Some more fully formed Rumble thoughts...
Like I said last night, I didn't hate this PPV. It had a good line-up, but nearly every match was hampered by bizarre booking. Not outright bad booking, but booking that just makes you go... huh?
To start with, as much as I don't want to admit this to you, WWE... I enjoy Brodus Clay. What I need you to understand, however, is that it's because of Clay's sheer charisma and devotion to this role and not your wonderful booking ideas (i.e., hit shuffle on WWE iPod. Boom. Gimmick'd.). I need to point out, though, that I'm already hit the point of diminishing returns with it. Give the man a feud now, or I'm out.
That 'Be a Star!' PSA? Eve might like to 'forget all the bad stuff people say', but the audience is just screaming "CHIN!".
Right, onto the actual stuff...
Apparently WWE has problems with 25th shows aside from the fact that they don't understand the word anniversary. Just like WM25, WWE managed to set-up a good angle that they rendered completely toothless to the point where it hampered the match. For WM25, it was the No DQ stipulation for HHH/Orton... for RR25, it was special referee Johnny Ace WHO IS BEING EVALUATED SOON OMG. Why? Why book it that way? They took what was a (albeit cliched) solid angle and completely scuttled it by announcing that HHH was basically going to fire Johnny Ace, forcing Ace to tow the line. That Raw got even more bizarre, since not only did they do that, but they also went ahead and blew their wad on Punk getting his hands on Ace. It just... from a booking standpoint, it makes no sense. It takes the drama away. It made the match stipulation meaningless, it made Ace a distraction from what was a decent match, and it promoted a guy for the show after the RR... which, classically, is a show that you don't need 'extra' surprises for. It's
ing baffling. My only hope is that this was rushed because they're going to dump this story tonight and move Punk on to something else... but I fear that's a slim chance, at best. I just can't see them dumping Johnny Ace yet.
Which, by the way, yes... I keep typing Johnny Ace so I don't have to spell that mother
er's last name. I admit it.
Now, back to the HHH thing. One, is HHH evaluating Ace as Interim Raw GM or both jobs? Because, really, losing the Raw GM position isn't terrible when you have a VP job to fall back on. Just saying. Two, so, uh, HHH is the COO. He'll be at Raw to evaluate Johnny Ace. If I'm right here, WWE just informed us that the guy running the company has something BETTER TO DO THAN SHOW UP AT THE ROYAL RUMBLE. I mean, did no one think that through? Plus, if he was so concerned about Ace abusing his power, wouldn't it have been better to, I don't know, prevent him from interfering in the match in the first place? I know that wrestling has no place for logic, but this was a bit much for me. Again, HHH the hands-on COO, apparently didn't even attend the Royal Rumble. Three... which, really, is an extension of number two... again, logic has no place here, but HHH is concerned about Ace's abuse of power. Yet, apparently, HHH is totally okay with a guy running around with a chloroform glove, gravely injuring other wrestlers, and threatening to hurt women. You're right, Johnny Ace is totally the guy to be worried about. For
's sake, WWE.
Speaking of Kane, I don't even have the words to express how much I despise this storyline. First of all, why in the
would this match not have just been booked as a No DQ match for any reason other than 'creative isn't ready to end this and both guys can't take a loss'? Exactly. Just like WM25, this is a story that builds to a knock-down, drag-out brawl between two guys who want to hurt each other. To have a regular 'ol match just doesn't make any sense. So, we inevitably got the expected ending, which is a DQ finish with a heap of mid-card abuse for dessert. Again, logic, but why would Ryder even show up to the Rumble after that? Oh, and for those of you paying attention, let's realize the guy who they claimed had a kayfabe BROKEN BACK showed up to Rumble, but not the COO. I understand that they need Cena to look strong, but why do it at the expense of Ryder? Each passing week makes Ryder look terrible, it doesn't do anything for Kane, and it makes Cena look incompetent because he never sees it coming... or manages to show up just after things happen. I don't understand who this is helping. The other problem is that Ryder is too much of a cartoon to take seriously. I guess these are booking problems you run into when you notice that the person who has been your top guy for a decade has ABSOLUTELY ZERO kayfabe friends. Whoops.
As a sidenote, I'm completely over Ryder. As a mid-card comedy act, he's fine. Booking him in serious angles has killed any enjoyment.
I used to think Kane used yarn, but the red stuff in his costume appears to be shoe laces. I'm not sure that's better.
The Rumble match itself was completely indicative of the problem that WWE faces right now, but continues to put its fingers in its ears and 'nah, nah, nah, can't hear you'. How many main eventers were in that match? Four? Even then, that's counting people like Sheamus, which is a stretch. WWE's roster is thin, which the Rumble illustrated perfectly. I watched the 2003 Rumble yesterday morning and the talent divide between 2003 and 2012 is in-
ing-credible. That's completely WWE's fault, though. They haven't corrected the fact that they've failed to make new stars, and the Rumble last night illustrated that they still don't care. Regardless of what happened, the real story to take from last night is about Miz, Rhodes, and Ziggler. These guys lasted, by far, the longest in the Rumble and had great showings. Rhodes and Ziggler, in particular, are guys that should be seriously moved up the ladder, which last night helped. Then the Big Show showed up and cleared all three of them from the ring in about 10 seconds. Why? Who does this help? What does it accomplish? They ruined upwards of 50 minutes of work by those three guys to give Big Show the SAME
ING PUSH HE GETS EVERY YEAR AT THE RUMBLE? That's really the only part of the show that made me angry. I like Show... he's been on an upswing recently, but his time is winding down. Why, if you were so gung-ho about having that Rumble ending, couldn't the final five guys be Jericho, Ziggler, Rhodes, Miz, and Sheamus? Orton spent so little time in the match that he was utterly pointless, so give the spotlight to those guys. Instead of ten minutes of Jericho/Sheamus, go with ten minutes of those five guys... the crowd would assume that Jericho is going to win, but have each guy keep fighting back. You get 4 guys over instead of one. Sheamus winning aside, I defy anyone to tell me that they think that was not only the correct 'final four', but that it was also booked correctly even with those four.
Jericho. Even now, he's on Twitter telling people to 'stop whining'. You know what? 24 hours ago, I would've given him the benefit of the doubt. Now? It's over. I give up. Cryptic videos, cryptic sentences, over-the-top antics... with no pay-off. I get that this isn't over yet, but they severly injured it last night. Why? Jericho comes back as some ridiculous character, tells us he's going to do, I don't know, something at the Rumble and... and... well, shit, he pretty much just acted like Chris Jericho. I can't help but look at the past few weeks and wonder why they didn't just hold his return until the Rumble and book it the exact same way. There was nothing new. Nothing interesting. It was like two years didn't even happen and he was a normal Rumble entrant. I just... I dont get it. The problem with that is that I don't think there *was* anything to 'get'.
Maybe that's the troll, though... his big idea for a return was nothing more than "A jacket... wait for it... with LIGHTS!".
The final thought is... look, people roundly seem to talk about this being a boring, undercard Rumble. I didn't hate it as much as others, but my question to pose is... what did you want to happen? Seriously sit down and think about this. There were no big returns ready to go yet, with people like Mysterio, Del Rio, Sin Cara, and Christian still apparently too injured for an appearance. How many surprise entrants are there that would be worthwhile? Legends wise, many are dead, have shown up already, or wouldn't be worth debuting at the Rumble. I mean, sure, I'd have loved to see Goldberg show up, but there's no point in paying him to come in and not at least book one program for him. WWE got into the habit of doing surprises and nostalgia grabs at the Rumble because there was such a plethora of people to bring in, plus they had the main event talent to make using a slot on someone irrelevant not seem like a big deal. Weirdly, the Rumble is the one place where WWE managed to take a story to its logical conclusion, and it was based on the announcers. We all knew Michael Cole was coming, but that didn't make me enjoy it any less. It made sense, you knew it was coming. Then, to top that off, they gave us Kharma to wash the Cole stink off. It was a silly little moment, but it worked. The same with Santino, Foley, and Rodriguez. The little comedy bits worked for me. Still, getting back to the point at hand... I'm curious, can anyone come up with a list of 3 surprise (returns, nostalgia, etc) entrants that would've been better than what we got, would have been realistic, and would've made sense storyline-wise (i.e., yeah, Taker could have come back, but they wouldn't have him lose the Rumble, so that's out)?
... hey, so, I've typed way too much here. I suppose I'll be nice and save my 'where do we go from here?' thoughts for later. :lol:
