Uneven ‘Royal Rumble’ Paves the Road to ‘WrestleMania’

The show didn’t get great reviews from fans, but it brought WWE’s plans for the immediate future into focus.

The top two matches for WrestleMania 38 appear to be set following Saturday’s Royal Rumble PPV in St. Louis.

Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey were the winners of the men’s and women’s Rumbles, respectively, guaranteeing both of them a championship match at WWE’s biggest show of the year, which takes place over two nights, starting April 2, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Lesnar is scheduled to face Roman Reigns for the universal championship, and Rousey is scheduled to face Charlotte Flair for the SmackDown women’s title.

Rousey returned to WWE after a multiple-year hiatus during which she and husband Travis Browne welcomed a baby girl. She had left with the intention to start a family, and while most expected her to return eventually, it was a surprise to hear a few weeks before that she was training for a return only four months after giving birth. She entered the women’s Rumble match at No. 28 and worked for about 10 minutes, eliminating four women, including Flair, to win the match.

Rousey’s last match, at WrestleMania 35 in 2019, was a three-way involving Flair and Becky Lynch. The match was controversial at the time because most fans seemed to have preferred the idea of a one-on-one match with Ronda vs. Lynch, but WWE inserted Flair, likely in part because of the feeling that the match would be better with two seasoned wrestlers involved. Lynch pinned Rousey to win both the Raw and SmackDown women’s titles, although the finish was botched when Ronda’s shoulder accidentally came off the mat before the three-count. Obviously what would make sense in the story line would be for Ronda to point out this fact and challenge Lynch to a title match at WrestleMania. But this is WWE where story lines often do not make sense, so it will be interesting to see how it explains Ronda wanting a match with Charlotte, who she already eliminated from the Rumble, and not Becky. Whatever story line they come up with (in real life, the reason for the match is that Rousey is signed through at least next year’s WrestleMania), they likely feel that the Lynch match is the bigger one—hence WrestleMania with Charlotte this year and WrestleMania with Lynch next year.

Rousey is said to be a regular on TV from this point forward, not a part-timer, and will be considered a SmackDown wrestler; although she will certainly make appearances on Raw as well. WWE’s very lucrative television deal with Fox expires in 2023, so the idea is that putting her on that brand will boost ratings as the time nears for renewal discussions.

Lesnar entered and won the men’s Rumble despite wrestling and losing the WWE championship to Bobby Lashley earlier in the show. In that match, which saw both men brutalize each other with dangerous-looking German suplexes, the referee took a bump and Reigns hit the ring to attack Lesnar. He speared Brock and then beckoned to Brock’s manager, Paul Heyman. Heyman had managed Lesnar for years, then took over as the manager for Reigns, and a few months ago apparently switched his allegiance to Lesnar again. But in the end, it was a swerve; and Heyman handed the title belt to Roman, who laid out Lesnar with a shot to the head, allowing Lashley to get the pin. Heyman and Roman then left together. This obviously builds to Roman vs. Lesnar for the title at WrestleMania, perhaps with the story line that Heyman will finally have to choose which wrestler he will side with once and for all.

The Royal Rumble itself was a mixed-bag show, which received mostly negative reviews from fans. Seth Rollins beat Reigns via DQ in the opener. The match was great, but the finish was terrible. Reigns put Rollins in a guillotine choke, and Rollins appeared to lose consciousness. The ref raised and dropped his arm to determine whether the match should be stopped, but Seth’s limp arm fell on the bottom rope, which led to the referee calling for Roman to break the hold (impossible to suspend disbelief on this preposterous call). Roman refused to break the hold and was disqualified but retained the title.

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The women’s Rumble was very hit-and-miss. WWE fired dozens and dozens of performers over the past two years and then suddenly had a match in which it needed 30 women, and there weren’t 30 women to choose from. So it went outside the company and brought back wrestlers such as Kelly Kelly, Alicia Fox and Cameron, who hadn’t been regulars in years. (Interestingly, it didn’t use anyone from its own NXT brand.) Some of the wrestling was O.K., some of it was downright terrible, but there was a car-crash entertainment factor to it.

Becky Lynch beat Doudrop to retain the Raw women’s title. They worked hard and the wrestling technically was good, but Lynch is miscast as a heel; nobody believed Doudrop could win. The WrestleMania sign caught on fire and fans were distracted. Ultimately it was the quietest Becky Lynch match since she first hit it big in 2018. She won with a manhandle slam off the middle rope.

Edge and wife Beth Phoenix beat Maryse and husband Miz in a mixed tag team match that was probably better than expected since neither Maryse nor Phoenix had wrestled in years. Miz and Maryse—while not great in the ring—are good cowardly, diabolical heel characters; Edge and Beth played great gritty babyfaces; and in the end, a program that looked like a waste of time for Edge (given he probably has only a limited number of matches left), actually turned into a fun program with a strong payoff. Edge and Beth hit simultaneous Glam Slams (Beth’s finish) on the heels for the win.

The mens’ Rumble had its moments but was among the more boring Rumble matches in the history of the event. This and the women’s match had their scripts torn up multiple times over the weekend, and in the end both felt disjointed, lacking any good strong story throughout. Among the top moments were Johnny Knoxville looking shockingly good at both giving and (mostly) receiving punishment before being eliminated by Sami Zayn; the return of Drew McIntyre after taking time off to rehab a neck injury; Kofi Kingston trying his annual outrageous elimination-avoidance spot but accidentally mistiming it and getting eliminated for real; and Bad Bunny returning to WWE to hit two great spots and then getting destroyed by a Brock Lesnar F-5.

Other than that, it was a pretty by-the-numbers generic Rumble, and there were many fans disappointed at Lesnar’s somewhat unexpected appearance at No. 30 and subsequent victory. The most notable thing about the match was how quickly they were rushing everything to get the show off the air by midnight ET even though the history of the Royal Rumble has shown that fudging the intervals is not something WWE has ever avoided, and doing it here would have left more time for the big moments at the end.

The “Road to WrestleMania” has begun, and while it didn’t get off to the hottest start, WWE is largely failure-proof at least in the near term, and it should easily sell upward of 100,000 tickets total across both nights for WrestleMania. Hopefully the road to the company’s biggest show of the year is smoother after two years of pandemic-related issues.

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