A Quick Take on the 2017 Royal Rumble

This past Sunday, the WWE hosted their annual Royal Rumble event, coming to us from the Alamo Dome in San Antonio, TX.  A site which hosted the 1997 Royal Rumble (trying hard not to think it has been 20 years already).  A Rumble that saw "Stone Cold" Steve Austin put in an impressive performance along his way to the top of the WWF at the time, and to being one of the most popular wrestlers of all-time.  Sadly, the 2017 didn't really have a display like that, but after the previous couple years of lackluster Royal Rumbles, this year's edition, I felt was one of the better ones they've put on in recent years.

The Royal Rumble usually provides a solid series of undercard matches.  This year was no exception.  Every match on the undercard was solid to outstanding.  The John Cena/AJ Styles match was one of the better matches I've seen in a very long time.  Despite how some fans may feel about Cena, he does step up to the plate under the bright lights, and rarely disappoints.  In the Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns match for the Universal Championship, despite how I personally feel about the endless push Reigns gets, and how drawn out this feud has been, both men put on a great match.  Having Chris Jericho (Owens' buddy), hanging above the ring in a cage was a nice old school touch.

As for the Rumble match, I REALLY enjoyed it, well 90% percent of it.  I did my best to stay away from any online sources that may've spoiled the outcome for me.  When it comes to the Rumble, I want to be surprised.  I loved what they did with Braun Strowman.  He's been booked since the brand split last year as an unstoppable monster.  His performance in the Rumble match did not disappoint.  He'd eventually be eliminated, but I felt his performance was congruent with how he's been booked.

Chris Jericho was another highlight.  Entrant number 2, he found himself in the Rumble and lasted about an hour.  I was disappointed that the announcers barely made mention of his duration.  As a kid, I used to love when Gorilla Monsoon would bring up how such and such was nearing a record.  Sure, Jericho spent some of the time outside the ring, but he's had an impressive run, and the Rumble reflects it.  For a man who's about 45 or so, and being in the business as long as he's been, he's putting on one of his best performances as a character since I first saw him back in 1995.

The Rumble was a lot of fun until about entrant 25 or so.  Prior to that, it was mainly the younger guys, and they put on an entertaining show.  From here on out, we had entrants such as Goldberg, Brock Lesnar, and The Undertaker enter the fray.  With these part-timers and legends, it felt the match had some of the air sucked out of it.  Topping it off was entrant 30.  Guess who?  Roman Reigns!  I told myself if he wins, the Rumble was a bust.

As the Rumble reached its conclusion, we had Goldberg quickly eliminate Lesnar, continuing their feud.  Then Reigns eliminated the Undertaker, getting me even more nervous.  Fortunately, Reigns did not go home winning the Rumble.  He was eliminated by Randy Orton.

Overall, despite my feelings that the WWE needs to stop relying on old-timers and continually pushing Reigns on us, they did a great job with the 2017 Royal Rumble.  It's the first Rumble in several years at least I really enjoyed.  I was nervous after the last couple Rumbles, but the WWE didn't let me down this year.  The show gets a solid 4 stars from me.

Starrcade '91: BattleBowl - The Lethal Lottery

1991 Starrcade: The Lethal Lottery

The 1991 edition of Starrcade was the very definition of a gimmick PPV event. There were 10 tag team matches, with the winning team of each match sending it’s representatives to a battle royal known as the Battlebowl. The BattleBowl was a double-ring take on the Battle Royal. As for the tag teams themselves, they were random pairings. As a result, there were heels teaming with faces, and in the case of the opening match with the Fabulous Freebirds, normal tag partners facing off against each other. There was certainly promise for this event to lay down the groundwork for stories moving forward. Unfortunately, the event didn’t seem to do that with the exception of the outcome of the BattleBowl match itself. As an admission, I caught WCW when I could back then, which wasn’t often, so I could be wrong about feuds.

My overall opinion of the event would be that while I felt the BattleBowl concept was interesting, the overall card I felt very middle-of-the-road about. The first half of the tag matches provided most of the highlights. The first match had Fabulous Freebird members Michael P.S. Hayes and Jimmy Garvin on opposing teams. The Arn Anderson and Lex Luger vs. Terry Taylor and The Z Man provided fans with the match of the night. Of course, how can we forget Rick Rude was on this card as well as part of the Dangerous Alliance. The rest of the tag matches after the first half of the event leading up to the Battlebowl could not hold my interest. However, Rick Steiner’s belly-to-belly overhead suplex to 450lb Big Van Vader was one of the event’s highlights. Arachnaman? Not so much.

The BattleBowl itself was a different take on the Battle Royal match concept. Two rings were set up side-by-side, and the elimination was a two-step process. The match starts in ring one. Competitors get tossed over the top rope into ring two. Sort of like a losers ring. When a competitor gets tossed over the second ring’s top rope and hit the floor, then they are eliminated. The first ring in due time gets cleared of everyone except for one, as does the second ring. The two remaining competitors then do battle, and whoever gets tossed over the top rope to the floor is the loser.

The BattleBowl match I felt was well paced. It took awhile for the first ring to clear, which I feel in a match like this is important for storytelling purposes. It gives the feeling that the competitors all want to survive and win the match. Once the second ring started to fill up, THEN the eliminations began to pick up pace. The two survivors were Lex Luger (first ring), and Sting (second ring). Sting and Luger would battle for a bit before Sting eliminates Luger, winning the inaugural BattleBowl match. I thought this set up the feud between Luger and Sting nicely.

Overall, Starrcade ‘91: BattleBowl – The Lethal Lottery, was an event with a lot of promise, but the execution ultimately fell flat. There was so much potential to create interesting feuds moving forward out of the tag matches, which didn’t seem to happen. The wrestling overall wasn’t bad, but lacked consistency. There are some good things to be found on this card, but it was easy for me to become bored watching a lot of it. While I give WCW credit for trying something different, they should’ve saved this gimmick idea for a card other than their biggest one of the year. Either that, or have the tag team matches occur on a series of Saturday Night shows over a few weeks, and save the BattleBowl for the PPV. I’d not recommend watching this. The tag matches made the card drag at times, and can easily cause a view to lose interest, in particular the final half of the tag matches.

Royal Rumble Opinion

The Royal Rumble, one of the premier events for the WWE, started with humble beginnings. The Royal Rumble as an event concept we all recognize aired on the USA network back in January of 1988. A variant of a Battle Royal, instead of having all the competitors start the match at once, competitors came down to the ring in timed increments. The 1988 Rumble match did not end that card, but instead was the second to last match. In addition, the 1988 Rumble was the first, and only Rumble to have 20 competitors. From 1989 on, with the exception of 2011, when the WWE tried a 40 participant Rumble match, the number of competitors has been 30. Over the years, there has been some tinkering to the Rumble event, from placement of the Rumble match itself, to the time between competitors. Perhaps the best known tinker to the event that we take for granted today is that the Royal Rumble lays the foundation for Wrestlemania. In the formative years of the Royal Rumble, it was its own standalone event.

In 1992, the stakes were raised big time. Prior to the 1992 event, there was no Road to Wrestlemania. The idea prior to '92 was the winner received a handsome payday, and got to boast of how they outlasted 29 other competitors. In 1992, the story leading to the Rumble was that the World Heavyweight Title had been vacated. The winner of the Rumble match would win more than a payday, or an ego boost. He’d go home with the title. The winner that year, Ric Flair, made history. Not only for winning the title, but he started the match as the third entrant. He broke the record up to that point for remaining in the Rumble match, which was held by Rick Martel, who set it the year before. Going forward, the Royal Rumble solidified itself as not just a gimmick event, but one of the most important ones of the year. To this day, the winner has either gone on to main event at Wrestlemania, or, in the case of 2016, win a title that was vacant (Triple H).

As a young wrestling fan, I loved the Royal Rumble. It was unpredictable. You got to see battles between tag team partners, face against face, heel against heel. It was always exciting trying to follow who was in the ring, who had been eliminated, and who had yet to come out. The Rumble match was often used to push storylines (see Hogan and Savage in 1989), and was where feuds were born (Roddy Piper and Bad News Brown in 1990). The Royal Rumble usually had very good and entertaining undercard matches. The Rockers vs. The Orient Express tag match from the 1991 immediately comes to mind. That match, to this day, stands as one of my favorite tag matches of all-time.

I have certainly enjoyed the Rumble over the years, despite weaning in and out of varying levels of fandom. There have been plenty of moments that make the Royal Rumble a must-see event. Steve Austin’s 1997 showing, which solidified his rise to the main event scene. Kane’s high number of eliminations from 2001. Vince McMahon blowing his quad running into the ring in 2005, and all three commentators participating in 2012. For the most part, it has retained some degree of surprise. In recent years there’s a surprise entrant, usually a legend. However, some of the surprise element has been ruined by the internet, in addition to overly predictable booking. Also, I wish they didn’t play the wrestler themes as they come out. Just let the buzzer sound, and let us see who comes out from behind the curtain.

With the 2017 Royal Rumble just a few weeks away, I very much plan on watching it. Despite how I feel about some of the recent editions of the event, the Royal Rumble is the only event of the year where you get a potential mixture of lower-card, mid-card and main-event scene competitors in the same ring at the same time. The format of the match stands the test of time, and while the WWE can put on a bad Wrestlemania, or any PPV for that matter, it is very difficult for them to put out a bad Royal Rumble.