Tag: Brock Lesnar

WWE Royal Rumble 2019: Every Match Ranked

It’s now been 12 hours since the Royal Rumble finished, I’ve slept for about 10 of them, and I’m still not entirely sure I’ve recovered from everything that happened on Sunday night. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually the opposite because I’m buzzing so much over everything that could happen going forward now.

This year’s Rumble was a really enjoyable show, with most of the non-Rumble matches delivering on a much higher level than they normally do. Still, the arbitrary rankings are calling so we must take every match on the show and order them from the very worst, to the very best.

Quick Note: Bobby Roode & Chad Gable vs Rezar & Scott Dawson is dead last, I just have absolutely nothing to say about it, so I’m not even going to bother officially ranking it.

9 – Daniel Bryan(c) def. AJ Styles
(WWE Championship)

Erick Rowan?!

Imagine going back two years and telling yourself that Daniel Bryan vs AJ Styles would be the worst match on a big 4 Pay-Per-View featuring a Brock Lesnar match, no-one would believe you, and yet here we are.

For one thing, this match really did get the worst spot of the night in terms of the order of matches. Having two Rumbles on one show can be a bit of a curse since you either have to put them back to back and risk exhausting your audience, or separate them and have one of your big matches get completely ignored by a tired crowd.

Bryan and Styles tried so hard to get the crowd back into this one, but after Becky Lynch winning the women’s Rumble in the fashion she did, it was never going to happen. That said, what happened in the match didn’t really help matters.

Right out of the gate the match was quite a standard WWE style main event. I don’t know if they were told to reign it in, or just didn’t bother but I really felt like this match needed to kick off at a fever pitch to really get the crowd to pay attention following the women’s Rumble. Secondly…Erick Rowan.

I don’t even know what to say to this. Rowan going from, an emotionless big dude that hits people with a hammer, to, Chequered shirt wearing vegan who cares about the environment might be one of the biggest and most sudden character changes I’ve seen in quite a long time.

8 – Shinsuke Nakamura def. Rusev(c)
(United States Championship)

Weirdly, this was the most surprising result of the night.

I wasn’t expecting a great deal from this match, and while it didn’t blow me away, it was certainly a fun match that was a lot better than what we usually get on the pre-show.

I’m not entirely sure why Shinsuke Nakamura won since, from a creative standpoint, I don’t really see what more Nakamura can do with the title (which is weird considering he did literally nothing with it). Realistically, I don’t see Nakamura holding on to this title for much longer, probably dropping it to someone like Rey or Andrade very soon, and I’m really worried that another short reign like this will destroy what little prestige that US title has left.

7 – Shane Mcmahon & The Miz def. The Bar(c)
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

Wrong.

In the past 10 months, Cesaro & Sheamus have lost their tag team titles to both a 10-year-old kid and have been pinned by Shane Mcmahon and his ugly ass shooting star press, a move I love but somehow Shane made it look crap.

That said, this match was fairly enjoyable, Shane did all his usual crap and it had minimal bearing on the match, Miz was working his ass off here to make this thing look competitive. The Bar was great as usual, although they weren’t really allowed to kick into that higher gear which is so fun to watch.

All I can hope for right now is that this title reign is short because if it’s still going by Wrestlemania I might lose my mind.

6 – Brock Lesnar(c) def. Finn Balor
(Universal Championship)

Well, I can’t say I was expecting any different.

It’s hard to get a lot of real excitement behind a match were the ending feel inevitable the whole time, but these “Brock Lesnar vs small guy” matches seem to keep delivering.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I did Lesnar vs Bryan, but I think this told a different story, even if it did hit the same beats in places. Having Finn blast Brock right out of the gate was a good move to make sure the crowd were into this one, especially following the fairly vapid WWE Championship match that preceded it.

Ultimately having Finn tap to the Kimura is never going to make him look weak, this is the same move that made The Undertaker tap out after all. The attack after the bell should be good for giving Seth more motivation to take down Brock following his Rumble win, I just hope Balor keeps the momentum he’s built up over the past couple of weeks.

5 – Buddy Murphy(c) def. Hideo Itami & Kalisto & Akira Tozowa
(Cruiserweight Championship)

Just put these guys on the main show, come on.

I really feel that the cruiserweight division needs more matches like this. One on one contests on 205 Live are often excellent, but if you want to get a crowd going on a pre-show (or even early on in the main show), you want a good fast paced multi-man match.

There was great action from start to finish here, and it allowed some of the more forgotten talents on 205 Live, such as Tozowa show that they can still go just as good as anyone else on that roster and deserve these featured spots.

I hope we get a really good one on one feud coming out of this match, as I think Murphey and any of these guys would be a brilliant match to watch.

4 – Ronda Rousey(c) def. Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)

The structure of the show last night was quite weird. Having both women’s title matches go on early and then immediately followed by the women’s Rumble seemed like an odd choice, but it seemed to serve the overall narrative of the night quite nicely.

This match wasn’t as flashy or as fast as you’d expect the match to be, but that didn’t detract from the quality of the match whatsoever because the storytelling here was fantastic. It really feels like, with every new opponent she faces, Ronda has to learn something new about how to wrestle. Sasha was in control for a large portion of the match and Ronda seems to really excel· in matches like this at looking like an efficient and smart wrestler, waiting for her spot and taking control at crucial moments.

It was a wrestling match that just focused on wrestling, and sometimes that’s all you really need.

3 – Asuka(c) def. Becky Lynch
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

WWE proving here that sometimes they can have their cake and eat it too.

I’d like to point out how hard I found it to choose which women’s title match was better, they were both brilliant in different ways, and believably the order could be reversed and I’d still be happy with it. In the end, I settled on putting this one higher because it felt just a tad faster paced and had a tiny bit sweeter of a finish.

As for the details of the match, I find myself saying pretty much the same things I said for Ronda vs Sasha, it was just 15 minutes of solid and fun to watch wrestling. As I mentioned, I liked the finishing sequence a little more, with Asuka and Becky constantly reversing their submission holds until Asuka catches Becky out with something she wasn’t expecting.

While I was a little apprehensive of Becky tapping out at the time, but given what happened later in the night I don’t think it matters. It ended up as being a pretty great way to give Asuka a strong win heading into Wrestlemania seasons without it costing Becky anything.

2 – Seth Rollins wins the Men’s Royal Rumble Match

It was SO close between these Rumble matches, I had to watch both of them a second time before I could make a decision I was happy with. I’ll talk about why I picked one over the other in the number 1 spot, so for now, let’s go through all the highlights in this match.

We kicked things off, as we always should, with Elias. He did his stuff before eventually being interrupted by none other than Double J, Jeff Jarrett. This was something I’d always wanted to see, but I never thought it would actually happen. They tease a duet before Elias takes a cheap shot on Jarrett, followed by a smash with the guitar and a swift elimination.

The NXT entrants were also great this year. After giving us Almas and Adam Cole last year, WWE decided to check the other three boxes on my, favourite wrestlers in the world right now list, by giving us Johnny-freaking-Wrestling, Pete-goddamn-Dunne and ALEISTER FUCKING BLACK. While there is a part of me that is still absolutely furious that Baron Corbin eliminated Black, all three guys got a great showcase in the match and I love every single one of them. Now in 2020, we need Velveteen Dream to come out to have a stare down with Nakamura and I’ll have got everything I’ve ever wanted from Rumble cameos.

The comedy spots in this match were also pretty spot on, Curt Hawkins hiding under the ring, followed by Titus O’Neil’s reaction to the whole thing was very funny, and resulted in Hawkins actually getting an elimination, which was cool.

Nia Jax trying to do what Becky Lynch did was also very fun to watch as well. It’s a little unclear what the rules are on women entering the men’s Rumble now there is actually a women’s Rumble, but I’ll go with it for now. I never really thought about Nia Jax getting RKO’ed until Sunday night, but once the scenario was placed in front of me, I realised I’d never wanted to see anything more in my life. I know some people are up in arms over this, but I think Nia’s got the build to pull it off, and there’s been so much heat behind Nia since the incident with Becky that the crowd were over the moon to see her get beat up for a second time that night.

The final four onwards was also excellent, not quite as good as last year’s final four but I still thought it was great. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Seth getting laid out for a little while, but it wasn’t actually for very long so I didn’t mind it too much in the end. Watching Ziggler, Almas & Rollins teaming up to try and take down Strowman was fun, and I especially liked when Rollins did the smart thing and got the fuck out of the way when Strowman started to rally.

The final sequence was nail-biting stuff too. Once again I found my logical wrestling brain arguing with my emotional brain over what was going to happen moment to moment. Of course, WWE aren’t going to do Strowman vs Lesnar at Mania, but during that whole final segment, I was so scared that’s exactly what would happen.

Overall this Rumble match had lots of great action from start to finish and now we get to sit back and enjoy the ride to Mania where Seth will (hopefully) take down Lesnar (please, God).

 1 – Becky Lynch wins the Women’s Royal Rumble Match

So this is what happens when the man comes around…

Unlike the men’s Rumble, this match wasn’t great the whole way through, in fact, I’d argue the first half of the match didn’t have a great deal to enjoy at all. However about halfway through the action really picked up and all the raw emotion surrounding the finish were unrivalled.

Going into more detail, the match started off a bit sloppily, with Lacey Evans not being quite as crisp as she could’ve been on some spots early on, and until Charlotte hit the ring, there just felt like there was a general lack of action.

Billie Kay refusing to enter the ring until Peyton Royce showed up was pretty entertaining in the way only the IIconics can pull off, and Nikki Cross getting one of the loudest reactions of the night was pretty cool too. We also got to see the world’s most adorable badass in Kairi Sane, running down to the ring while looking through her telescope, how is that helping in any way? I just love her so much.

We got a whole bunch of innovative spots from Naomi and NXT’s Kacy Catanzaro (a name with far too many syllables for me to remember), which kept the pace going at a point in the match where things could’ve quite easily sunk back down into a slump. In addition to this, we got some comedy in this match as well, and I know most people hated this, but I couldn’t help but giggle when Hornswoggle popped out from under the ring where Zelina Vega was hiding, although I would’ve loved to see Almas kicking the piss out of the little guy once they got backstage.

Eventually, we get to the closing stages of the match, specifically where Lana comes out at number 28. She makes it to the top of the stairs and then begins to limp very slowly down the ramp. Now, at this point is when the eyes of everyone watching lit up with hope, we didn’t want to get our hopes up just yet, but we could believe what might happen. Following an attack from Nia for good measure and Carmella entering the ring and being instantly forgotten about, IT happened.

The thing we were all praying for, but refused to believe in actually happened, as Becky Lynch wandered up to Fit Finlay who was tending to Lana and made her case right there on the spot and – after a quick debate – Finally gave the green light, the crowd (and I) when crazy as Becky officially entered the Women’s Royal Rumble match.

Everything from this point on in the match was fantastic, a whole bunch of quick and impressive looking eliminations with Bliss, Carmella, Bayley all falling one by one. Lynch would pull Nia off of the ring apron to eliminate her before Nia responded by beating Becky up. At this point Charlotte really came into her own for this performance, as Becky was being tended to by officials on the outside, Charlotte watched on in glee, goading Becky and revelling in the fact that she was about to be declared the winner without having to do anything.

It wasn’t to be though and as the referee was about to raise Charlotte’s arm, Becky burst back into the match, screaming at Charlotte with a tear in her eye “You’ve taken enough from me, you’re not taking this” – just thinking about it brings a tear to my eye. After a quick scuffle, Charlotte was dumped to the floor and Becky finally won the Royal Rumble.

The emotions here were so powerful and is a testament to how amazingly well all of the women involved have been booked since the summer. It was these emotions that made me realised that I had to pick this match over the men’s since it gave us what may be my favourite Royal Rumble moment ever.

Thank you very much for reading this review, if you enjoyed it then please share it around on social media, and if you disagreed with me on any of these points, then come shout at me about it on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you stick around because later in the week I will be posting my review of NXT Takeover: Phoenix. I’ll see you there!

WWE Royal Rumble 2019 Predictions

The new year may bring some the depressing realisation of being yet another year closer to the grave, however to wrestling fans it means the excitement, anger and general confusion that comes with the Royal Rumble event.

How predictable a Rumble is, generally varies widely. Either it’s ludicrously obvious like in 2013, or completely unpredictable like in 2017, and this year we seem to have one of each. As usual the undercard seems pretty easy to call, however, the matches themselves look to be fantastic.

Rusev(c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura
(United States Championship)

Oh, this is still happening?

It’s not been officially confirmed as of the time of writing, but I imagine this will end up on the pre-show, and while these are both guys I like very much, I can’t say it deserves any better.

Rusev winning the US title on Christmas Day (which was also his birthday (which was also Rusev Day)) was a great point on that feud which felt like it had been going on forever. Instead, they decided to artificially extend the feud by having Lana take the world’s weakest bump and having it take her out of action for over a week (despite being an active wrestler herself).

The US title really needs something to save it soon because right now no-one has any reason to care about it. With any luck, someone like Almas will win it soon and make it matter again, as for now, I’m going to pick Rusev to retain here, mostly because I don’t see a reason for Nakamura to win it back any time soon.

Buddy Murphy(c) vs Kalisto vs Akira Tozowa vs Hideo Itami
(Cruiserweight Championship)

Oh hey, I remember when these guys used to have any sort of on-screen presence in WWE.

Believe it or not, I have actually been watching the occasional episode of 205 Live this month so I’m not just blindly guessing at what’s going on for once. Personally, I’ve been really enjoying Murphy’s title reign, putting on great match after great match, and I don’t really want to see it end anytime soon.

That said, I also really love Hideo Itami and all the stuff he did pre-WWE and in NXT, so finally giving him a platform where he gets to wrestle in front of an audience that actually cares about his existence. Kalisto is long past being worth anything in the cruiserweight division, and while I like Tozowa, his opportunity had come and gone if you ask me.

It boils down to a choice between my heart and my head, and realistically it doesn’t make sense for heel Itami to take the title off of heel Murphy, so I’m going to pick Buddy Murphey to retain.

The Bar(c) vs Shane Mcmahon & The Miz
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

I don’t very often define a creative decision in WWE as “wrong”, because any creative decision tends to have some pretty sound ideas behind it and could end up leading to something great. However, Shane and Miz winning the titles here would very much be the wrong decision for this match.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad The Miz isn’t just floundering about doing shit-all until Daniel Bryan is ready to fight him again, but using Shane Mcmahon to do it really doesn’t feel like the right way to go. Miz obviously still has some beef with Shane from the World-Cup-To-Determine-The-Best-In-The-World™, and he’s obviously going to turn on him eventually, I just really hope they don’t win the titles before then.

The Bar has been looking really strong in this title reign, taking out The New Day, The Usos and AOP with relative ease and to have it end with them losing to Miz and Shane would be a disaster.

Unsurprisingly I’m picking The Bar to retain because I don’t want to imagine the alternative.

Asuka(c) vs Becky Lynch
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Yes please.

This is the match that I’m planting my flag in for the match of the night. The Smackdown women’s division has been absolutely brilliant ever since Summerslam and this is the perfect way to keep the ball rolling. Taking the most popular wrestler and making them fight your second most popular wrestler, it’s booking at it’s simplest, yet most effective.

As for who should win, I think it’s pretty simple, but picking who will win is slightly more difficult. Personally, I think Asuka has to retain otherwise she may as well have never won the thing in the first place. The problem is, given that a Triple Threat between Ronda, Charlotte and Becky is what’s currently on the cards for WrestleMania, I think there’s a chance WWE will want both titles to be on the line, so Becky could win it back any day now.

Ultimately, I’m going with Asuka since I just can’t see why they’d have her win the title if they were going to take it off her before Wrestlemania, especially as soon as this.

Ronda Rousey(c) vs Sasha Banks
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Remember the days when Sasha was treated as a megastar in the women’s division? Good times.

That said, Sasha has been made to look pretty damn good in the build to this match, which is quite impressive considering how much of a chump she’s looked al lthroughout 2018. With any luck, Sasha will be able to carry this momentum into the Elimination Chamber next months where she’ll probably be fighting for the women’s tag titles. Who knows, maybe she’ll even stay this level of a star for the rest of the year.

This is one of those matches that doesn’t immediately spring to mind when you think of dream matches for Ronda Rousey, but now it’s being presented to me, I’m very happy to see it indeed. I spent all of 2018 singing the praises of Ronda Rousey as an in-ring competitor and I stand by that, so I’m expecting a fantastic match here, provided no shenanigans occur.

It’s not exactly hard to pick a winner though, Ronda Rousey is going to retain for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows who these women are.

Daniel Bryan(c) vs AJ Styles
(WWE Championship)

While I’m sure this will be a great match and I’m happy to see it, I can’t help but be a little bit disappointed this isn’t Bryan vs Ali.

I still love Styles as much as I did when he first joined WWE, but I think I’m done seeing him in the world title picture for quite a while now. His reign was long and filled with a lot of great matches with awful finishes, so once this is done I hope to see him try something new and interesting for a little while before sniffing around a world title again.

Bryan, on the other hand, should carry that title forever. His character since turning heel has been a brilliant heat magnet that crowds seem to love so much that they want to boo him. A heel that actually gets boos for doing heelish things, crazy I know.

I’m going with what I think should happen here and pick Daniel Bryan to retain and carry that thing into Wrestlemania to have a brilliant match with literally anyone on the Smackdown roster.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Finn Balor
(Universal Championship)

I have but one simple request, which is for Finn Balor not to die please.

There’s a lot of fear out there regarding this match right now, that all of Balor’s momentum from winning two matches in one night and pinning John effing Cena will be wasted when Brock beats him easily in about 8 minutes. I was fearful of this too until I heard the news that apparently Brock requested Finn as Braun’s replacements since he likes to wrestle the “David vs Goliath” style of match.

Hearing things like this and looking back at matches such as Brock vs AJ and Brock vs Bryan have restored my hopes that this will actually be a pretty good match.

You don’t need me to tell you who’s going to win though. You can root for Finn all you like, but Brock Lesnar is winning.

Women’s Royal Rumble Match

I thought this one would be pretty hard for me to call until I read the list of participants.

For those who are unaware, the current match that is planned for Wrestlemania is Ronda vs Charlotte vs Becky. Now obviously plans can change at a moments notice in WWE, but I know many fans (myself included) will be a little disappointed we aren’t going to get Ronda vs Becky one on one.

As for the Rumble match itself, I’m looking forward to it. I was rather underwhelmed by the inaugural women’s Rumble last year, as I thought it relied too heavily on women from the past and didn’t focus on the current stars. However there are significantly more women on the main roster this year, so we should get some effective storytelling involving modern-day stars instead of the past this year.

Normally for a Rumble, I’d got through all the people who had a chance of winning but this time around there really seems to be only one choice for me. There is still a tiny part of me that is holding out hope that Becky will make a surprise entrance and win the thing, but I’ve got to go with my head here and pick Charlotte Flair to win this.

Men’s Royal Rumble Match

I’m really excited about this one.

I feel like last year’s euphoric win for Nakamura has restored my faith in the Royal Rumble match, even if what happened after wasn’t amazing. Even bad Rumble matches are fun to watch for the most part and I’m feeling pretty confident that this years will be a good one too.

While I think Drew Mcintyre does have an outside chance here, realistically this match is between two men for me:

John Cena – It’s generally never a good idea to count Cena out of any match like this, but this year, in particular, I think he’s one to watch. There isn’t really any of note on Smackdown right now that Bryan could face at Wrestlemania, and personally, I’d really like to see him fight Cena.

Cena is the antithesis to everything Daniel Bryan has been preaching these past few months, add onto that Cena’s 17th world title reign, their previous match at Summerslam 2013 and whatever drama is going on over on Total Bella’s and you’ve got yourself one hell of a story right there.

I’m fairly certain Cena vs Bryan will be the match at Wrestlemania, but I don’t think Cena’s going to go through the Rumble to get there.

Seth Rollins – You have no idea how badly I want this to happen. Seth Rollins has had arguably the best year of his career this year, putting on the best match of almost every major show he’s been on this year (TLC excluded). In process of making the Intercontinental Championship the most hotly contested title in WWE last year, he also built himself up to be the only man who could really take down Brock Lesnar in Roman Reigns’ absence.

Getting a Rumble win under his belt would be a fantastic way to go full steam ahead into Brock Lesnar and have a brilliant run with the Universal Championship, taking on all comers until the summer at least. It seems the most logical choice to me, and I really want to see it happen, so Rollins is the man I’m picking to win this year.

That’s all folks! Thank you very much for reading these predictions, follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo for live reactions to the Rumble on Sunday and NXT: Takeover on Saturday, and stay tuned for my review of the Rumble early next week!