I am choosing to discuss the WWE World Heavyweight Championship triple threat match between Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins and John Cena first because that might put me in a better mood before I have to talk about the other stuff.
Safe to say, the match absolutely ruled, quite possibly my favourite WWE match of the year (and by "year" I mean between Wrestlemanias). The match was a fantastic high energy bout with great work and spots from all three guys played out with the smartest ring psychology it could have.
I am a huge supporter of Brock Lesnar in the WWE, even to the point where I thought him being the man to break the Undertaker's undefeated Wrestlemania streak was the perfect choice. Brock Lesnar is unique, and not unique in a Bray Wyatt kind of a way, unique in a legitimacy sense. On top of his amateur wrestling, football and MMA experience he's also properly trained as a professional wrestler, which means he's an unbelievable legitimately tough as nails athlete who can wrestle perfect WWE style main event matches.
That's the key difference between Brock Lesnar and everyone, he's not playing an asshole on television he just is an ashsole on television. He leaves wrestling for nearly a decade, comes back and blows all the doors off, wrestles a couple of times a year, gets huge paychecks for it and flips the fans off for it while beating all their favourites. Brock Lesnar does not care about Undertaker's stupid pre-determined phony winning streak, he just beats it. Brock Lesnar does not care about Cena's comebacks, he just destroys him for 20 straight minutes in a main event match and takes his title with no give to sports entertainment nonsense. And the best part about all of this is you believe he could actually do it because well...look at him, watch the stuff he does in the ring!
That's the magic of Brock Lesnar, and due to his athletic background, experience and the nature of the modern day wrestling business to overexpose every other talent by making them wrestle on television multiple times a week, there will never be anyone like him again in wrestling. Due to this, Brock Lesnar (and ONLY Brock Lesnar) is immune to the stupid pro wrestling clichés that any full timer would fall to on a regular basis, apart from when the time's right and creative don't want him to be any more (note: losing to Cena in 2012 was short-sighted and a big mistake on WWE's part). This is what makes his matches have an utterly unique and big-fight-feel kind of atmosphere.
Which is why I adored the triple threat match at the 2015 Royal Rumble, Brock destroys both guys out of the gate with little resistance. Rollins tries his usual J&J security tricks but that immediately gets shut down by Brock with no consequences to him. Rollins also tries to beat him with his usual briefcase-to-the-head heel trick of stealing matches and even that doesn't work and he just gets F5ed anyway. However, after a parade of finishers and a crazy table spot on the outside they are able to take Brock out of the match for several minutes. In that time Cena and Rollins do their WWE main event shtick between themselves only and give the crowd to kind of action they would be expecting, all while providing half a dozen false finishes, high drama and a lot of good spots.
In the end, all three guys were utilised to their core strengths in the smartest way possible. Brock went in a monster to cause tension at the start, was a monster throughout the match, came out of the match even more of a monster. Rollins was incredible as he continues his streak of great main event match performances in perhaps the most confident rise to the top I've ever seen in wrestling. And Cena was Cena, you know what you get with him. Rollins gets a few fake out near wins with his usual cheating tricks, Cena gets a few fake out near wins with his usual "Super Cena" shtick, then Brock says "screw that" and just re-enters the match taking them both out because he can. It was absolutely perfect.
You know what, I was wrong, even after all that rambling I'm STILL mad as hell about how stupid the Royal Rumble match was.
ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THE ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH NOW
No, NO, before anyone starts, I am not just mad that Daniel Bryan didn't win. I was prepared going into it that Roman Reigns was probably going to win, and I don't really have anything against Reigns other than he needs a little more polish on him before he can main event Wrestlemania in my opinion. Let's be honest, there are legitimate reasons to not want Brock Lesnar Vs Daniel Bryan for Wrestlemania as awesome as it would be, Bryan's health is still in question and being thrown around by Brock won't help anything if there a danger there, and whoever faces Brock at Mania needs to beat him (preferably clean) and Daniel Bryan might not be able to make that convincing. So in theory, I have nothing against Roman Reigns winning this year's Rumble.
What I'm mad about is they knew everyone wanted Daniel Bryan to win, they knew nobody wanted Roman Reigns to win, they knew what would happen if they screwed it up because this exact thing happened last year, yet regardless they still handled it in the stupidest way possible.
First things first, Daniel Bryan did not need to be in this match at all. The match was already packed with fan favourites like Ziggler, Ambrose, Reigns, Mizdow, Wyatt, Cesaro as well as a bunch of surprise entrants and midcard babyfaces. Daniel Bryan was indefinitely injured a few weeks ago where we all genuinely believed he might be retiring, if having him in the match is this much of a problem then just have him make a surprise return the night after the Rumble! Sure, this isn't enough to get people on board with Reigns winning the title, but at least if you made it look like Daniel Bryan couldn't be in the Rumble at least no-one would hate you (and by proxy, Reigns) for it!
What you definitely don't do is throw Bryan into the ring at number 10 and have him thrown out by number 16 in the least interesting way possible. If you're worried about his health either A) see above and don't put him in the match at all or B) have him come out at the end instead so you don't make the crowd crestfallen halfway through the match (they had no problems doing this with Ziggler!)
Last year's Rumble match wasn't very good, even ignoring the drama not a lot of note happened in it and it was fairly sloppily put together all things considered. But still, at least Batista came out to get booed at 28 and not 19, and the fans turned on the match at Number 30 when they realised Daniel Bryan wasn't in it and not halfway through the goddamn match when they had already seen him and he was gone. I can't believe I'm saying this, but by having him wrestle Wyatt and losing in the first match of the night last year, the Royal Rumble 2014 was actually better booked than this year's.
Seriously.
Here's why I say WWE knew how this was going to turn out; because they knew Daniel Bryan was going to get the pop of the night no matter what, the plan was probably to have him thrown out fairly early on so fans would get over it before the Roman Reigns and Rock party got going because again, they knew Daniel Bryan would overshadow it and fans wouldn't be on board. If that is what they were thinking it's pretty goddamned stupid considering what happened last year, and also when you consider the fact if you're genuinely worried that a guy is so popular he's going to upstage and get THE ROCK booed perhaps you need to rethink this entire plan from step one.
So by underestimating the popularity of Daniel Bryan (how do you even do that at this point?) WWE undermined the entire second half of the Rumble, put not only Roman Reigns and The Rock but everyone remaining in the match in a really tough situation, and got their fanbase salty leading into their biggest show of the year again.
Some people may try to play Devil's Advocate and say on its own merits the Rumble match wasn't that bad, or this or that were fun moments or whatever, and if the crowd hadn't booed everything it would have been great. First thing's first, a crowd isn't a single sentient being, if you put on a show that makes 18,000 people turn on it and nothing wins them back you've done something wrong, end of discussion. Secondly, when the match itself has been completely buried without repair all those little fun moments mean nothing. I remember Kane's 2001 Rumble performance where he eliminated 11 guys because it was a fun match, and a genuinely good performance, it sticks with me because it was overall a good presentation. When I think of the 2014 Royal Rumble all I imagine is those last 10 minutes where everything was lost and Batista pointing at his crotch, and Reigns elimination record is just a meaningless arbitrary number lost in that mess. I was enjoyed this Rumble match for the first 25 minutes or so, but does any of that stick with me now? NOPE.
Not to mention it felt like WWE were deliberately twisting the knife this year. Mr "Show Off" Dolph Ziggler comes out at 30, barely gets to do anything and gets knocked out by KANE AND THE BIG SHOW, Ambrose meets a similar fate, Barrett and Cesaro don't get a ton of fanfare on their exits either. I don't even remember who eliminated Bray Wyatt (again, the highlights of the match faze into a blur when it's bad). After Bryan is gone the match turns in a mass of humanity of jacked up big dudes filling the ring almost like an extra FU to any Bryan fans left not demoralised. Ultimately, it was a poorly booked match that they hoped Rocky would save by showing up, but couldn't (and boy did he know it).
I'm just at a loss here, the fact the WWE clearly knew this wasn't going to go down well and hit the panic button trying to do damage control instead of coming up with something different to do blows my mind. Roman looked REALLY bad tonight, this isn't doing his career or your Wrestlemania main event any favours, you guys should know by now from Del Rio/Sheamus/Swagger/Miz that you can't force these things! Once again, it's not the fact that Roman Reigns won the match and Daniel Bryan didn't, it's the fact they could not have handled this any stupider if they tried.
Instead, you've somehow managed to screw up the most idiot-proof, basically guaranteed-to-be-entertaining Pay-Per-View of the year twice in a row...doing the EXACT same thing.
The worst part is at least last year it seemed pretty unbelievable that WWE would seriously attempt to main event Wrestlemania 30 with Randy Orton Vs Batista and SOMETHING would save us (and it did). This time round they seem to be pretty set on doing Reigns Vs Lesnar so I don't know how they're going to handle post-Rumble damage control this year. Looks like we're stuck with what it looks like this year.
Don't worry everyone, I'm sure the WWE Network "cancel subscription" page will be back online soon enough.
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