The much anticipated Royal Rumble is in the books. Time to look back at the event starting with the kick off show.
Shinsuke Nakamura won back the US championship from Rusev after Rusev collided with Lana, sending her off the ring apron to the floor, decent match overall.
Missed the majority of the next two matches to be honest so let's get to the main card.
Starting off with the Smackdown women's championship match. Asuka going one on one against "The Man" Becky Lynch.
It's great for Asuka that she remained champion by forcing Lynch tap out in a back and forth match, it also made things a whole lot clearer as to who was going to win the women's rumble later on in the show.
Staying with the Smackdown brand, The Miz and Shane captured the tag titles from the bar in a very entertaining match. Let's see how long that reign lasts, I give it until fastlane.
A match I was looking forward to delivered, Sasha and Ronda put on a action packed match. I thought the champion was going to tap but she managed to get out of that dilemma, in the end Banks tapped out. Ronda moves on to her next challenger and Sasha will attempt to move on also, probably to focus on the tag titles at the Elimination Chamber.
The Women's Rumble match featured Pay-per-view debuts for Lacey Evans, Nikki Cross and other NXT talent, I picked number 20 Who turned out to be Zelina Vega. She hid under the ring for a while, sound strategy if you can make it work.
When Lana walked out at number 28 injured, it became obvious that Becky was going to take her spot, the final two came down to Becky and Charlotte with "The Man" prevailing.
Interesting to see what they do with Charlotte, I still stand by my prediction that the main event of Wrestlemania will be a triple threat match between Becky v Ronda v Charlotte.
Going to quickly talk about the two WWE championship matches starting with Bryan v AJ. I had AJ to win this match up but it wasn't to be after numerous attempts to tap Bryan out, Erick Rowan returned to help the champion win the match.
Rowan is obviously going to be Bryan's "heavy" I wonder if they'll mention Bryan's affiliation with the Wyatt family in the past. This match was slow and felt boring, go look back at the crowds reaction to this match or the lack of it. The women's rumble had something to do with it.
Ok, on to the Brock Lesnar v Finn Balor Match. Balor put on a great effort, attacking the beast from the get go, going after him after Lesnar hurt himself via the announce table, For me, Balor had it won but, one moment of lapse of concentration and the Kimora lock was applied, Balor tapped out right away.
On to the main event, which lacked surprises besides NXT's Johnny Gargano and Aleister Black putting on a good show, the match was lacking some fire and became slow in my opinion because how long the event itself was, McIntyre was eliminated with Seth still in. I'm kind of getting tired of Kofi's escape scenarios, it's played out now I'm sorry.
We knew R Truth wouldn't make it to the ring despite being the last entrant but I, like many didn't expect what happened next.
Nia Jax attacked him and took his number 30 spot, eliminating Mustafa Ali and then things picked up when that happened as I thought "they wouldn't have her win the men's match would they?" The Superkick, 619 and RKO to her was crazy prior to her elimination. Royal Rumble tend to have unexpected things happening and this was one of those examples.
Seth Rollins eliminated Braun with a stomp to win. He will go on to "BURN IT DOWN" at Wrestlemania whether it's against Lesnar OR Bryan time will tell.
Overall this event was a 6 out of 10. My only gripe with this is that the show was so long. 5 hours. 7 if you count the kick off show. I'm very much looking forward to the halftime heat tag team match during the big Super Bowl game on Sunday.
All eyes turn to Raw tomorrow night. (Morning if you're in the UK like me) I'm going to a write a one-off blog review for Raw and Smackdown over the next two nights.
All eyes turn to Raw tomorrow night. (Morning if you're in the UK like me) I'm going to a write a one-off blog review for Raw and Smackdown over the next two nights.
Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this. Any feedback is welcome.