Rumble Winners shouldn't be obvious

As far as Men's rumble went, I figured Cody or Punk. They would be the final two and one would eliminate the other. The only wildcard for me would be if The Rock decided to show up.

But for the women, Bayley was straight up telegraphed. The way that Damage CTRL was made such an important focus of Smackdown, Bayley winning the rumble and then challenging Iyo I could see from a mile away. I never once thought anyone else would win the rumble except her. Hell, it was so telegraphed that one of my good friends who gave up on WWE years ago, but was still a lingering Bayley fan, watched the Rumble as her first show in about 3 years JUST because we all knew Bayley would win and she wanted to see it live.

But as for random winners? For me the wild thing is that it isn't even about that main event spot anymore. That seems to have been cast aside, at least for the women. With the way things are right now I don't feel like winning that Rumble for either side guarantees you that main event anymore, and that's sad. It's sad and it's missing the point. (Saying this as a person who loves that Sami and Kevin got their moment but also believes the women got screwed out of the main event by the WWE's obsession with The Bloodline.) And yet, even with that possibility of not being in the main event, the chances of a "random" person winning feels smaller than ever. As stated above, you know going into the rumble these days that at least 25 of the people there are just fodder for the few already established main eventers in the match. And this year was egregious. Making the title match with Roman, plus putting Kevin in the US title shot, I mean, I know they needed an undercard but with those two matches they wiped out pretty much their entire pool of "Believable Potential Winners" outside of the final two and Gunther at most. (Because Drew wasn't winning it I don't care what anyone says, they're still treating him like an upper mid carder who will main event Raw from time to time, but we'll see if that changes with Punk gone.)

Basically, me and my friends predicted the outcome of every single match at the Rumble, outside of not being sure if it would be Cody tossing Punk or Punk tossing Cody. It wasn't just the rumbles that were predictable this year, the whole CARD was.

I pretty much said the same thing in the Rumble thread. These Rumbles are becoming more and more predictable. Part of the reason is because it’s filled with nothing but jobbers. You know damn well it’s either one of the four people main eventing that’s going to win. It’s kind of weird to think we had guys like Angle, The Rock, Undertaker, Kane, The Hardy’s, Edge, Christian and whole other set of superstars all in one era. Today’s wrestlers just don’t give off that aura or even imo, relate to the audience on a level to where we should care about them. Why should I care about Austin Theory? Why should I care about The shush squad or whatever they’re named? There’s a lot of talented guys (ring wise), but I just don’t see how they stand out. Bron Breakker is probably the only new guy that I like that is somewhat refreshing. I felt the same way about Bray. He was refreshing and brought something cool to the table. The only thing was I didn’t enjoy his in ring work too much.

Surprised Rock never won it this year now lol