It has been an extremely eventful few days for the WWE Universe. There are a lot of hurt feelings because of how the event concluded. Before we get into the… err… interesting conclusion, let’s take a brief look at the rest of the extremely short card.
In the pre-show Tyson Kidd and Cesaro defeated The New Day in what was a fun match to watch live. The Philadelphia crowd was not kind to New Day. For the first time this writer can remember Kofi Kingston and Big E. were boo’d out of the building. As near as one could tell it has nothing to do with Kofi or Big E’s skill, it is seemingly all about their laughably awful gimmick. The staunch Philly crowd has no patience for gimmicks that involve (as MVP hilariously put it) “shucking and jiving”. Before this writer gets ahead of himself, let’s not delve too much into the silliness that is New Day. Cesaro was super over with the crowd. Every time he took a breath, the crowd went nuts. But hey, its like Vince McMahon said during the Stone Cold podcast, Cesaro is missing something and doesn’t connect with the fans. Yup. Let’s just leave that there.
The Ascension defeated The New Age Outlaws via pin fall. As always, The Outlaws were treated as the legends they are. The Philly fans are extremely tough to please, and they have no trouble telling you what they like and don’t like. The fans seemingly do NOT like the Ascension. As their music hit they were initially met with boo’s that very quickly turned into complete silence. The worst thing that can happen to you as a wrestler is getting no reaction at all.
The Usos once again defeated The Miz and Mizdow to retain the tag team. Not much to talk about here. Fun match, the crowd was extremely into Mizdow, as is every crowd. The only heel in this match was Miz and he played to his strengths as usual.
The Bellas defeated Natalya and Paige. The live crowd could careless about this match, especially anything the Bellas did. Paige tried really, really hard to get the crowd into the match but it was to no avail. The interesting thing is the crowd was into Paige when she was in the ring. The only problem is she was hardly in the actual match. This should have just been a one on one match between Paige and Nikki. This is not a knock on Natty in the least bit but Natty vs. Either Bella isn’t particularly compelling.
Brock Lesnar defeated John Cena and Seth Rollins in what was on of the best matches this writer has had the pleasure of witnessing live. As expected, this raucous Philly crowd nearly eviscerated Cena as he made his way down the ramp. Hearing them chant John Cena sucks along with Cena’s entrance music was actually quite hilarious.
One of the things that stuck out about this match was that it didn’t seem like your average WWE title match. It was a bit stiffer. Rollins went full tilt and even broke out the Phoenix Splash in the hopes of putting Cena away. It was all for naught as Lesnar was too much for both Rollins and Cena. Another thing to note from this match the injury angle to Lesnar. This wasn’t apparent to the live crowd, but it seems Michael Cole noted that the EMT’s told him that Lesnar has broken at least one of his ribs. When you sit back and think about the conclusion of the Rumble match, it seems Lesnar is being set up for…
The winner of the 2015 Royal Rumble Roman Reigns. There are so many things that can be said about Reigns winning the Rumble. This writer feels obligated to preface his comments with the following: I like Roman Reigns. Always have. But what happened last night was wrong on so many levels. There has been an overwhelmingly negative reaction to Reigns winning and no matter which side of this you fall on there should be. Stay with me on this one and try to take your personal feelings out of it and think about this objectively.
The WWE is a business. For a business to be successful, they need to provide a product that its audience wants to see. Based on what we witnessed last night, the WWE Universe was not given what they want. Not only did WWE not give the audience what they want, they essentially took the time and energy to smack the faces of essentially everyone in the arena and a vast majority of those watching at him.
The first point most will make is: “But everyone complained last year when Reigns didn’t win the Rumble, but you complain now?” False! The WWE Universes overwhelming support last year was for Daniel Bryan to win the Rumble. When that became impossible, the WWE Universe resigned itself to cheer for anyone to win but Batista. Who did that leave? Roman Reigns. The really sad thing about how the Rumble went down was just the horrible way Roman Reigns was booked during it. He did a whole bunch of nothing. One of the reasons the people got behind him last year was due to his extremely impressive showing. Breaking the record for eliminations in a single Rumble event (12).
If the match itself were booked better the blow of the Reigns win would have been minimized. The only people that came off looking good were Bray Wyatt, who they made look like a world-beater until he was tossed and Big Show and Kane. Yes, you read that right. Big Show and Kane. No, this isn’t 10 years ago. It became obvious half way through the match what was happening. Creative had Big Show and Kane do the dirty work so Reigns wouldn’t get boo’d for eliminating the most poplar wrestlers in the match. Big Show and Kane made Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose and especially Dolph Ziggler look like totally jobbers. Big Show and Kane were literally picking them up by the seat of their pants to toss them out.
After all of that, Reigns manages to toss out both Big Show and Kane at the same time because they decided working together to throw out Reigns would make way to much sense. That alone was a total insult to everyone watching’s intelligence. Big Show and Kane do that natural thing after turning on each other: after they are eliminated they decide to go back to working together and they attack Reigns. The Rock comes out to save him, which leads the Philly crowd to go nuts. It’s hard not to when the Rock shows up. As Rock and Reigns battle Big Show and Kane, the live crowd realized what was on this writer’s mind the whole time: where the heck is Rusev?
An extremely loud we want Rusev chant breaks out. If you supposed top face is getting boo’d in favor of a heel who hates America, there is something seriously wrong. Reigns of course throws out Rusev and official wins the match. The Rock and Reigns celebrate while the Philly crowd throws what can only be described as verbal pipe bombs at Reigns. The phrase, “If so and so wins, we riot!”? Yeah, there was literally almost a riot. After the fact there were actually multiple fights and a few idiotic fans trying to block in the wrestlers cars as they attempted to leave the arena.
It’s easy to understand why so many people were upset, but behaving in such and unsightly manner is totally unacceptable. Acting like a baby that had his binky taken away is not the way to deal with loss. At the end of the day one of the things that makes our heroes great is dealing with adversity. That is actually one of the reason Daniel Bryan is as over as he is at this point. Bryan, Ziggler, and Ambrose may have not come out of the Rumble looking good, but in the end that may make their characters even stronger.
As far as Reign goes, be patient. We have no idea were all of this is going to go. Is Roman Reigns “ready”? Not at all. But you never know. Was Randy Orton or John Cena “Ready” when they one their first world titles? Probably not. But look at where they both ended up. Just be patient. And stay tuned.
Biggest pops of the night:
Cesaro
Damien Mizdow
Seth Rollins
Daniel Bryan
Dolph Ziggler
The Rock (wait for it)
Biggest Heat:
The New Day
Kane & Big Show
John Cena
The Rock (yes again)
Roman Reigns