Welcome to the “it’s sign pointing season” edition of The Wrestling List. I’ve got my Royal Rumble thoughts and also Raw thoughts.
Let’s talk Royal Rumble. Thumbs in the middle show for me. I know everyone has a ton of opinions on the show and I understand all of them. Some liked it. Some didn’t. Some were middle road like I was. For me, I didn’t think the crowd energy was very good for the show and I think it hurt the show a bit for me. But then I see people saying the crowd was loud and awesome. So it’s all opinion clearly. LOL. Yes, there were some things they were really into but there were moments that fell flat that would have gotten a bigger reaction in the States. The Hobbs debut was met with mostly silence most likely with a crowd that probably just didn’t know him very well. That would have gotten a big pop in the States. Also the Americano reveal was mostly met with silence where as I think the States crowd would have reacted more to it. Not much noise during the women’s match till the last ten minutes or so. Obviously, they went nuts for Brie Bella’s return but that crowd tends to mostly react to seeing stars.
Let’s talk about the show itself. The women’s Rumble was solid. I had Liv Morgan picked to win as she felt due to finally have her Rumble win and she is a great choice to go through Mania season with as a challenger for the title. I loved the closing sequence with her, Tiffany, and Ruca battling it out for the win. I was happy to see the return of Tiffany Stratton as well. We had the Brie Bella return which got a big reaction from the crowd. It will be interesting to see the Bellas maneuvering through the tag division. They made Lash Legend look like a monster with her eliminating both Charlotte Flair and Iyo Sky. They were clearly looking to put a rocket on her with this. Another big elimination was Nattie eliminating Becky Lynch which was a big moment that they’re serious with this new character for Nattie. We had some dissension with teams including Charlotte accidentally eliminating Alexa Bliss. Kairi Sane eliminating Asuka with Asuka looking none too happy about it while Kairi had a look of fear on her face. Liv Morgan eliminating Raquel. So, that could stir some trouble in the Judgment Day. Sol Ruca getting to the final three looking like a star. She was definitely in the Roxanne Perez spot from last year where she got to the final two. I thought Charlotte Flair had one of the quietest one hour Rumble performances ever. There were times I forgot she was even in there cause the focus was on other things in the ring.
The men’s side. Well, I called Liv’s win. I failed spectacularly with my men’s Rumble pick of Bron Breakker. LOL. I felt good about that one when I picked it. I never even expected that Bron’s Rumble appearance would be so short with him being taken out by another masked man. We definitely had drama with the men’s side at the end with who would make it. I said geez, Gunther is going to have quite the night if he retires AJ and then wins the Rumble too. Instead it was Roman Reigns getting the win. I assumed with that win that we would get Punk and Roman at WrestleMania which is a big star power main event match there. Oba Femi was the one to get a big rocket put on him during this match looking like a monster. He would later be taken out by Brock. Speaking of Brock, they have him do the big elimination of Femi but then Brock gets eliminated while everyone is watching the Jey Uso entrance. They almost missed it on TV too. That was bizarre. Speaking of Jey, when he goes to do the encore, why in the world from a logic standpoint would nobody just sneak up and dump him out? I said Roman should go over there and dump him out for a lesson to pay attention. Remember that he did this during War Games too right before the Brock entry. Je’Von Evans also got a nice run in the Rumble being the longest in the match to put some attention on him which was nice to see. I wonder if we get something going forward with Cody and Orton after Cody accidentally hit Orton with the Cody cutter. That is a big match run that we have still waiting on to get and putting it in Mania season would be fun. But I also guess we may not be done with Cody and Drew as Drew cost Cody the Rumble.
AJ Styles and Gunther. Wow, I was shocked to see AJ lose. Yes, I know they’ve been doing a lot of things over the last couple of weeks doing big match scenarios with him with Nakamura and Punk but I thought it was almost too obvious with the booking of that AJ would lose and this was his farewell. Match was good. The ending was interesting with AJ seemingly refusing to call it a career with putting down some of his ring gear. Does he jump to TNA? Japan? Is this just his ending of his WWE career? Or is this it, period? It left me confused with how he was acting post match. I really want to see him do a TNA run. Sami and Drew was just there for me. That match didn’t really excite me. When I saw Sami was in that four way, I guessed Sami would win to give the drama of him battling for the championship there. Lastly, what was up with the seating? LOL. So, was the stadium filled with a lot of empty seats or was it the LED lighting? People are battling it out online over that. Whichever it was, they should never do that again cause if it was the LED lighting, that made the building look empty and it was a HORRIBLE look on TV for one of your top shows of the year. It was a terrible visual.
Tonight’s Raw saw WWE finally back in the U.S. after this very long international tour. Philadelphia hosted Raw with the show opening up with a raging Bron Breakker ready for vengeance on what occurred to him at the Rumble. The Vision tried to keep him under control. He called out Pearce who wasn’t having what Bron was putting out. However while all this is going on, LA Knight ran in with a chair doing damage to The Vision. That wouldn’t be the first time we’d see LA Knight as he continued to wreck havoc on The Vision later. I’m really curious to see what the end game is here with the Bron/Heyman/Pearce stuff. The other big stories of the night were who are the Rumble winners going to choose for their WrestleMania opponents. We got one answer and didn’t on the other one. On the women’s side, we had Dom return to introduce Liv Morgan. Liv said she was non committal and wasn’t in any rush to make a big decision including saying she wanted to go to Smackdown as well to contemplate her decision. Liv introduces Raquel hyping her for the Philly street fight against Stephanie for the title. Will Raquel bring up the the Rumble? Yes, she did. It was awkward for a few seconds there but then Raquel said she didn’t want Liv at ringside cause she wanted to win this on her own. Liv cheered the decision and went to the back. The match itself was a good one and the finish had Liv running in trying to help Raquel which backfired. Raquel overcame that and then Roxanne ran in too trying to help. Roxanne takes a table bump on the floor. Then, Stephanie and Raquel do some counters but ultimately it sends Raquel on to the table. I say on as she didn’t go through it as she bounced on it. Stephanie then hit the finish to retain the title. Now the question is does this continue issues between Raquel and Liv? That’s the women’s side of the Rumble winner. Let’s move to the men’s side with Roman Reigns making his appearance at the end of the show to discuss what he wants to do. CM Punk interrupts Reigns. They have a really good back and forth promo about beating one another, their history, and their opinion of what each other has meant to the company. Punk says Reigns is a part timer while adding the difference is that he wants to go to all the countries and see the fans performing for them. Reigns then brought up that of course you want to do that cause you took a break for ten years. Reigns brought up Drew saying he beat up Drew for years to which Punk battled back saying did you do it or did your cousins do it for you? Just a really fun back and forth here with Reigns choosing Punk for WrestleMania. It’s official as it will be CM Punk defending against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania.
Other notes from Raw. Oba Femi destroying The War Raiders. Oof, not great. I know it made Oba look like a monster but I always have Vince McMahon flashbacks of how Vince always loved to book one guy to destroy tag teams by themselves and it was often the tag team champions. Then, Vince wouldn’t understand why tag teams weren’t over. Well, it’s because one guy is beating them up. Finn Balor’s video segment was good about respect and how respect didn’t get him a spot in the Rumble so now he’s going to have to do what he has to to get where he wants. New music change for Stephanie Vaquer. Not a fan of it. I loved her other music. My biggest complaint is the new music sounds generic. That is my complaint of so much of WWE themes in recent years. Most sound the same and repetitive. I noticed this at the Rumble that music would hit and I wouldn’t know who it was. They have a real problem with music sounding the same. The Bellas twins cut a promo tonight declaring they are chasing the tag team titles. Promo didn’t start the best with the fans chanting Cooooop referring to the Eagles player, Cooper DeJean, who has been linked to dating Nikki lately with Nikki mistaking that they were booing instead of chanting Coop. Brie then pointed out that I think they’re chanting Coooop and Nikki had to pivot. Promo was confusing anyway cause I couldn’t tell if they were babyfaces or heels. Kind of a weak Philly crowd tonight as they just weren’t very loud overall. That’s weird that we’ve had two traditionally great crowds of Montreal and Philly in the last week both seeming mostly flat.
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