Royal Rumble

genius!

I heard they were planning to bring Pat Patterson back to help book the Rumble, but I can't confirm that. Anyway, it was brilliantly booked. It was like 2003 all over again, except booked properly. That is -- get the good workers in the match early on, give them all longevity pushes, and sacrifice them to the monsters at the end. The Luger/Bret ending was really well done, Cena can still credibly claim to deserve a title match at Mania, and we get the Batista/HHH match that everyone wants.

Orton got slapped back to the midcard where he belongs, the rumoured HBK/Angle match is clearly going to happen (yes!) at Mania, and the rumoured Snitsky & Heidi vs Taker & Kane match is also clearly going to happen at Mania, thus throwing all the useless dead weight into one match so that they don't drag down other matches.

My download of the Rumble is ONLY 1.4% COMPLETE.

The Angle-HBK feud is a very promising one (last year's big Raw/Smackdown crossover match was the two musclemen's curtain call, and dismal).

The Raw since suggests they aren't shuffling Orton back down the card.

Ha, Taker & Kane vs two genuinely useless big lumps shows that the 'brothers' (though they seem to have stopped mentioning that of late) aren't so hopeless. A guaranteed whateverth win in a row for Taker at Wrestlemania, of course.

Much as I enjoy JBL when he is talking, I am very bored with him as champ in the ring. Gimmick match coming with the Big Show, and they are hinting at Batista going after JBL instead of HHH, so I think they are keeping him going for a while yet.

Typically, there are only two guys who have a realistic shot of winning. Obviously, Cena and Big Dave were those guys this year. One of the things that made last year's Rumble so great was that four or five guys could have realistically been expected to win.

The trick to booking the Rumble is to make it seem random and unpredictable, even though it is the most meticulously booked match in the WWE. They'll set up unlikely yet plausible situations, but the key is in timing and the way those situations impact the match. Ax and Smash drawing #1/#2 and going at it to reinforce the "every man for himself" concept is a famous moment that everyone remembers fondly despite its obvious unlikeliness. Also, in 2000 you had Too Cool and Rikishi alone in the ring at one point, and they performed their dance routine smack in the middle of the Rumble (which was the most over thing in the WWF at the time). Highly unlikely but tremendously entertaining on its own merits but also because it didn't impact the match (if this had happened at the end of the match instead of near the beginning, it would have been a different story).

This year, we had the fantastic part about midway through when eight guys in the ring suddenly put aside their differences to split into Raw and Smackdown factions, only to put aside their differences AGAIN to gang up en masse on Mohammed Hassan (therefore reinforcing the xenophobia and racism toward the Hassan character :(, but we've already got threads about that). Again, it's an unlikely sequence, but not so implausible given the weeks of Raw vs Smackdown buildup for the Rumble, as well as the negative portrayal of the Hassan character.

On the other hand, I hate the way when they ordered the participants in a way that flagrantly telegraphs both the winner and the big stars, i.e. so many early Rumbles when there'd be mainly jobbers in there for 40 minutes, then you'd get more of the big stars in there, and then Hogan would come out around #26 and would be the obvious winner. See also one of the most infuriating Rumbles in recent memory -- 2003. It was a fantastic Rumble for the first 40 minutes as all the good workers were in there, with Jericho getting a great longevity push after weeks of buildup between him and Shawn about entering first and going all the way. Then they flushed it as Jericho got tossed in a totally lame manner by Test, the ring filled up with slugs, then Brock entered at #29 and was the obvious winner.

Agree that the 2004 Rumble was fantastic, even aside from Benoit winning, there were loads of good workers who all looked like contenders and the 'who can eliminate the incredibly fat man' thing was well done. Also it just seemed sort of well paced and plausible in a way that a lot of the earlier ones didn't, ie the eliminations were mostly quite imaginative rather than one two guys leaning on another guy halfway over the rope for five minutes at a time.

Still haven't seen this one, I think I might have the first two matches by now...

I agree with the lack of surprise for the rumble. that was my main beef in the smackdown thread.. they mostly focused on their title match storyline, and didnt have any contender buildup for cena as far as I noticed from recaps and stuff. Yeah hes way over, but theres no storyline about him wanting it badly or a situation like batista was in, so that when they finally clashed at the end of the rumble, it would have been a big friggin deal. instead it was just 'oh how nice, its cena, perhaps he'll have a title match at mania, but he wont win' and voila, DAVE is the winner w/ a minor amount of controvery that will probably lead to a scenario with cena in a title match at wm21.

OTM about Cena ... they've been keeping him and JBL apart throughout the latter's title reign. Having a budding megastar like Cena be the guy to finally unseat your long-running heel champion at Mania is a storyline that kind of writes itself (assuming they actually follow through with it -- Vince has a major hard-on for JBL so I wouldn't count my chickens).

Still, the payoff is so much better when there's months of buildup behind it, no matter how subtle. I'm not expecting HHH-Batista to be that great of a match, but they've spent months building it up in spectacular fashion, it's the match that the fans clearly want to see, and Batista is Really Really Over as a result of all this. That stuff matters a lot more than the quality of the match (which will be fantastically booked to make it seem that much better of a contest).

Shawn Michaels needs to jump to Smackdown (and likely turn heel) IN THE WORST WAY. If they want Cena to hold the belt long-term, then Cena should feud with Shawn and Angle, who'd make him look like a million bucks. Plus, we'd get to see Shawn v Eddie, Shawn v Taker (one of the only matches I'd want to see Taker in these days). Then Cena and JBL could resume feuding over the belt around Summerslam or Survivor Series, and move the belt back to JBL and start another chase to keep things fresh.

Unfortunately, the WWE seems set on turning Eddie heel (???), and I don't think Shawn would want to leave RAW and his buddy HHH (which makes me wonder how they're going to build the Angle-Shawn feud properly).

Now, HHH being HHH, he'll want to do 20 minutes at Mania and I can't say I blame him. But hopefully he'll realize that a 12-13 minute match is better for business in the long run, particularly if their match goes on last.

They could've done more with the Batista vs Cena stuff, the crowd were crazy for it and it ended up being really brief both before and after the interruption so McMahon could waddle out/crock himself hilariously/sit silently in the ring. I hope this doesn't mean they're holding off for a Batista/Cena/Layfield triple threat at WM.

The ending of the WWE Royal Rumble this year was not the one scripted going in.

The original plan was to have John Cena escape from a Batista powerbomb one time, then get powerbombed a second time and tossed for the win. However, both men lost their balance and fell out of the ring together, sending the refs into a panic.

At first, they declared Batista the winner, but since it was clear Batista fell first, Vince called an audible from the back.

He went ahead with a tie storyline with Raw referees declaring Batista the winner and Smackdown referees declaring Cena the winner. Vince also decided to come down personally and direct the rest, and of course was injured as he came into the ring. He directed everyone from his seated position, including the ending that did go down, with Batista tossing Cena relatively quickly.

credit: Dave Meltzer Wrestling Observer Newsletter

When it's down to the last two men, it should be a shoot.

i've never used yousendit before though so this may or may not work...