Should the 2017 Royal Rumble Match have 40 men as opposed to 30 men?

[Terry Gyimah]

If anything should the 2017 Royal Rumble Match have 40 superstars as opposed to 30? Personally speaking I would say that yes the 2017 Royal Rumble Match should have 40 superstars and why? Because of the roster depth that WWE has not only on RAW but on Smackdown Live and not to mention the only time WWE has ever had a 40 man Rumble was in 2011 which is why the Royal Rumble Match instead of it being 30 superstars it should be 40 from now on starting in January

 

[enviousdominous]

For my taste, 40 is a bit too much. I remember watching back in 2011, and it just seemed really weird to me. Del Rio won, after coming in really late to the match. By that point, we had already seen so many ups and downs that seeing someone actually win the damn thing wasn't any reason to mark out. I remember being more relieved to see the match end than I was happy to see Del Rio win the Royal Rumble. There's also the fact that he went on to lose at WrestleMania, so the match was diminished by his late entry and by his lack of an ability to subsequently win anything after the Royal Rumble.

Obviously the 2011 Royal Rumble wasn't planned very well -- which has been a trend almost every year since then --, so I can see this working if the WWE can make it exciting for at least 60% of the match. I would rather see that the WWE stick with what works for a few years, just to see if the brand split is good enough to last.

 

[Kris Benwa]

No. 40 men sucked. I don't think they should ever do that again. It just went on forever and ever. By time Del Rio won nobody cared any about the match anymore. It was ridiculous. I think 30 men is perfect and that keeps the match at just around hour, 15 people per brand. I don't think they should deviate from that formula. If it ain't broke don't fix it right?

 

[Aquaman6686]

No. The 40-Man Rumble was HORRIBLE. It was filled with rookies and nobodies who didn't deserve to be in the Rumble, and as a result it was incredibly boring. 30-Man Rumbles is the way to go and always will be.

 

[ccugrad1]

The Royal Rumble as a whole is a flawed thing simply because you are giving the winner of it a shot at the title at WrestleMania. Let's be honest, and we'll use the 2015 Rumble as our guide, did anyone honestly believe R-Truth was winning the Royal Rumble? Or Curtis Axel? Or Dolph Ziggler? You could put 40 guys in this year's Rumble and before it even took place you could knock the potential winners down to about 3 or 4.

 

[Dave]

It depends.

It depends on just who would be in the event really. People are giving the 40 an rumble of the past a really bad name, and I will agree that it wasn't very good. But I think that was more down to the booking than anything else. Honestly, it wasn't that much longer than a normal Royal Rumble match but having Del Rio win it and all the shit with Santino Marella really killed it. Some of the booking was really questionable but that doesn't have to be the case here.

At last count, Raw has 51 superstars, counting women. And Smackdown has 36 superstars including women. I think, if memory serves me, 16 of those are women and probably wont be included... So much for equality, right? So that leaves 71 people heading into the Royal Rumble match. You can safely assume that both the main titles on each respective brand will be defended, along with the women's titles from each brand. So with that in mind, you're only looking at 4 or maybe 5 people coming out of that number. That leaves around 65 people all looking for a shot to et on the card and into the match.

Do I think it is feasible? Absolutely. The roster is very deep when you consider both shows at the same time. I have already pointed out that most WWE superstars wont have anything to do if they aren't in the Rumble match. But do I think that the WWE will take that chance again? Probably not. It was so widely panned before that I think it has put the WWE off every trying it again. Which, for my money, is a shame because it could be handled so much better than before.

 

[Deoxyribonucleic A.C.I.D.]

No, they shouldn't.. too much.

But they should have a 15-women Royal Rumble match!

 

[Vintage]

no. they struggle to produce 30 names as it is. I'd say 15 of them you couldn't even remotely take serious which is fine.. but with 40 of them that number would up to about 25 maybe even 30 jobbers in a main event match. The more people you have.. the more eliminations you want the person you're pushing to make while protecting certain other people who also need to have good showings.

 

[Aquaman6686]

The Royal Rumble as a whole is a flawed thing simply because you are giving the winner of it a shot at the title at WrestleMania. Let's be honest, and we'll use the 2015 Rumble as our guide, did anyone honestly believe R-Truth was winning the Royal Rumble? Or Curtis Axel? Or Dolph Ziggler? You could put 40 guys in this year's Rumble and before it even took place you could knock the potential winners down to about 3 or 4.

Dolph Ziggler in 2015? Absolutely. Not only was he on the hottest roll of his career, not only did they save him for #30 to build up hope after Bryan was eliminated early, but his elimination (in two minutes so Vince could bury him) made fans even more enraged than Bryan's earlier in the night. Ziggler was easily one of the favorites.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

Make it 80. I don't really care. Battle royals are like most everything else, they are what you make of them. What makes the Rumble special are three things:

1. The surprise entrants
2. The climax
3. Kofi Kingston

The rest is all filler. It can be fun or it can be dull. The number of people doesn't really matter. At least with more people there is a greater likelihood of more surprise entrants and more time spent getting interested in who is next.

 

[Radical Canadian Goose]

Honestly, with the brand split, I feel like I will be more surprised by the winner this year. With that being said I am ok with going to 40. There is so much talent between the 2 rosters 40 is easy to handle. Add in surprise entrants (Angle, Broken Matt Hardy???) and as GSB mentioned Kofi Kingston, and the Rumble is must watch. I don't care how many people are in it, but, sure go 40.

 

[OYDK]

They can do it, although I don't have very fond memories of the last 40 man Rumble. In fact, that was probably the least enjoyable Rumble match that I've watched as a wrestling fan. It didn't help that Alberto Del Rio was the one who ended up winning that thing. God that really was a shit-show.

Anyway, 40 can easily work, but they have to cut down the time between which each entrant is introduced, which if I'm not mistaken, they did do the first time around. Really, other than that little hitch, it's all about the booking. The 2011 Rumble match sucked because the booking sucked and the winner was a dud. A 40 man Rumble with some shocking surprises, logical booking, and a winner that the fans actually want to see at Mania would be no different than a 30 man Rumble with the same criteria.

 

[Dragonslayer]

I think 30 is well enough; in fact, this year I was fairly disappointed with the Rumble, as there were only about 3 or maybe 4 guys who you'd have given a reasonable shot at winning the thing. Too many low- and midcarders were filling up the participants as it was already anyway, and you'd never have expected any of them to win.

So if you increase the number to 40, you'll just add more people who have zero chance at winning the thing.

Granted, the surprise entrants/cameos are always fun (and even in that regard, this year's Rumble was severely lacking), but out of the regular roster, it would be important to include at least 8-10 main event or upper midcard caliber guys who might have a shot at winning the thing, and have at least 5-6 of them last to the end sequence of the match, to keep things interesting.

So I say: keep it at 30, ten of which should be viable contenders, plus 4-5 funny cameos, and the rest can be made up from lower midcard and undercard guys.

 

[mral82]

I think there should be 3 Diff Rumble Matches at The Rumble where it'd be:
1)Solo Males in no Tag Teams (So Winner gets shot at Either World/Universal Championship)
2) Women's (Winner chooses either RAW/SD! Women's Championship at WM)
3) Tag Teams (Kinda diff on this as it would be Solo eliminations but The last 2 are the Winners and must Team to take on Tag Champs of their Choosing)
So that'd be a 15 Women, 20-24 Man Tag Team and whatevs left goes to the Solo's
Plus the other matches would be Champion vs Champion Brand vs Brand Matches
So right now it'd be for example:
Charlotte vs Becky
Owens vs Styles
The New Day vs Heath Slater & Rhyno
Reigns vs the Miz
or Owens/The New Day/Reigns/Perkins vs Styles/Slater/Rhyno/Miz as your other matches.

 

[HORRORHOLIC]

I think 30 is well enough; in fact, this year I was fairly disappointed with the Rumble, as there were only about 3 or maybe 4 guys who you'd have given a reasonable shot at winning the thing.

It's been like that for decades now. That's why I don't like that the winner get's a Wrestlemania shot. You already pretty much know who the winner is gonna be. There should be another stipulation.

 

[Navi]

The main page is announcing that the 2017 Rumble will be held in San Antonio, and it will be a 30 man Rumble. As usual the winner get a title shot at Mania.

Didn't say how they will work out which title the winner will go for, unless they have to go for the title on their brand. In which case what happens to the other title?

 

[Dagger Dias]

Depends on who is available for the event. The rosters are large enough that if you take out the champions and their potential challengers, you would have enough to do a 40 man Rumble. Advertising it as having 40 competitors from both brands would be a big deal. I doubt they will try doing 40 again. Honestly, the problem the last time they did 40 wasn't the numbers. I had far bigger issues with the fact that the runner-up was the resident jobber. Santino should never have lasted as long as he did in that thing. That was almost as big of an insult as having the winner of the event go on to OPEN Wrestlemania as opposed to having the final match, but that's a whole other topic. I personally would prefer they keep it at 30. If they did do 40 again, I'm cool with it. They should focus more on big returns, legend cameos, and the use of both rosters instead. Doing that in the context of the standard 30 man Rumble is just fine. It doesn't need fixing.

 

[ShinChan]

The main page is announcing that the 2017 Rumble will be held in San Antonio, and it will be a 30 man Rumble. As usual the winner get a title shot at Mania.

Didn't say how they will work out which title the winner will go for, unless they have to go for the title on their brand. In which case what happens to the other title?

I guess that the winner gets to chose the title and thus the brand. Aka let's suppose Roman Reigns wins this Rumble and then he gets to chose between Universal Championship and World Championship. The title he choses, the same brand he goes on. And the other title feud could be based on simple storyline.

OR. The winner gets a title shot for whichever brand he is on. Aka as Reigns is on Raw, he can only challenge Universal Champion.

The former situation would be better, I think.

As for the thread, I guess that it all depends on booking. Of course we don't want the duo of Kane and Big Show throwing multiple guys out and go on to the final four. 30 or 40,the booking as well as the winner should be logical as well as deserving.

 

[HORRORHOLIC]

The latest reports are that the winner will get a shot at the champion from the brand he is on.