Royal Rumble

One match show. Brock vs Cena vs Rollins tore the house down. Rollins really look he belong after his performance despite losing effort. Rumble match is ok but went downhill after Daniel Bryan got eliminated. Great to see Bubba Ray Dudley and DDP make appearance. Big things for Bray Wyatt and Rusev again? Love how crowd turned on Reigns. I would have booed at him consider how badly he's being forced since he came from injury. Not even Rock could save him.

Some random thoughts...

The triple threat match was very good.

Everything up to that point was below par.

I was impressed with Bray Wyatt in the Royal Rumble and it was good to see Bubba Ray and DDP. (The Boogeyman? Not so much.)

I am having a hard time warming up to Roman Reigns as a contender.

What? Philly fans booing a legend like the rock?? He ain't Mike Schmidt!

So now everyone is against reigns? Please.....

Wwe has been ****ty for years, but reigns is what "everyone" wanted and now that it's happened, it's no good??

Lesnar, rock, reigns at mania.

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The crowd was great. They didn't hold back at all when Reigns won the rumble. Best match by far was the three way dance(in Philly so it has to be the three way dance). That 450 moonsault that Rollins did was awesome. He was the star of that match IMO.

Problems with Reigns

- never had feud with anyone major outside of Rollins and Ambrose
- everything is forced including his push and interviews
- lost his momentum when he had surgery. When he returned all he got was two week feud with Big Show which he got exposed as nothing special
- hardly any intensity in the ring
- one dimensional

There's nothing about worth cheering about him.

I still can't believe Rollins pulled out corkscrew moonsault press on the show.

The Bray Wyatt thing bothered me.

It wasn't a gauntlet match for Bray Wyatt was it? Did I miss something?

If the end game wasn't to have Bray eventually win it, then why waste the time? To make him look good in case of a Taker match? Well, he was easily eliminated after all that. I don't get it.

There were far too many fillers in the match. No way shape or form should Titus O'Neil, Curtis Axel, Tyson Kid, Big E, Sin Cara, R-Truth, Fandango, or Adam Rose be involved in this match. Not one of them brought anything significant to the match. And we all knew there was no chance in Hell that any of them had a shot at winning. There are other guys in the company that could have had their spots. Sheamus and Orton are available now aren't they? They would have been big name surprise returns.

I don't give to flips about Diamond Dallas Page, and I never will. He was always a nobody to me.

I liked seeing Bubba Ray Dudley appear. Looks like Bully Ray's quit going to the gym and started frequenting Dunkin Donuts. He was looking buff in TNA, now he's a fatty again.

I hated seeing Miz and Truth start the show. Very lame. Miz started it in 2012. Lame.

And then Truth soon made sense because of D-Von not being there, and Bubba needing a token.

Daniel Bryan being eliminated half way through the show was where the show took an extreme turn. I know what creative was thinking. Get Bryan out early and out of the fans minds hopefully, so when Roman wins, there won't be so much heat. Wrong.

The fans took a huge dump on the rest of the show after Bryan's elimination, and rightfully so. The Rumble match was a clusterf*ck from the start. And the fans love Bryan. And WWE is seemingly always a year behind in knowing what the fans want, and when they finally tune in, it's too late.

WWE never listens to the fans. 2012 in St. Louis, the fans wanted Orton to win. Nope, Sheamus won. And the fans shi*t on it. 2013, Cena won right? Nobody wanted that. Fans sh*t on it. 2014, Batista. Fans sh*t on it. And this year, Roman, and the fans sh*t on it.

It's like they do it on purpose.

You know the Rumble match is sh*t when the fans are chanting for the evil Russian to win.




The Heavyweight championship match was amazing.

Rollins busting out the Phoenix Splash was so cool.

And I personally loved seeing The Boogeyman.

Was always a huge fan of his.

The rumble match itself was one HUGE head-scratcher. The way it was booked, the "confusing storylines", the horrible double-duty guys, botched camera work, etc makes it one of the least appealing of all time, IMO.

Unless Daniel Bryan physically can't go for long periods of time yet, then eliminating him so early made no sense. CLEARLY, the crowd wants to see him...at least let him be in it at the end. Even if he physically can't go, then don't enter him at 10 or let him take breathers during the match. Hell, their champion took a 15 minute nap during a championship match earlier in the night. It really made no sense to eliminate him the way they did. I'm not a huge Bryan fan as far as wanting him to be in every main event, etc like most of the IWC. I like him just fine and all, so I don't care either way if he was the winner or got thrown out first. However, the majority of the crowd loves him and the second he was tossed the crowd visibly and audibly changed. It seriously sounded like air coming out of someone who had just been punched in the stomach. Whether people wanted him to win or not, they were probably at least expecting some drama. There was none. The ONLY thing I kept hoping for was that the Bunny was an entrant (gay as that is) and would last until the end and be revealed to be Bryan...and again, I could care less if he wins, headline WM, whatever. The lack of drama is what bugs me the most.

Why is no one talking about the "confusing" Wyatt stuff? Luke Harper & Wyatt cleared the ring and waited for the next guy, which ended up being Axel. Rowan attacks Axel and goes in the ring. Staredowns ensue. Harper points his finger gun at Rowan insinuating an attack is coming. Then he turns to Wyatt and does the same thing. For a brief moment, the crowd goes crazy thinking Rowan & Harper are going after Wyatt. Rowan goes after Wyatt and Harper immediately attacks him. The crowd almost goes immediately silent. Rewatch it. It was WEIRD and confusing....unless I am TOTALLY missing something???

Watch Reigns & Rusev in the seconds before Swagger comes out. They are basically holding hands, casually strolling from one end of the ring to the other and visibly talking to each other. I realize the camera probably isn't supposed to catch that kind of thing, but there is a live crowd there also who had to have witnessed the entire thing. At least the TV/network audience only saw glimpses of it.

I'm OK with guys pulling double duty (guys who already wrestled, but appear in rumble match too) since the match is for a Championship match. Logically speaking, everyone should try to get in the match to have that chance. But, if you're going to have double duty guys being accepted, then why aren't Cena, Rollins, etc. included (other than they were probably "real life" exhausted)? Why do I have to suffer through the like of Kofi, Big E, Tyson (I do like Kidd, however), etc. who I know and everyone else knows, isn't winning the match. Again, at least put some drama in the thing.

Other things that were dumb:
Having like 5 guys eliminate 90% of the entrants. Between Rusev, Wyatt, Show, Kane, & Reigns, they had the majority of the elims.

Having upper tier guys like Ziggler, Bryan, Ryback (ugh!), Ambrose etc. have such unimpressive, quick showings. They didn't eliminate anyone really and weren't in the match hardly at all (37 minutes combined for those 4). Compare that to the combined 53 minutes of Big E, Swagger, Kane, & Big Show. As stupid as Ryback is (I hate him), which group of 4 would you rather watch? The IWC has a few guys who they love that were in the match. I consider Bryan, Sandow, Ambrose, Barrett, Cesaro, and Ziggler to be darlings to the IWC (among others). Those six were in the match a combined 37 minutes. Take Bryan and Ambrose out of that and the rest were in a combined 13 minutes. Again, not suggesting any of them should have won over Reigns, but having the guys your audience wants to see build the drama and excitement seems to make sense to me. Instead, we got midcarders and double duty curtain jerkers to build "drama". Oh, we did get 110 minutes of Rusev, Wyatt, and Reigns. I like all three, so I'm OK with that, although Wyatt and Rusevs elims could have been better considering how they were built throughout the match as being dominant.

It looks like we were typing at the same time Sam. most of the thoughts & opinions are the same too. Great minds...

DaleMurphyCollector said:

It looks like we were typing at the same time Sam. most of the thoughts & opinions are the same too. Great minds...

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The Wyatt family thing was executed very poorly. I get what they were trying to do. They wanted to make it look like Erick and Luke were going to team up against Bray, but it didn't turn out as they had hoped.

Super Mario said:

And I personally loved seeing The Boogeyman.

Was always a huge fan of his.

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I had no problem with him either but it would have been cool it was Wyatt/Harper vs. The Dudley boys. Not sure why they didn't have Devon in the rumble. Contract issue?

jszczech said:

I had no problem with him either but it would have been cool it was Wyatt/Harper vs. The Dudley boys. Not sure why they didn't have Devon in the rumble. Contract issue?

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Haven't heard anything at all.

I'm surprised no RVD due to them being in Philly.

Maybe Devon is out of shape since he hasn't even been a regular in TNA and didn't pass a physical like guys like Hogan and Flair failed. Also it was good to see Ryder back. Poor guy. I feel bad for him. But he must be doing something right lasting all these roster cuts...

jszczech said:

I had no problem with him either but it would have been cool it was Wyatt/Harper vs. The Dudley boys. Not sure why they didn't have Devon in the rumble. Contract issue?

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