mania I’m sure. As bad as a champion that he is, that belt looks awesome on Taker’s waist. More big match intros which while they’re usually good, they kind of don’t work for Taker for some reason. This is likely to rock or suck with no real in between. This is like a wet dream for Vince: both guys are big faces so why wouldn’t this work?

Taker at 299 pounds sounds odd for some reason. Rey gets freaking launched to the floor but lands on his feet. Nice indeed. Taker has done maybe two moves and he’s put Rey on the floor twice. This is all Taker so far. Thankfully the 619 misses. Taker goes for the Tombstone but Rey uses the ancient Chinese principle of kicking his feet to get out of it. Taker of course messes up his knee because that’s all he can do in most matches anymore.

His hip is in a lot of legit pain at this point so it’s likely not a ton of acting. We get the Asai Moonsault for the Japanese fans out there. Taker’s chest looks the same as Michelle’s used to look like. I wonder if they got them done in the same place? They seem like they’re killing time, which screams BATISTA to me.

Surprisingly enough though it doesn’t come as Taker just more or less casually hits the Last Ride after countering a flippy. Where’s Norcal when I need him? Oh yeah at a bar with muscle guys.

Rating: C-. I wasn’t thrilled here at all. The only good thing was that there was a clean ending which was my main concern here. It’s two more old guys in the main event but at least they’re popular so that’s all I can ask for. Not awful, but underwhelming.

Shawn and Kane talk. HHH and Shawn talk. Greatness personified.

I freaking LOVE that video package about the numbers.

Royal Rumble

Dolph Ziggler is first and Evan Bourne is second. Ok then. And the Zig Zag hits a few minutes in. He pulls a Davey Boy Smith though and doesn’t make sure he goes over. The Shooting Star hits and Punk is third. With the roll he’s been on lately he needs a LONG run here. He starts off hot by throwing out both guys and has time to cut a promo. The heat is there, the look is there and the ability is there.

He has to job to the old guys though right? Number four is one of Cryme Tyme. Oh it’s JTG. Please….make it quick. Hey I got my wish! It lasted just a few seconds as we get our second promo of the night. I love Punk in case I didn’t make that clear. Fifth is Khali. Don’t you fucking put Punk out to this fucker! You know they will though. Please, sacrifice Serena or something. I beg of you Vince, use your damn brain.

Nope, Punk gets his ass kicked. Oh I get it: Khali is a “fun” character so that makes the idiocy ok. He gets the vice but it doesn’t last long enough and…Beth Phoenix is 6th? Well ok then. It’s different if nothing else. Beth gets picked up and placed on the apron where she kisses Khali before ELIMINATING HIM!! Punk hits her with the GTS after a brief skirmish. Didn’t see this coming. Seventh is Zach Ryder. This is odd indeed.

Beth is odd as we get some awesome music from Ryder. Punk tries to recruit Ryder and then hits him to MASSIVE face pops. He’s alone again as this is awesome. It’s another promo. Kane or Show will put him out soon enough. He says he’s better than whoever is next and you can smell the elimination coming from here. And it’s HHH. Bye Punk. Have fun in the belly of HHH’s ego. His intro takes the better part of ever so at least he’s consistent.

Hey Punk actually lasts until McIntyre is 9th. And HHH puts out Punk to get his ego up again. Yep, can’t have these young talented and over guys taking the place of guys like HHH. HHH is called the future of the company. That’s a scary thought. DiBiase is 10th. We’re 1/3 of the way through this. Oh great. Morrison is 11th. Nothing of note is happening at all. McIntyre takes Starship Pain and here’s HHH to take his head off anyway.

Kane is 12th, To recap it’s HHH, Kane, DiBiase, Morrison and McIntyre in there at the moment. The IC Title boys take a double chokeslam and it’s all Kane meaning he’ll be out soon or last a long time. And HHH saves DiBiase. Ok then. I guess the whole end your career thing is forgives. Cody Rhodes comes up on the monitor and Striker says it must be Rhodes. What would we do without you Matty? Legacy dominates…kind of. Morrison is acrobatic as all hell.

Rhodes underrated in the ring. Striker says he’s the seed of the Dream. BAD FUCKING IMAGE MAN! Kane of course is moving and Cole can’t tell McIntyre and HHH apart. MVP is 14th. Miz jumps him in the aisle and blasts him with the belt. Know what would be nice now? A shot of the ring. Oh there it is. Morrison hits a SICK springboard spinkick to the head of McIntyre. MVP is taken out as I’m pretty sure HHH is going to win here.

My guess is Shawn vs. HHH somewhere down the line because of Shawn’s incessant ego. Carlito is 15th and apparently he’s interesting. Yeah that’s bullshit if I’ve ever heard it. He hits a nice springboard reverse elbow to Legacy. That was nice. MVP will likely run in and attack Miz later. Nothing predictable at all there. HHH takes the Backstabber as do a lot of people. Holy crap he’s dominating. Sixteenth is Miz. Amazingly MVP doesn’t jump him. That’ll be next I guess.

The Skull Crushing Finale hits Carlito. The fans pop like a cherry pie for Miz vs. Morrison and here’s MVP to put himself and Miz out. Legacy has HHH in trouble and of course he doesn’t go out. Carlito hangs onto the rope and stays in. Number 17 is Matt Hardy to a huge pop. This crowd is awesome. To continue the trend he dominates and hits a bunch of people before Kane puts him out and Kane is out by HHH.

You really can see it coming. I hope I need glasses. Spinebusters all around. A hot crowd pops for him so that validates this I suppose. HBK is 18th and I think I feel a showdown of 1990 proportions coming. Rhodes and Carlito and DiBiase are gone. Ok we have Shawn, McIntyre, Morrison and HHH in there at the moment. Ok take out Morrison and the showdown is pretty clear.

Shawn has the second most eliminations in Rumble history apparently. Yep it’s showdown time and there’s the clock. It’ll be a jobber and…never mind it’s Cena. Vince the Survivor Series bombed with this main event so why wouldn’t this do it too? And of course he beats up DX. A double You Can’t See Me is booed to an extent. HHH stops an FU and takes a Pedigree AND HHH IS SUPERKICKED OUT OF THE FUCKING MATCH! I am STUNNED as all hell. TAKE THAT MELTZER!!!

Shelton is in now and I’m switching my bet to Cena. Shawn has put Shelton out like three years in a row or something. This is his eighth consecutive Rumble. Wow I wouldn’t have guessed that one. Cena ends Shawn’s streak and puts out Shelton. Holy Mania rematch Batman. Yoshi Tatsu is 21st. I like this guy for some reason. Of course Striker has a dumb name for him: the Poison Fist of the Pacific Rim. Cena dumps him in a few seconds and we’re back to Shawn and Cena.

Nothing overdone about that AT ALL is there? Ok Atlanta is allowed to do the WOOs. Big Show is 22nd. Show almost goes out but saves himself. Cena goes for an FU but it misses. Shawn has to skin the cat (what a name I tell you) because Chin Music misses. Mark Henry is 23rd. Well they’re having some big names in there at least. I still can’t get over HHH being out already. It’s a curveball if nothing else. Henry goes for a slam can can’t get it.

Why do I have a feeling he’s not the world’s strongest man? He gets the slam a bit later but then almost gets an FU. Masters is number 24. Have to have some jobbers I guess. He press slams Shawn and of course doesn’t throw him out. Instead he puts the Masterlock on Show and he gets tossed for it. Henry and Show go at it again as we have a clock. It’s R-Truth….AND HE PUTS OUT SHOW AND HENRY.

I guess there is a youth movement. It’s Truth, Cena and Michaels here. He shows his TNA connection by hitting Cena with the Stroke. The fans are chanting boring. This hasn’t been bad at all. Swagger is 26th as Norcal pops. This is his first Rumble. I wouldn’t have guessed that. Vader Bombs all around. NO! Stream went out! Never mind it’s back!

Kofi is 27th. There goes Truth. Jericho is 28th. Kofi put out Truth in case you were wondering. He follows that up by kicking the hell out of Shawn and then gets thrown by Cena. All three are down and here’s 29. HOLY SHIT IT’S EDGE! Ok it’s not really shocking but still cool moment. Oh yeah he’s a damn face. Just like he should be. Spears all around and we might not have a surefire winner now.

There goes Jericho and Edge is domination. Sweet the Edgecution is back! Fans are WAY into this. Shame Batista will be 30th. It would have made sense to just have it be Edge in at 30. Ok final four are Cena, Shawn, Batissta and Edge. Naturally Batista is dominating. Anyone of these guys could win. Edge spears him down and Cena FUs Edge so everyone is down. Shawn nips up to another great pop. That’s one of those moves that just plain works.

Shawn is dominating here and Striker fucks up again by saying that Edge has had no vigor. Shawn is dominating here and this is exciting me. Cena gets kicked and si does Big Dave. Edge clotheslines Shawn to the apron and then gets superkicked back in. DAVE PUTS SHAWN OUT! The crowd just goes dead silent. That came from nowhere. This is wide fucking open at this point. WOW I haven’t heard a crowd die like that ever.

That…might not have been what was supposed to happen. He goes nuts an goes back in, beating up referees. Could this be a Shawn HEEL TURN??? I certainly freaking hope so. More referees come down as Shawn looks freaking crushed. Striker says this is heartbreaking (no pun intended I’m sure) as he says Shawn has never achieved this. If he means beating Taker he’s an idiot. He’s also never achieved a good buyrate but we’ll ignore that.

Ok so it’s Edge, Batista and Cena. Cena reverses the Batista Bomb and Batista reverses the FU and there goes Batista! This would suggest Edge winning but I’m not so sure. He sets for the spear with those great visuals of his and it misses of course. Cena goes for a clothesline and EDGE WINS IT! FUCK YEAH!

Take that people screaming this was going to be predicable! Love that ending, even though it’s the same thing they did with Cena but not as exciting/sweet. This is what we needed too: a FRESH face that is going to get some fucking POPS. Great move all around and a great Rumble match.

Rating: A. Very solid Rumble here. Edge winning was a very pleasant shock and I liked it a lot. They had the star power in there tonight and no Santino or Duggan or jokes like that who are just going to waste time and spots. The formula works great when it clicks and this was no exception. I was bored until HHH got dumped but it wasn’t awful before that. Once he’s gone though, it’s straight through the roof. Very good Rumble and likely in the top five ever of them.

Overall Rating: A-. I was going back and forth between B- and C+. The whole show was indeed nothing great, but there was nothing that bad really. The right people won, for the most part they won clean, Orton is a face…I think, Shawn is snapping, Legacy is OVER, and Edge is back as a top level face.

This was a very good show and if you want to say it was predictable, let me know so I can laugh at you. Fun show and worth checking out, just don’t expect a classic. Edited: what the hell am I thinking? This show was great. A-.

And so ends the history of the Royal Rumble. I think so also ends my marathons but you never know. I had fun doing this and I think I'll be doing one off reviews now as it's much easier and I can look around and have more fun and diversity with it. Anyway, thanks for reading. I appreciate it. I'll be posting this in the PPV review thread also so that there's one here for posterity as well.

 

[X]

Dude...an A-?! What in the name of God...this is what I mean man, how do you tear apart every TNA PPV and then give a god damn A to tonight's completely mediocre PPV? Apart from the actual Rumble match itself, which was indeed fantastic, the card was garbage. Zeke-Christian was decent, better than it should have been, but nothing special, a TV match. MVP vs. Miz comes out of nowhere and was totally underwhelming (the abrupt ending didn't help either), next up we've got Sheamus and Orton in what could have been a decent match, but ended up being about 5+ minutes of boredom with a an atrocious DQ finish that makes that barely better than a token TV title defense against a jobber like Evan Bourne. Which somehow is Sheamus' biggest defense yet. Mickie vs. Michelle wasn't even a match, just a prolonged TERRIBLE comedy sketch that took a big fat shit on all of this supposed momentum that the feud had been building up. Mysterio vs. Taker was pretty decent for about five minutes, but again, that's all we got. About five minutes. There wasn't a single good match on the undercard, the closest to one was Miz-MVP.

Seriously man...I just...don't get you. You're WAYYYYYY too generous to the WWE, and don't hold them to even half of the standards you hold every time you judge a TNA or ECW show. Tell me, what exactly happened on this show aside from the Rumble? I'll tell you what: Absolutely fucking nothing. It could have been a C-grade episode of a Saturday Night's Main Event for God's sake, both World Title matches were a total joke...I mean, I'm just at a loss here.

The Rumble match itself, again, was awesome. But the entire undercard was AWFUL. Whatever the hell you're smoking, please pass it this way mon frere.

 

[klunderbunker]

I was expecting this.

First of all, where do I say my reviews are unbiased? Sure I like WWE more. I always have and likely always will.

Zeke vs. Christian was indeed average. Not bad at all and it ended their issue perfectly, which is what a PPV match is for.

US Title: bonus, unadvertised wrestling. Show me what's bad there? Miz gets a clean win which he needs, MVP shows signs of a heel turn, Miz can move on to someone with credibility. I fail to see the problem.

Sheamus keeps the title, Legacy is over, Orton is presumably a face. it was an angle, not a match, and there was some psychology in it. Did you expect something else/

Prolonged? Yeah, 5 minutes counting recap and entrances is prolonged.

The WHC was fine. Did you really expect Taker to lsoe? Of course not. He's boring but he is a divine creature compared to the disaster of Rey's reign. It ended Rey's world title thing, there was no Batista, and they did big man vs. little man. How was this that bad? Good, no, but certainly watchable.

The Rumble was awesome.

No bad matches (remember, I didn't count the women as an actual match) in sight. Angles were advanced, everything made sense, there were surprises, a bonus match and a white hot crowd.

That sounds like a great show to me.

 

[X]

I was expecting this.

First of all, where do I say my reviews are unbiased? Sure I like WWE more. I always have and likely always will.

Well, atleast you admit it.

Zeke vs. Christian was indeed average. Not bad at all and it ended their issue perfectly, which is what a PPV match is for.

Yes. Average match. Nothing we can't watch for free on ECW each and every week. Notice I'm bringing up some of the criticisms you had for Genesis.

US Title: bonus, unadvertised wrestling. Show me what's bad there? Miz gets a clean win which he needs, MVP shows signs of a heel turn, Miz can move on to someone with credibility. I fail to see the problem.

Bonus unadvertised wrestling that's completely mediocre? Sure, no problem if you like watching poor wrestling matches that barely last seven minutes. Glad to see that MVP is finally getting over as a face in this little feud with Miz and they immediately job him out to the Miz.

Sheamus keeps the title, Legacy is over, Orton is presumably a face. it was an angle, not a match, and there was some psychology in it. Did you expect something else/

Yeah, I did. A WRESTLING MATCH. See, if I'm going to pay FORTY FIVE dollars for a PPV, I don't want to see an angle furthered KB, I can see that every single week on any of the free television shows, you buy the PPVs for the wrestling matches, the payoff to those angles and feuds. The match was boring, short, and had a bullshit finish. In other words it was a shitty excuse for a World Title match. If I paid to see that I would be fucking pissed.

Prolonged? Yeah, 5 minutes counting recap and entrances is prolonged.

For one of the WWE's patented atrocious comedy sketches? Five minutes is like three hours.

The WHC was fine. Did you really expect Taker to lsoe? Of course not. He's boring but he is a divine creature compared to the disaster of Rey's reign. It ended Rey's world title thing, there was no Batista, and they did big man vs. little man. How was this that bad? Good, no, but certainly watchable.

The fuck is this "watchable" bullshit? Again KB, as you so often brought up with Genesis, why the FUCK should I pay 45 dollars for a "watchable" five minute World title match? How is that not a complete and total ripoff? Notice a trend here? None of the matches are good. Not a one of them.

The Rumble was awesome.

No disagreements there.

No bad matches (remember, I didn't count the women as an actual match) in sight. Angles were advanced, everything made sense, there were surprises, a bonus match and a white hot crowd.

That sounds like a great show to me.

Then you have low standards for a "great" show. Shouldn't a great show, oh I don't know, have a few good wrestling matches? "No bad matches"? Umm...no, several bad matches. The entire undercard. "Watchable" isn't good. It's watchable. How the fuck does "watchable" translate to an A?

Again, outside of the Rumble match itself, terrible show. Not even close to being worth forty five dollars.

And what's this "making sense" bullshit? So what if it makes sense? Is that all that's required now to get an A rating? It just has to make sense? How about, I don't know, it be GOOD? Can it do that as well? Can we have wrestling matches that don't suck? Seriously man, just how you reached an A for this show is beyond me.

 

[klunderbunker]

Well, atleast you admit it.

Never denied it.

Yes. Average match. Nothing we can't watch for free on ECW each and every week. Notice I'm bringing up some of the criticisms you had for Genesis.

Ah, but ECW didn't air it on TV did they? Nope, instead they made people pay to see it the first time, which is what the point of a business is. Yes it was TV quality if not slightly above it, but the story was supposed to end at the PPV and it did.

Bonus unadvertised wrestling that's completely mediocre? Sure, no problem if you like watching poor wrestling matches that barely last seven minutes. Glad to see that MVP is finally getting over as a face in this little feud with Miz and they immediately job him out to the Miz.

Or instead of saying they're jobbing him, you could hear the GREAT heel heat he got for the cheap shot as it seems they're transitioning him back to heel after the totally failed face run. You can't be suggesting he was over as a face on the levels that he was over as a heel could you? This did three things: it was a title match that should have (although it likely didn't) end their feud so WWE is at fault for that, it gave Miz another win which is what he needs and it hopefully started MVP's heel turn. I still fail to see how this is bad.

Yeah, I did. A WRESTLING MATCH. See, if I'm going to pay FORTY FIVE dollars for a PPV, I don't want to see an angle furthered KB, I can see that every single week on any of the free television shows, you buy the PPVs for the wrestling matches, the payoff to those angles and feuds. The match was boring, short, and had a bullshit finish. In other words it was a shitty excuse for a World Title match. If I paid to see that I would be fucking pissed.

That's fine. And you got a wrestling match. Seems odd that this dirty finish was awful but Angle/AJ's finish was ok. So a heel turn by AJ into a character he's not suited for is better than Orton doing something a lot of people wanted to see and that he desperately needs while giving Sheamus another title defense to build up his credibility and most importantly keep the title off of Orton? That's a better ending than the same person winning again?

To be clear: not saying or even implying that the match qualities are even close as they're not. This was about an angle though. The shows building up to this were about the Rumble, not this, just like they should have been.

For one of the WWE's patented atrocious comedy sketches? Five minutes is like three hours.

I'm not.....fat. You're.....fat. Oh god I can't breathe. Someone get me a Twinkie!

Yeah, WAY better than the Divas thing.

The fuck is this "watchable" bullshit? Again KB, as you so often brought up with Genesis, why the FUCK should I pay 45 dollars for a "watchable" five minute World title match? How is that not a complete and total ripoff? Notice a trend here? None of the matches are good. Not a one of them.

Neither was any of the undercard of Genesis. Both were watchable. Wasn't bad at all and again, this wasn't the focus of the show in the slightest. And please, I beg of you, tell me this is comparable to the importance of the Wolfe/Dinero or Morely and Daniels matches. They were filler. This was for a world title. Actually everything here was for a title or the Rumble. Genesis had 8 matches, two filler, which is far lower than I thought so I'll end this one.

No disagreements there.

This is I think a big thing. the Rumble was about an hour of the show, which is just under 40% of the whole show. That's a TON to have be pure awesomeness. Another reason the show was solid: it's a very unique event. No other show has one match that the whole show is predicated on. It's actually hard to compare the two show when you think about it because of that. Genesis had more matches, meaning more filler had to be used which is perfectly understandable and I can't fault them for that.

My issue with Genesis is this: why should I have wanted to see it? Not as a TNA fan or a smark or anything like that, but as a casual fan, why should I have wanted to buy Genesis? Other than Angle/AJ, what on there would I have wanted to buy, and on top of that, of the announced matches that I would have wanted to see, how many actually aired?

Then you have low standards for a "great" show. Shouldn't a great show, oh I don't know, have a few good wrestling matches? "No bad matches"? Umm...no, several bad matches. The entire undercard. "Watchable" isn't good. It's watchable. How the fuck does "watchable" translate to an A?

The 45 dollars I won't argue with you on, as that's an absurd sum for any wrestling show other than Mania.

the thing is though, this is different from Genesis to me for one major reason: the Rumble. That alone will drive buyrates. How many people here say they buy that and Mania alone? Liek I said, this isn't a really fair comparison to make as one show is a traditional PPV and one is based completely around a gimmick match which is over 1/3 of the show. That's the problem here: it's a very different subject which makes it difficult to compare.

 

[X]

Ah, but ECW didn't air it on TV did they? Nope, instead they made people pay to see it the first time, which is what the point of a business is. Yes it was TV quality if not slightly above it, but the story was supposed to end at the PPV and it did.

Dude Christian has been feuding on and off with Zeke since the summer and the Regal feud. I guarantee you it did not end tonight. The match was average. Average doesn't deserve an A.

Or instead of saying they're jobbing him, you could hear the GREAT heel heat he got for the cheap shot as it seems they're transitioning him back to heel after the totally failed face run. You can't be suggesting he was over as a face on the levels that he was over as a heel could you? This did three things: it was a title match that should have (although it likely didn't) end their feud so WWE is at fault for that, it gave Miz another win which is what he needs and it hopefully started MVP's heel turn. I still fail to see how this is bad.

Because it wasn't good KB. Maybe it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. Somehow that equals an A in your book though. What the hell is the point of having MVP cut these sympathetic promos and FINALLY start to get over as a face if they're just going to turn him heel a week later? They could turn MVP heel anytime they'd like, why should they give up on his face run the minute it just starts to work?

That's fine. And you got a wrestling match. Seems odd that this dirty finish was awful but Angle/AJ's finish was ok. So a heel turn by AJ into a character he's not suited for is better than Orton doing something a lot of people wanted to see and that he desperately needs while giving Sheamus another title defense to build up his credibility and most importantly keep the title off of Orton? That's a better ending than the same person winning again?

So many things wrong here.

1) A DQ finish is VERY different from getting a "dirty win" like AJ did. In one case someone is getting a pinfall victory, in the other we get nothing.

2) How is AJ not suited for a heel turn? Are you kidding? His heel turn was GREAT, have you been watching him with Flair since turning? He's a natural cocky heel again, a role he played for far too short a time during his early years in TNA. AJ is actually a damn good heel when he's serious and not being written as a comedy character. AJ Styles is the new Nature Boy. How can you not fucking love AJ carrying on that tradition just as Flair did with Buddy Rogers before him?

3) The Genesis match was actually a DAMN good match. Easily four stars. The Sheamus-Orton match? Mediocre. Boring really. Maybe two and a half stars if I want to be generous.

4) How can this DQ finish possibly count as a CREDIBLE title defense KB? DQ finishes are not credible, at all. Pinfalls and submissions are.

To be clear: not saying or even implying that the match qualities are even close as they're not. This was about an angle though. The shows building up to this were about the Rumble, not this, just like they should have been.

And Genesis' main event managed to be about an angle AND deliver a great match at the same time. That's the difference KB. It furthered the angle and it was a great match. Sheamus and Orton was not.

Neither was any of the undercard of Genesis. Both were watchable. Wasn't bad at all and again, this wasn't the focus of the show in the slightest. And please, I beg of you, tell me this is comparable to the importance of the Wolfe/Dinero or Morely and Daniels matches. They were filler. This was for a world title. Actually everything here was for a title or the Rumble. Genesis had 8 matches, two filler, which is far lower than I thought so I'll end this one.

Are you serious? The entire undercard of the Rumble was the definition of filler. No one on planet earth expected Orton or Mysterio to win, these were filler title defenses at their very definition. How exactly is Wolfe/Dinero filler, but MVP/Miz isn't? Explain that to me. MVP-Miz had a few weeks of an angle, and then had this match. Dinero/Wolfe had a few weeks of an angle, and then had a match at Genesis. Explain to me how one is filler, and the other isn't.

This is I think a big thing. the Rumble was about an hour of the show, which is just under 40% of the whole show. That's a TON to have be pure awesomeness. Another reason the show was solid: it's a very unique event. No other show has one match that the whole show is predicated on. It's actually hard to compare the two show when you think about it because of that. Genesis had more matches, meaning more filler had to be used which is perfectly understandable and I can't fault them for that.

The Rumble was good, but an extended Battle Royale, even one as prestigious as the Royal Rumble does not make up for an undercard of trash.

My issue with Genesis is this: why should I have wanted to see it? Not as a TNA fan or a smark or anything like that, but as a casual fan, why should I have wanted to buy Genesis? Other than Angle/AJ, what on there would I have wanted to buy, and on top of that, of the announced matches that I would have wanted to see, how many actually aired?

To watch wrestling? To watch a classic match between two great wrestlers? To see the debuts of Kennedy and Kendrick? To see how the Hogan-Bischoff storyline is playing out? There are quite a few reasons to watch. Just as many as there are for the Rumble.


As for what matches actually aired, wow you're exaggerating. The only match that was advertised that didn't happen was Lashley vs. Abyss. One match.

The 45 dollars I won't argue with you on, as that's an absurd sum for any wrestling show other than Mania.

the thing is though, this is different from Genesis to me for one major reason: the Rumble. That alone will drive buyrates. How many people here say they buy that and Mania alone? Liek I said, this isn't a really fair comparison to make as one show is a traditional PPV and one is based completely around a gimmick match which is over 1/3 of the show. That's the problem here: it's a very different subject which makes it difficult to compare.

Forget the Genesis comparisons then. What the fuck makes this an A show? You really think this was one of the best Rumbles ever? Because judging from your grades for all the other events, you do. I don't see how you could possibly believe this was one of the best Rumbles ever when the entire undercard was garbage. A classic Rumble needs to have atleast ONE good match apart from the Rumble itself, it's what set shows like the Rumble in 2000 and 2003 apart, they each had a GREAT World title match to go along with the Rumble. The undercard can be filler, but I need SOMETHING else besides just the Rumble to give a thumbs up to a show. If the Rumble is 40% of the show as you say, then judging by my math this show should get an F. Give the Rumble a PERFECT score of 40/40, but the undercard was just garbage. You know what a 40 is? It's an F KB.

Anyways, that's my last bit for tonight, I'm off now. Always good to break out the sparring gloves every now and then with you.

 

[klunderbunker]

Dude Christian has been feuding on and off with Zeke since the summer and the Regal feud. I guarantee you it did not end tonight. The match was average. Average doesn't deserve an A.

He was feuding with Regal, not Zeke. And you're right, that's why I gave it a C+.

Because it wasn't good KB. Maybe it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. Somehow that equals an A in your book though. What the hell is the point of having MVP cut these sympathetic promos and FINALLY start to get over as a face if they're just going to turn him heel a week later? They could turn MVP heel anytime they'd like, why should they give up on his face run the minute it just starts to work?

Again, it accomplished more this way. Miz looks better, MVP gets more heat, and the feud (should have) ended.

1) A DQ finish is VERY different from getting a "dirty win" like AJ did. In one case someone is getting a pinfall victory, in the other we get nothing.

No, we get Sheamus winning the match and keeping the title, likely leading to a rematch somewhere.

2) How is AJ not suited for a heel turn? Are you kidding? His heel turn was GREAT, have you been watching him with Flair since turning? He's a natural cocky heel again, a role he played for far too short a time during his early years in TNA. AJ is actually a damn good heel when he's serious and not being written as a comedy character. AJ Styles is the new Nature Boy. How can you not fucking love AJ carrying on that tradition just as Flair did with Buddy Rogers before him?

You're....you're kidding right? AJ was AWFUL as a heel thursday. He looked completely out of place and I didn't buy it for a second. His high flying stuff is suited for a face and I see no point in tweaking the best wrestler in the world, at least not so fast.

3) The Genesis match was actually a DAMN good match. Easily four stars. The Sheamus-Orton match? Mediocre. Boring really. Maybe two and a half stars if I want to be generous.

Agree on both counts, and as I said I liked it WAY more than I should have. I've always loved Orton as a face so the turn at the end was epic to me. I think I gave it a B+ which I'd equate to about 4 stars, maybe 3.5 but somewhere in there.

And Genesis' main event managed to be about an angle AND deliver a great match at the same time. That's the difference KB. It furthered the angle and it was a great match. Sheamus and Orton was not.

As I've said before I hated the heel turn. You have a great wrestler/face in AJ. So let's just throw away that and the great mentor thing with Sting from three months ago to make him a remake of Flair so they can party....with no music and all their clothes on but they're partying! Still hate that turn and it felt ridiculously rushed.

Are you serious? The entire undercard of the Rumble was the definition of filler. No one on planet earth expected Orton or Mysterio to win, these were filler title defenses at their very definition. How exactly is Wolfe/Dinero filler, but MVP/Miz isn't? Explain that to me. MVP-Miz had a few weeks of an angle, and then had this match. Dinero/Wolfe had a few weeks of an angle, and then had a match at Genesis. Explain to me how one is filler, and the other isn't.

So what if the title matches were more or less decided. Did you think Angle would win? I certainly didn't. Did you think Hernandex/Morgan would lose? I didn't. And Dinero/Wolfe didn't have an angle. They had the match already.

The Rumble was good, but an extended Battle Royale, even one as prestigious as the Royal Rumble does not make up for an undercard of trash.

Good thing it wasn't trash then. You yourself said it was average and not bad.

To watch wrestling? To watch a classic match between two great wrestlers? To see the debuts of Kennedy and Kendrick? To see how the Hogan-Bischoff storyline is playing out? There are quite a few reasons to watch. Just as many as there are for the Rumble.

AJ and Angle yes and I'll leave it at that since we've argued the issue I have with it more times than should be legal.

Kendrick was an unknown, so how can he be a draw?

Anderson....maybe, but the problem was he wasn't announced as wrestling or even appearing (I mean the mystery guy at the time mind you) but rather Lashley vs. Abyss. By the time the PPV was on the air, the people that found out about Anderson ahd already ordered the show.

As for what matches actually aired, wow you're exaggerating. The only match that was advertised that didn't happen was Lashley vs. Abyss. One match.

And Outsiders/Beer Money, which would have been a draw no?

Forget the Genesis comparisons then. What the fuck makes this an A show?

It was fun and I had a great time watching it.

You really think this was one of the best Rumbles ever?

Match yes, whole show, it's definitely one of the most fun.

Keep in mind, this was a live review. I don't have the benefit of looking back on it like I do the others so the grade is likely high, true.

A classic Rumble needs to have atleast ONE good match apart from the Rumble itself, it's what set shows like the Rumble in 2000 and 2003 apart, they each had a GREAT World title match to go along with the Rumble.

And to me and yes to likely me alone, Sheamus/Orton was good enough to do that. Don't bother arguing with me on this one as I'm not being rational about it at all, and no they don't compare to the other two matches you listed.

Anyways, that's my last bit for tonight, I'm off now. Always good to break out the sparring gloves every now and then with you.

A-freaking-men good sir. Always most enjoyable.

 

[Phoenix]

Think this is the first Rumble I've sat through completely in 3 years, I watched 08 and 09 until up to the Rumble, think it was because I was damn tired or something.

I quite liked the Christian/Zeke match, the only problem was that throughout the match Zeke countered the Killswitch attempts FOUR times and had god knows how many pin attempts. I think the C+ rating was a fair result because it appeared apparent that Zeke would not win, but yet Christian made him look good.

If there was one thing that got a new line of thought in was when Cody when to Orton, whilst I expected a Ted moment, I actually thought a Ted push was going to happen in the Rumble as well as the Legacy breakup. I did think Ted was going to go further in the Rumble, but it did depend on the title match really.

WWE Title match I loved, and for what reason? The psychology. I don't think I've seen a match where Orton gives as much psychology where it didn't feature a guy's head in a good while. Sheamus working the arm was good and I very much agree that Orton felt so much like a face there that the turn is more than likely going to happen. Think the one point I want to make of this match is that we got a much more legitimate contender out of Sheamus, he doing like Brock Lesnar squashes for most part when he came to Raw, even on Cena. This match with Orton brought up his stock because we actually saw more of what he could do in the ring, if Sheamus does face Triple H, you do believe that they will have a good encounter given how much technical skill Hunter likes to show off each week. Back to point, DQ ending was the angle as you said and I think this played off well, only thing was where Orton was saying "You're finished, it's my was time!" was that supposed to him being face or heel? He needs to be a face big time but his rant made me have some doubts.

Women's segment, the only thing I can say I quite liked was Mickie gave Layla what looked like a Lou Thez press and slamming her. Quite a suprising 20 seconds to go with, but at least it wasn't overkill.

Taker/Rey, my stream was messing up at this point but it looked ok from it. Seeing Taker on the second ropes just looked weird to say the least, think the main thing people got a big discussion from was Taker bleeding, you know they wouldn't stop the match for that because it's Taker! Ending with a double 619 and then a Last Ride counter, now I'm pretty certain that happened on their only encounter on Smackdown like 7 years ago, the 619 into a Last Ride did at least. That bit with Taker doing his pose with the blood around his mouth did look sick!

The Rumble itself, was it me or was just too fast? I felt like people were coming and going, I even did question if it was 90 seconds, but it was. Anyways, stream messed up at the start so I didn't worry about missing Ziggles/Bourne but Punk getting a promo was EPIC! This really is giving Punk an epic push and Phoenix putting out Khali is definitely a moment to savour. My other main problem was that Trips was giving his usual domination of everyone but everyone really give their finishers for good measure on him. Main issue I had when Kane was in, why the hell did you save Triple H TWICE?! He saves him twice and Trips eliminates him in return. Shawn's timing of entry was slightly predictable given the period but I really felt let down by how he just cleaned house, not even just give us a minute teaser of HBK/Morrison? Or just let some feud moments to play out. Which brings another problem I had, what the hell happened to the Legacy angle?! You kinda think they set up the idea that Orton would eliminate Dibiase and Rhodes, or even break down between them, but no Shawn Michaels dumps them within a minute of arrival and the angle is gone for the rest of the night, that did bug me quite a bit, but I'll give him credit Triple H getting eliminated that early was FUCKING EPIC!

R-Truth eliminating Show and Henry was a huge moment, breaking his streak of his two appearances in the Rumble ending via Show eliminating him, he's clearly getting a bigger push than Kofi, I mean Kofi came in, eliminated Swagger and Truth and was gone a few moments later, I hate to say it but Kofi's push feels dead to me there. I marked out like crazy for Edge's return, words could not describe how happy I was to see his return. The final four was good, but by the time we got to them I was like "Really? Is it the end already?!" seriously, that's how I felt it was too fast, people were coming and going left, right and center and the end was already there. Shawn getting eliminated first out of the final four was definitely a shocker because I think many believed it would happen, the rematch that is. Cena and Edge being last was great because I think either winning was going to work for the crowd but boy did I mark out like hell when Edge won, I couldn't get to sleep because I was so damn excited that Edge was back and won the Rumble, I hope he stays on Smackdown come April 13th (Me, Lee and Dave going). I thought Edge being back and number 29 was a nice big suprise.

Actually that's a thing, we had 5 "suprise" spots, we got Edge (great suprise as we weren't sure if he would return), Beth Phoenix (eliminating Khali gives her instant credibility), JTG (well expected but wasn't named), Chris Masters (need something to fill up) and Dolph Ziggler (yes, he wasn't named prior to last night). I think in terms of things, that was a good thing that suprise entrants were not a big guy making a one off return like RVD or a HOFamer making a pointless cameo. It felt right really.

PPV wise, it was a good watch, think the Rumble Match would be the top one of the night despite the speed and Orton/Sheamus gets second due to the psychology and ring work they put in.

Definitely better than last years and it gave us some variety we haven't seen like lower guys eliminating some higher guys, Triple H going out early, Edge returning, Shawn not being in the final three. A good show. I'd probably say I'd give it a B, but going up to an A- minus because of how much I marked out for Edge!

 

[The Brain]

Royal Rumble 2010

I know I haven’t posted about 2008 or 2009 yet, but with last night’s rumble fresh on my mind I wanted to get to it. Other than some very minor disagreements you and I have pretty much seen eye to eye on the rumbles over the years KB. One disagreement was 1996, which I liked and you did not. 2010 is another disagreement. I did not care for this show at all. I thought it could have been a lot better. I should point out that I watched this was a crowd full of people and it didn’t have my undivided attention. Also I am usually hard on a show when it first takes place. It’s very possible that I’ll watch this again in eight or nine months and like it better. For now I’m not impressed.

The opener doesn’t do much for me. To be fair I don’t watch ECW often so I’m not too familiar with the story and I haven’t seen Jackson wrestle much. I’m just tired of the ECW title. It’s a pointless championship. Right now it’s probably less prestigious than the IC or US titles. What are there like nine guys in ECW? It’s not like they’re all (or any) championship material. Maybe I’m exaggerating but you get the point. Christian is fine, but the title is meaningless. The match here was ok at best.

Why couldn’t the US title match have been announced before the ppv? It’s not like that match would have increased buy rates, but at least pretend to care about the title. Hell Razor vs. IRS seemed like an important match in 1994. Why? Because they put some effort into it. These guys had a story so why not just announce the match? This match was decent but nothing special. I’m a little surprised you weren’t sure who would win this. The Miz is going strong right now while MVP hasn’t had anything going for him for quite a while now.

I don’t understand the WWE title match. Face vs. face is fine. Heel vs. heel is tough. I have to disagree about your opinions about Orton. He should stay heel. His whole gimmick is he’s a cold calculating sadistic asshole. A lot of guys can do either face or heel, but to me Orton is total heel. He got a good reaction in this match, but the fans needed to cheer for someone. They chose Orton over Sheamus. This match didn’t do anything for me. I know the finish was to advance an angle, but I still don’t care for it. At least have Cody hit Orton by mistake and get pinned as a result. I’m getting real tired of these lame disqualifications.

I normally don’t comment much on the divas match. That’s because they usually don’t have much of a story. Here we had a match that actually had a story. This feud has been going on since October or November. Why have a match that finally has a decent story only go 20 seconds? The recap was like more than ten times longer than the match. Whatever.

Taker vs. Rey had me intrigued if nothing else. I thought these two could give us some unique spots and maybe do something pretty good. It just didn’t work for me. It was pretty good but nothing special. I didn’t think they would give us a great match, but I thought they could. My hopes weren’t high yet somehow I was let down anyway.

So I see two wrestlezone icons stating that the rumble match was awesome. I don’t see it. I thought this could have been a lot better. I was excited for this going in. I really didn’t know who was going to win. That’s rare for the rumble. I figured either Cena, Michaels, or Triple H and I was wrong on all three. Why were only 25 guys announced before the event? That implies we would get some surprises. Edge was a nice surprise but the others were just regular roster members. I didn’t like how a lot of guys were eliminated. They were going too quickly in some cases and anticlimactic in others. Guys like Jericho, Kofi, and Big Show should have lasted longer. Triple H should have stayed in until the end. Him getting eliminated when he did really took a lot out of the match for me. There was hardly anybody in the ring until about ten guys in and there weren’t enough guys at the end. For the first time the final four was decided before the 30th man entered the ring. That doesn’t work for me. So Batista was already in the final four before entering. Wouldn’t Triple H, Jericho, and Big Show have looked good in there too? For my taste this went too quickly and there wasn’t enough drama. Also I don’t like Edge winning. I don’t see him going to mania to challenge for the title and if he doesn’t it takes away from winning the rumble.

Overall this was very disappointing to me. I was hoping for a good start for the road to WrestleMania and this just left me confused. There’s plenty of time to straighten things out, but I don’t like the start we’re on.

I'll get to 2008 and 2009 in the next day or two to finish off the series. Great work as usual KB.

 

[Nadeem Ahmad]

Quote:
Forget the Genesis comparisons then. What the ____ makes this an A show?

It was fun and I had a great time watching it.


Quote:
You really think this was one of the best Rumbles ever?

Match yes, whole show, it's definitely one of the most fun.

Sometimes that is what people need for a good show. It doesn't always have to be about the "five star matches" in terms of technical moves. Efforts, strength, speed and other factors play in to the match like psychology. Based on reading the reviews, I was brought back to shades of "Razor Ramon versus Bret Hart" when thinking about this match for the similar title. It could just be about how a wrestler avoids moves or plays defense to a certain degree. Seeing the rookie in Sheamus weasel the way out from the technician of Randy Orton was almost genius.

Also, Mickie James beating up the champion was believable because of the rage and emotions going into the feud. If anything, the storyline might be advanced because of it as McCool might say she was caught off guard and did not fight with the best effort. It is like how Chyna lost to Ivory at the first Rumble of this decade, unless she was disqualified.

The same case may be made for Rey Mysterio. The fact that a man of barely five and a half feet for height was in the ring with Undertaker was impressive enough. Can anybody realistically expect him to be on the top game every day of the year when regularly facing competitors of nearly twice the weight and still putting up displays of winning or even dominating in those matches? Again it was about quickness against strength and even a normal wrestler like Jericho, Evan Bourne or somebody close to a cruiser could be tired from repeatedly running around and doing the things that Rey performed with throughout the career so it was not a stretch for him to stay down after five minutes against a skilled veteran.

I know klunderblunker did not reply to why the championship of the United States was not filler so I thought I would put some input off of the behalf of anyone. That meant I was not speaking for anybody. It was not filler because like he said they were feuding for a while. It was also a nice surprise as being unannounced prior to the airing of the show. Such things do not need to be wasted with advertisements because the draw of the rumble was already existant. If they were to fight at some odd "pay-per-view" in another month which did not feature any of the big four or five events like Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Night of Champions or Bragging Rights then it sure became probable for that sort of attention to give subscribers a reason to be hyped for what they paid for and for the potential increase in orders albeit slight.

As for the Extreme Championship Wrestling which would be slated for departure soon, I thought it deserved one last run at a big show and it received the farewell with a good notice as the holder of the title from there who was putting on amazing skills for a better portion of the last year going into the twenty-third anniversary of the special battle royal. Who thought Ezekiel did not stand with a chance of winning? He countered four attempts of the finishing manuever by Christian. That does not ring bells about Undertaker who only knocked Kane down with three Tombstone Piledrivers at Wrestlemania Fourteen yet nobody with the right mind thought Glenn Jacobs stood ready to win.