I recently conducted a “Royal†experiment. It’s been more than a year since I regularly watched WWE, so unlike previous years in which I’d discuss, analyze and speculate to death, this year I had no idea who was likely to win the Royal Rumble, or even what the current storylines are other than the cursory knowledge I glean from reading Pulse Wrestling. So I avoided spoilers, stayed away from live reports, and watched the replay last Tuesday night on the American Forces Network (AFN) completely unaware of what happened last Sunday night, just to see how well I’d like the show.
TODAY’S ISSUE: A look at the 2009 Royal Rumble.
Two weeks ago I took a trip down memory lane and viewed many previous editions of the Royal Rumble, one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s marquee events and the official onramp for the road to WrestleMania. The last time I tuned in for a WWE pay-per-view was October of last year, mostly because I got it for free on AFN thanks to being stationed here in the Republic of Korea while serving in the USAF. That show was decent, but wasn’t good enough to get me watching regularly again. But my long look at Rumble matches past made me curious about the 2009 version, so I decided to tune in and stay away from any information about the show; I went in completely unaware of a single match result or storyline occurrence.
The opening video montage was very good, of course. That area has long been a strength of WWE productions and they delivered in spades once again. The first thing I noticed was that for each match (other than the Rumble match itself) both competitors completed their full ring entrance and then the ring announcer did the introductions rather than calling out their names, weights, and home towns on top of their music while the wrestlers walked the aisle. I wonder if that was a new WWE standard, or if this show was scheduled to run short and they wanted to tack on a few extra minutes to stretch the format. Either way, it brings a more serious “pro sports†feeling to the proceedings and is certainly an improvement.
In the first match of the night, the “All-American American†(a goofy moniker if I’ve ever heard one) Jack Swagger defended his newly acquired ECW title against the man he defeated for it, Matt Hardy. Matt is still very over with fans, and having been an MFer since Matt’s original split from his brother, I was quite pleased to see that his ECW title reign was successful in that respect. This was my first time seeing Swagger in the ring; he’s a good-looking athlete, but he seemed a bit green, so WWE was wise to book him against a capable hand like Hardy to guide him and provide him with some valuable on-the-job training. Swagger’s finisher was nothing more than a gut-wrench powerbomb, and the two flaws with that are the pedestrian nature of the move (it’s a bit boring for a finish) and that it’s too hard to execute on some of the bigger men he’s likely to face, such as Mark Henry. I hear he has a Blue Thunder Bomb in his repertoire as well, so maybe if he mixes them up they’ll solve at least the first concern, but it’d be no easier to use on a giant than the gut-wrench powerbomb is. He might want to add either a submission hold or an explosive strike to his arsenal. The regular ECW announcers called this match, and Matt Striker is phenomenal on commentary and very entertaining. His bright, relevant announcing is easily the best on television.
Then there was a women’s title match. Other than the fact that Melina still screams a lot while wrestling and seemed to be a babyface in the match, there was nothing of note; moving on. The Shawn Michaels angle with JBL is actually fairly interesting, and a nice twist on storytelling. I can see them having a heck of a match at WM 25 if this is where things are leading, as they seem to be. They’ve found a unique way to connect fans to a performer via this “financial peril†angle, and JBL is the perfect foil to make it work.
But considering the heavy reliance on soap opera-style drama in the JBL/HBK angle, all the ga-ga with Jeff came off as too much. That stuff about being attacked in his hotel, and his pyro going wrong on purpose should have been saved for when it could be the only such arc in the company. With two world titles in WWE, they ought to focus one championship storyline on straight wrestling so that the two featured programs aren’t so similar in style. When Vickie Guerrero first announced that the title match between Jeff Hardy and her husband Edge was a No DQ affair, my instinct was to wonder why they saved that news for moments before the match instead of announcing it ahead of time on television. After all, advertising it as such might have sold tickets and ppv buys. But when I saw Matt’s interference, I realized they wanted his heel turn against his brother and former tag team partner to be less predictable, although many wrestling analysts started calling Matt’s heel turn the moment the Charismatic Enigma won the WWE Championship, so it was always sort of predictable.
If handled properly, the program between Matt and Jeff could be very exciting, and hopefully as solid as the Bret/Owen Hart feud of 1994 that seems to have inspired this civil war. From the coverage I read of the first episode of SmackDown! after Matt’s heel turn, his promo was a good way to get that angle moving forward, and I expect a big showdown between them at WrestleMania, perhaps with involvement from a returning Christian. The Edge/Hardy match was pretty good, but nothing they haven’t done to death on SmackDown! in the past, with various challengers and champions in similar matches.
On to the featured event of the evening, the Rumble match. I won’t break down the entire contest, but I will say that it was booked to be fun and fast-paced (the 90-second intervals are vastly superior to the 2-minute type), and I truly enjoyed the ride. Vladimir Koslov’s elimination of Khali looked so lame that I figured Khali must have been protecting a leg injury. He practically placed himself gently onto the floor outside the ring, and it looked bad. Mysterio’s nifty back-walk on Miz and Morrison was a new innovation in the outside-the-ring-but-not-eliminated department, and a great one at that. However, the reigning tag team champs being tossed out single-handedly by HHHis HHHighness certainly did nothing to allay concerns that Triple H is the most greedy, dominant performer in the company thanks to his McMahon family affiliation. Did he really need to do that? Of course RVD’s surprise appearance was fun (and how many times will Goldust return to WWE?), but the best part about the 2009 Rumble was the teamwork of the hottest heel stable in the company, the Legacy.
When I wrote about the Rumble recently, I mentioned how stables never seem to keep their eye on the ball in the “every man for himself†match, but the Legacy did it right and it worked beautifully. It was a rare pleasure to see a group of guys working together throughout the match so that their leader could go on to victory. Wrestlers never seem to exhibit that sort of common sense, and it frustrates me to no end just like when a 20-year veteran ducks his head too early on an attempted backdrop and gets kicked in the mouth for his trouble. Randy Orton entered the ring at number 8, and was quickly joined by teammate Ted DiBiase, Jr. who was number 10. Just five entrants later, the threesome was together in the ring when Cody Rhodes entered at number 15, and they were ready to rumble. From that moment on the Legacy took care of each other and handled their business, protecting Orton and splitting the workload of one man into thirds so the team captain could win his first ever Royal Rumble match and go on to WrestleMania XXV. This was one of the most entertaining Rumble matches I can remember, and the fact that these cocky young hotshots were booked to out plan and out think their 27 opponents will go a long way in cementing them as a force to be reckoned with across the three brands.
So what conclusions shall I draw from my experiment? Here are the facts: I watched this show as an uninformed fan with no expectations or insider hints, which never happened while I watched WWE regularly so it was a pleasant treat for me. The Royal Rumble is one of the biggest shows of the year, the Rumble match has always been one of my favorites, and I got to see it for free this year. I was insulated against burnout from overexposure of the product because it’d been a long time since I’d watched WWE programming, and I was looking forward to the suspenseful 30-man contest and the revealing of likely booking plans for WrestleMania. With all these factors in their favor WWE did a decent job of entertaining me, however, had I been watching the five hours of original programming each week and paid for this ppv, they would no longer have had those advantages and my viewing experience as a fan would have been far different. It wouldn’t have been worth $50 to see a good Rumble match and Matt Hardy’s heel turn, which would have come to light on the following week’s free TV anyway. The JBL/HBK angle has been all over TV, the WWE title match offered nothing unique or interesting, and the women’s match was worthless.
I did have fun watching this show for the most part, but you could consider my enjoyment artificially inflated thanks to all the unique factors I mentioned earlier. Yes, I still would have liked the Rumble match itself either way since it was booked well, with a smart heel faction finally doing the shrewd thing. But WWE owes it to their paying customers to offer a show that’s more than just good enough, especially on one of their most famous spectaculars and the official first step on the march toward WrestleMania, the main event of WWE’s year.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
p.s. – “We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.†– Benjamin Franklin
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Elsewhere on Pulse Wrestling this week…
Here’s a very rare visit from our esteemed owner, as we get to see the Widrospective on RAW, the Rumble, ‘Mania and SuperShane.
Speaking of the Royal Rumble, here are newcomer Victor Malar’s 10 Thoughts on the Rumble, and his 10 Thoughts on SmackDown! too.
Ivan Rushfield produces episode 16 of Breaking Holds, discussing (what else) Orton and the Legacy, and Shane McMahon.
Paul Marshall looks at the other big US promotion in his Total Nonstop Weekly column.
Finally this week, what exactly is going on with Austin’s retirement match and Mickey Rourke’s involvement at WrestleMania XXV?
