Official Royal Rumble Thread: 1/31/2021

It would have made more impact if Bianca hadnt been no 3 and won lasting 56 mins tho. For me it took something away from Edge doing the same after it had just been done

Wow the last man standing botch really killed that match. The ref was too quick. I was most surprised to see Ricochet of all people. Jerry Lawler couldn't name one Royal Rumble moment in the pre-show. Seriously. If the RR is the only show he announces on every year, that's okay. But no more.

Edge 🥳

Couldn't agree more. There's just such an underwhelming lack of fresh star power or charisma across the entire roster at the moment. It's why people start to clamour for the likes of Big E to win the Rumble - it's just he's because one of the only ones left that's yet to be pushed to the Main Event and have a go at it, not necessarily because he should be the guy. The likes of AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, Shinsuke Nakamura, Jeff Hardy are all incredible workers, but have all had their go's at it, it's nothing we've not seen before. Then there's a whole pool of standard mid-card guys who are great at just being mid-card guys, and then there's not much else outside of that. I feel like we've seen everyone wrestle everyone, and there's just nothing fresh remaining now.

NXT does a great job because of it's sole emphasis on making the in-ring wrestling the focal point. It's cultish, so it works, especially with a live and largely adult-based crowd. The same can't be said for the main roster.

They're also in a sticky situation because they can no longer rely on the drawing power of part timers or Legends, because the novelty has completely worn off at this point. They rinsed everything out of Lesnar, we've now seen him lose clean multiple times. The same goes for Goldberg. The peak period for Triple H, Lesnar, Goldberg, Undertaker etc was around 3 years ago. Even their in-ring condition just doesn't look believable at this point. The ships sailed now. Edge doesn't quite fall into that bracket just yet, as he's notoriously still a fairly good worker with his in-ring style, and still has a bit of stock to his name since he's still fairly fresh from his return.

Roman Reigns vs The Rock, and Roman Reigns retiring John Cena, and eventually Roman Reigns vs CM Punk, is literally all they have left at this point.

Everyone seems very upset that a 47 year old Edge, who was able to go 58 minutes after not wrestling for nine years before 2020 AND fresh off a return from a torn triceps won the Royal Rumble, despite desperately clamoring for him to win it when he returned last year. Wow!

Clearly, it should've gone to 40 year old Dolph Ziggler, 40 year old Cesaro, 40 year old Shinsuke Nakamura, 39 year old Daniel Bryan, 43 year old AJ Styles or 40 year old Randy Orton instead! And that's not even going into the fact that most of these "new stars" everyone desperately wants to make are all in their early-to-mid 30s!

Same can be said for the Women's Royal Rumble. Why have Bianca Belair or Rhea Ripley win and establish themselves as new stars when already established star and multiple time champion with a history of concussion issues Alexa Bliss could've won instead!?!?

Wrestling bookers seemingly just can't do anything right whatsoever these days, eh?

The best part of the night for me was how they elevated so many deserving guys with big Rumble performances.

Rhea, Belair, Shayna, Big E, Lashley, Riddle, Priest all with great showings.

Otis should’ve won

Yim had tested positive for CoVid so it's speculated Lee was held out, at least out of an abundance of caution. No idea about Uce.


And I was gonna add to the convo, Edge's story was coming back and winning the Rumble. It's gonna take extra steps for me to get into a story built up with his Mania opponent, outside of another "Edge overcoming the odds" story repeat. Rollins, Big E, Bryan, Sheamus, Lee, Lesnar, even Goldberg all would have had the foundation already laid for a build against Reigns or Drew.

#1 and #2 are the same thing, so it's actually been done 5 times now.