Pros and Cons: Royal Rumble

After much thought and an hour long rage fest on twitter, I’ve decided to calm down and think rationally about the first “Big Four” Event from WWE in this years Royal Rumble.. After having predicted Chris Jericho to win in all as early as January 2nd, (That I can prove) my dreams were destroyed by the most hated man in wrestling. Before I get any further into it here’s the Pros and Cons of the 2017 Royal Rumble.

Pros: It was actually a good show

So let’s start by saying that I greatly enjoyed the Royal Rumble this year. It’s really hard to look at the final product and not get mad about the ending of the Rumble match itself. (As the guy who predicted Jericho to win) The Road to Wrestlemania has begun and it was a good start; Better than the last few Rumbles. It really was anyone’s guess on who would Win and Randy Orton wasn’t the worst of choices; in Fact he was the Odds on Favorite in Vegas. But the good part of the Rumble happened before the match itself, but in the card that led up to it.

The Show started with Bayley vs Charlotte for the Raw Women's Title, and the match was really good. I’m excited to see where the feud goes from here, and I’m happy to see Bayley getting a push. She was my favorite star on NXT, and She’s still among my favorites on the main Roster. Charlotte may be the best Heel Superstar on Raw, and would easily contend with The Miz for Best Heel in the Main Roster. The match was relatively short but a welcome beginning to the PPV.

With that the WWE Universal Title match between K.O. (Or Kevin Owens) and Roman Reigns. (Boo this man) No Disqualifications with Chris Jericho locked high in a Shark Cage to prevent him from interfering. The Match was mediocre, but it was as good as roman tends to be. Certain spots in this match looked REALLY good. The Frog Splash to the outside through a table, The Powerbomb through the announcer's Table; KO crashing through the Pyramid of chairs was pretty cool. Ultimately this match wasn’t flawless, but we’ll talk about it’s problems a bit later.

With Wrestle Kingdom as an afterthought, and the incredible Kenny Omega vs Kazuchika Okada main event behind us; WWE tried everything they could to match the hype that match generated. Cena vs Styles was as close as they could do this early in the year. The match was.. Dare a say Phenomenal. Unlike the KO/Reigns match before it, this was a pure wrestling match; there was many good spots still without all the weapons and interference. John is now a 16 time world champion (Tying the Nature Boy's Record) This match came as close to Wrestle Kingdom’s Main event as the overproduced wrestling juggernaut could get with Big Match John, and AJ Styles. Between the match at SummerSlam, and now after this last Sunday's match it was a classic, but it still barely holds a candle to the Epic in Japan. Match of the night Still

Lastly let’s cover the good of the Royal Rumble match before we get into the Cons. Chris Jericho coming out as Number 2, and becoming the Royal Rumble Iron Man of 2017 was overall a good thing. Jericho has spent over five hours cumulative inside the Royal Rumble match. The early start to the match was really good. Everyone involved had a good showing; Big Cass coming in Number 1 to give Enzo his Normal Entrance, Sammy Zayne, Braun Strowman, and Jack Gallagher, and of course Jericho all with good spots. A lot of people were probably upset over Jericho’s constant rolling out of the ring, but I think it was perfect for his character. Strowman looked super strong eliminating seven people, also single handedly eliminating Mark Henry, and the Big show. The best spot of the rumble was the Number ten Entrant. Tye Dillinger; The Perfect Ten from NXT entered the Royal Rumble to much of our surprise, and I couldn’t be more happy with it. With all of that.. Let’s talk about the cons of the Royal Rumble.

The Cons: What there is will ruin the experience of the whole show.

So Let’s start with legit complaints. Gallows and Anderson are the new WWE Raw Tag Champions... But why is that a bad thing?? Because it happened on the Pre-Show. The Pre-Show that also had a 6-Women's Tag-Team match that led nearly no where.. And The Nia Jax Squash match against two time Raw Women's Champion Sasha Banks. So why am I so upset? A Title Change on the Pre-Show gives it more legitimacy right? Well Yes, But it also could also kill the legitimacy, and prestige of the belts at the same time, as they weren’t important enough to be on the main show. But even being on the Pre-Show is better than the American Alpha who weren’t even on the show at all.

Secondly As WWE goes further down the line it feels to me that the way that the card is formed is completely random. Sometimes The Womens match is first, sometimes the opening match doesn’t matter, and sometimes the Main Event is going first because Big Match John has to catch a Plane to do the today show the next day… (Sigh) The Universal Title Match went on second at the Royal Rumble, Before the Cruiserweights. It was a good match as I said before, but it ended in among the worst ways possible. See Kevin Owens curent gimmick is that he can’t win a match without help from his best friend Chris Jericho. (Hence why he was locked in a shark cage) With that there were three logical endings. Roman Winning Clean (Or without Help or cheating), Kevin Winning Clean, or Interference from Triple H, the man who handed him the belt to begin with. Instead Braun Stowman helped Owens win on the promise (that was Made before Christmas) that he was next in line for a Title match; which was something even I had forgotten about..

Small Gripes: Why did both Heavyweight champions come out first in their matches? I understand that the ways of old doesn’t exactly mean that that’s the way it always has to be BUT, Allowing the challenger to come out first shows disrespect on the champ, and kills the Prestige of the title in my opinion. Secondly Why weren’t the US Title, Or Intercontinental championship on the line even the Show before, or after the Rumble? I understand you wanted Jericho and Dean in the Match itself, but Dean went through a rough last man standing match with KO and still came out to the rumble match and was the runner up losing to the Game Triple H.. So Tell me why they couldn’t have had a match? Lastly I’m upset Chris Jericho didn’t win the Rumble. What seemed perfect to me apparently needed to go to Randal Keith Orton instead.. I’m upset, but it could have been worse..

And now for the moment you’ve all been wait for, the two things that have potentially ruined Wrestlemania for me already. First, Where was the surprise entrants in the Rumble? You Remember last year? When AJ Styles came out as No.3 and everyone went completely bonkers? Well we knew that Kenny Omega wasn’t coming but we could have gotten something.. I know you’re thinking Tye Dillinger, but THAT WAS IT! Out of the 8 surprise entrants we got 1 actual surprise entrant. Second, ROMAN Boo This Man REIGNS was Entrant No.30 just an hour after being put through hell in a No DQ Match with Kevin Owens. Not only did he ruin my dreams of Seeing someone like Finn Balor, Shinsuke Nakamura, or Samoa Joe come out but instead it was Roman… I hate everything. Finally; You’ve set up a few matches for Wrestlemania that I don’t or No Longer want to see.. Roman Eliminates the Undertaker and claimed the ring as “His Yard” first off, No.. Second I can’t believe after NO ONE has Gotten Roman Over, you’re going to try one last time to make Roman famous by putting him over the Undertaker at wrestlemania… No.. Just no..” Second Goldberg Eliminates Lesner like he was James Elsworth. I no longer care about the feud between the two. I’d rather see Goldberg face Kevin Owens, or anyone really.. Lastly. The only Randy Orton Feud that makes any sense is with Bray Wyatt and if you give Bray the title to drop it to Orton, I’ll be legitimately pissed.

Conclusions

All in all Royal Rumble was a good PPV, not great, but good, Good Matches, Interesting ending, I’m sort of excited for wrestlemania, but not really. You can see more on my YouTube Channel Here! Thanks for reading my Blog, I hope you’ll come back soon but until than I’m Frank Wak and I hope you’ll come back soon.

#RoyalRumble #WWE #ProsCons #FrankWak