I Hear Voices In My Head, They Help Me Collude To Win.
(The Rumble where WWE tried to make me root for Triple H)
Storytelling: 3/5 Stars
Match Quality: 2/5 Stars
Finish: 2/5 Stars
Winner: 4/5 Stars
Extracurriculars: 3/5 Stars
TOTAL: 14/25 Stars
Great Moment You May Have Forgotten: As far as I can remember, this was the first true showdown between Cody Rhodes and Goldust, building the tension as we are still really waiting for the true pay off. Oh, and RVD returning was pretty unbelievable if you know the TNA backstory behind it.
Moment You Wish You Weren't Reminded Of: It's easy to pick Santino's 1 second elimination by Kane, but I'm going to go with Rey Mysterio's elimination, which was not only anti-climactic with what they were building, but looked like an accident.
*Note-This is the first Rumble entry that occurs between the years 2000 and 2010, meaning that those 11 Rumbles are in the top 16. That speaks to the high quality of Rumbles during the Oughts time period.
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This was a really weird Rumble match. It broke away from several usual trends of the past few Rumbles and had some weird feud moments and bizarre booking. While not all of it was bad, a lot the major match decisions were bad, a reason this Rumble is so low on this list.
Let me first say that this was sadly the last worked Rumble match of the golden team, Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler. While some will look to others as the best group to call a match, no two did so as consistently and enthusiastically as these two in their prime. If you don't believe me, look at the previous entry and see the difference.
The outcome of the match was about as obvious as it could get, but the process to get there was far from what the ideal should've been. It began with a nice back and forth segment from the acrobats of the WWE, Rey Mysterio and John Morrison. After a bunch of jobbers, a Khali typical moment, and a showdown between Trips and...sigh...Vladimir Kozlov (what a disaster that was, I mean seriously his moves are slow prodding and thus look weaker), Orton came in and took control. Soon, he was joined by his cohorts Ted Dibiase Jr. and Cody Rhodes, and Legacy was in full force.
One weird thing about this match was the amount of people in the ring at one time. Mysterio, Morrison, HHH, Orton, Dibiase, Jericho, Rhodes, Mike Knox, Taker, CM Punk, and Kane all went at least 15 minutes, and by the time Big Show arrived at number 30, there were 15 men in the ring! I'm not saying that was always a bad thing, but there were times during this match where an abundance of people hurt the quality of the in-ring portion, and the gap between eliminations dulled down the match quality. Even worse is that while some names went on forever, popular names like Dolph Ziggler, Shelton Benjamin (who from this point forward because he always enters, does a big move, and gets eliminated rather early, I will refer to him as "The Shelton Benjamin Treatment"), The Brian Kendrick, Goldust, and most famously Santino Marella, only last a few seconds.
If only his sister Santina was there to comfort him...
Something about this match did not sit right with me and perhaps it was the fact that although there was clearly a 3 man team working together in the match, no one seemed to pay attention and just continued attacking the other people. You would think with names like Taker, Kane, Jericho, HHH, and Mysterio, one of them would catch on instead of just allowing this to go on. Eventually, all the fun names, such as returning Jim Duggan or RVD, are eliminated and we are down to 6: Legacy, HHH, Big Show, and Undertaker. Knowing that one group is clearly working together, you would think Paul, Paul, and Mark would team up together. But no! Big Show once again ruins a storyline and attacks the other two, because logic doesn't dictate that giant's brain. Even his semi acrobatic save from elimination could not save the sheer moronic fact that he was attacking Taker instead of Legacy.
Well unsurprisingly Taker eliminates Big Show and vice-versa. This leaves us cheering for HHH (wow that's tough to write) against Legacy. This was not HHH's best role because let's face it, he's a douche and that's his best ploy as a wrestler. So eventually, he fights back and thinks he eliminates Orton, then gets to work and eliminates the other cronies. Unbeknownst to him, Orton was lurking and hit him with the throw over the top OUTTA NOWHERE, and eliminates The Game.
Look, I think Orton winning was the right choice, and it advanced the obvious storyline they were building. But the Royal Rumble should never end with a faction as 3 of the final four. It needs to be legitimate mid card to main event players who make us at least believe that someone has a chance to dethrone the favorite. Furthermore, WWE should always have a fan favorite in the final four to keep it interesting, a flaw they have committed way too many times during this match and it is not the last time they do it. So we have a great winner watered down by poor circumstances and wasted potential in growing a new star. Oh WWE, will you ever learn?
This is still the best Rumble to date you have witnessed, so maybe collude with a few friends to watch and analyze. Tomorrow's event features the winner we all knew was coming, but we tried so hard to believe otherwise. Also, one of the greatest factions in WWE does what they do best. Au revoir for now.
