The Royal Rumble rarely disappoints, and while the 2022 installment didn’t necessarily disappoint, it was, meh.
At the end of the night, Brock Lesnar, who had earlier dropped his WWE title to Bobby Lashley, who was aided by Universal champ Roman Reigns and manager Paul Heyman, won the men’s Rumble, and Ronda Rousey, in a not at all surprising surprise return, won the women’s Rumble.
I could’ve written this column on Friday and saved myself the four hours last night.
Reigns retained his Universal title after being disqualified in his match with Seth Rollins. Becky Lynch retained her Raw women’s championship with an uninspired win over Doudrop.
For whatever reason, we got a mixed tag match featuring Edge and Beth Phoenix vs. The Miz and Maryse.
Bad Bunny returned, and the entertainment media wrote about it, so, yay, on that.
Bunny and Johnny Knoxville, a product placement Rumble entrant, got in some high spots on the actual wrestlers, making said actual wrestlers look bad in the process.
Impact women’s champ Mickie James, turns out, was the only person to walk through the Forbidden Door.
Nope, no Cody Rhodes, no Jon Moxley, no Kazuchika Okada.
Meh.
The best match of the night, which is to say, the only match of the night worth watching, was the opener, between Reigns and Rollins, which, even though you knew that WWE wasn’t putting Rollins over, was booked to the point that you could actually suspend disbelief on a couple of the Rollins spots, his pedigree and his curb stomp that led to near-falls.
The finish, Reigns being DQ’d after refusing to release a choke after Rollins reached the ropes to force a break, was probably best, to keep the belt and heat on Reigns, while allowing Rollins to escape without an L, setting him up for a Wrestlemania main event with Lashley.
That finish, with Lashley going over, wasn’t a surprise, but the way the finish played out, with Reigns interfering after a ref bump, then teaming up with Heyman, who had come out to the ring as Lesnar’s second, was well done.
The rest of the match was two big guys in need of somebody to work with to make them look better.
The finish at least foreordained Lesnar coming out late in the men’s Rumble, then winning it, giving us the WM main event that you knew going in was going to be what we’d leave with at the end of the night, Reigns defending against Lesnar, which is fine.
The match itself, another between two big guys who need somebody to work with to make them look better, will underwhelm, but the walk-up, with Heyman as the third wheel, will be fun to follow along with.
The talk is that Rousey will use her Rumble win to book herself a match with Charlotte at ‘Mania, which is fine, though Rousey-Lynch would be better.
Lynch doesn’t have an obvious dance partner at the moment. They can always dust off Sasha Banks, and Banks-Lynch would be a great match; we’ll just have to wait and see how they get us there, if that’s where things are going.
The rest of it, honestly, who cares?
There’s literally nobody below the top of the card that has any juice with fans right now.
The weekly shows – Raw and Smackdown – are unwatchable, they’re so bad.
The saving grace there is, you don’t need to watch them, because WWE recaps the storylines with its slickly-produced packages on the pay-per-views, er, premium live events, they’re calling them now, to the point that you can save the roughly 200 hours of Raw and Smackdown that you’d have to watch between now and Wrestlemania 38 and just tune in then.
(Bonus points to you if you watch both nights.)
Story by Chris Graham
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