This Week in ‘E – The Rumble Fallout

Randy Orton wins big at the Royal Rumble, Rob Van Dam comes back for a one-shot deal and Mickey Rourke to wrestle “for real?”

Opening Witty Banter
The 2009 Royal Rumble is in the books, and like pizza or sex, even when the Rumble match is bad it is still good. This year’s main event was middling, but it might take me a couple viewings to get a better feel of it. Orton’s victory was the most obvious win since Triple H’s in 2002, but it was still a good show. The surprises of Hacksaw Duggan and Rob Van Dam were fun and got the crowd excited, and the comedy entrants at the end of the match were entertaining as well. The undercard was quite solid as well and actually makes the Road to WrestleMania little clearer.

Enough of that, now let’s take some ‘E…

The News of the Week
In some awesome news, it has been reported by Mickey Rourke himself that he will be making an appearance at WrestleMania XXV. Last night on the red carpet of the SAG awards he said, “The boys from the WWE called me and asked me to do it,” Rourke told Access Hollywood on the red carpet. “I said, ‘I want to.’ I’m talking with [WWE legend] Rowdy Roddy Piper about it.”

He then threw a shout out at Chris Jericho. Rourke said, “Chris Jericho, you better get in shape, because I’m coming after your ass.”

I think this is great, but the smark in me is asking why the sudden change of tune from WWE? Weeks ago they were burying the movie on the air and in their press release statements, and now all of a sudden they are showing clips on WWE TV and asking Rourke to appear at WrestleMania. We all know McMahon doesn’t like to promote anything he didn’t create, but perhaps he finally thought of the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality.

It’s been rumored that DH Smith will be the fourth “Horseman” added to Randy Orton’s Legacy.

I think DH would be the perfect “enforcer” for The Legacy. He’s got the built-in pedigree like the other three and he also shares the same Abercrombie & Fitch “shirtless boy whore” look of Orton, DiBiase & Rhodes, something that Manu or Snuka just didn’t have.

With CM Punk winning the Intercontinental Championship on Monday night, he became the fastest man to capture a version of the Triple Crown. He picked up the World Championship, the Tag Championship and now the I-C belt in just 203 days, beating Kevin “Diesel” Nash’s record of 227 days.

Granted the Triple Crown doesn’t mean as much as it used to with all the muddled championships and I personally only consider those who have won the WWE Championship, the I-C belt and the World Tag Championship as “true” Triple Crown winners, but it’s still impressive to see a guy like CM Punk have so much success in such a short amount of time. Although he did go about the whole thing quite backwards. Who said Punk wasn’t being pushed?

Rev Theory, the band behind Randy Orton’s theme “Voices” was originally going to play live on RAW tonight, but on their Myspace they posted this bulletin:

“We just learned that our WWE “Raw” performance that was scheduled to take place this Monday has unfortunately been postponed. Sorry to disappoint, but we’ll keep you posted on a make-up date once we have official confirmation!!

Thanks,

Rev Theory”

I understand that WWE might want to hype up the appearance so I can see as why they wouldn’t do it tomorrow night, but Orton is coming off the second biggest win of career last night and having him come down to a live version of his entrance theme would be another way to add to aura. I would expect a live performance sometime before WrestleMania. I’m sure Rev Theory is excited for the gig as it easily would be the biggest audience of their career.

Speaking of bands, AC/DC will be performing the WrestleMania XXV theme live at the big event, but so far the official song hasn’t been released.

That’s pretty cool I guess. After all we learned a few weeks ago that Cena and McMahon are fans of the band. I really believe a big part of the WrestleMania experience is the pomp and circumstance of stuff like this.

The Road to…No Way Out
Nothing has been officially set up yet, but it was officially announced last night at the Royal Rumble that both the World Heavyweight Championships and WWE Championships would be defended inside separate Elimination Chamber matches.

Wrestler of the Week
Week of January 19 – 26: Randy Orton
It’s no secret after this past week that Randy Orton is the new superstar du jour in WWE. He solidified his Legacy with Ted DiBiase and Cody Rhodes, and then kicked his boss Mr. McMahon square in the temple with his feared concussion kick. Then he walked out of the Royal Rumble last night as the first true heel to win the Rumble match since McMahon himself did it back in 1999. All in all it was truly the best week ever for young Mister Orton.

RAW’s On Tonight!
Tonight will be all about the fall out from last night’s Royal Rumble as Randy Orton will be out to gloat about his Royal Rumble victory, but also possibly face the wrath of the McMahon family after punting the patriarch in the temple last week. Plus John Cena retained his World Championship over JBL partly thanks to Shawn Michaels so more fuel will be added to that fire. And Melina became WWE Women’s Champion for the third time, but expect Beth Phoenix to want her rematch ASAP.

On Last Week’s Episode…
Norine and Malar cover the go-home show before the Royal Rumble.

Innarelli takes a look at ECW.

Marshall and Kirschner cover the return of Mr. McMahon on RAW.

How They Rated
SmackDown! (1.16.09) – 2.1

A.M. RAW (1.18.09) – .7

RAW (1.19.09) – 3.9

ECW (1.20.09) – 1.3

This is Boring, What Else is There to Read?
CHIKARTICLES~!

Ditch has a great interview up with MMA fighter and pro wrestler Josh Barnett.

Wiswell dissects the fallout from last weekend’s Ring of Honor shows, including the controversial Tyler Black-Nigel McGuiness main event.

In Case You Didn’t Spend the $40
PK provided live streaming coverage of last night’s Royal Rumble and Scott Keith provided his own unique rant. Yours truly also did his own live blogging on the event for Examiner.com.

Here’s the quick ‘n’ dirty.

Jack Swagger pinned Matt Hardy to retain his ECW Championship.

Melina pinned Beth Phoenix to win the WWE Women’s Championship.

John Cena pinned JBL to retain the World Heavyweight Championship.

Edge pinned Jeff Hardy to win the WWE Championship.

Randy Orton won the 30 man Royal Rumble match and earned a main event World Championship match at WrestleMania XXV.

IP Staff Roundtable Results for WWE Royal Rumble
A group of us got together (as we do every month) to put together our thoughts on last night’s Royal Rumble.

Here’s how we did:

Roundtable Champion: Brad Curran: 5-0 (47-25)

The rest of the field:
Raffi Shamir: 4-1 (70-53)
Danny Wallace: 4-1 (44-19)
Mark Allen: 3-2 (124-54)
Matthew Michaels: 3-2 (139-119)

For more relevant, interesting and exciting wrestling information from your truly, check out my gig as the Pro Wrestling Examiner over at Examiner.com.