Official Geek Out PPV Review: Royal Rumble 2012
Details- Details
- Category: Idiot Box
- Published on Tuesday, 31 January 2012 02:23
- Written by Romeo Moran
The 25th Royal Rumble, while ultimately proving itself to be entertaining above all, was an exercise in mismanagement and disappointment.
It was never going to stay afloat with just four advertised matches; the WWE has already conditioned the observant viewer (which is to say, a lot of internet fans) to always expect one or two more to be crafted seemingly from thin air. Sometimes, they deliver (i.e. 6-man Tag Match back at Summerslam, Air Boom vs. Primo & Epico for the Tag titles and Cody Rhodes vs. Booker T back at TLC), and sometimes, they don’t. This was one of those underwhelming shows, and that egregiousness is amplified due to the Royal Rumble being one of the most important events in the WWE season.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – this is a show review, and we must begin at the beginning.
The World Heavyweight Championship match in a Steel Cage opened the show, as expected. More things that were expected were Daniel Bryan the champion retaining, and the match being pretty short. There is only so many things a vertically-challenged champion can do with two giants within the confines of a cage, and I’m glad to say all of those were acted properly, with Bryan getting the believable kind of offense. Big Show naturally dominated the match, and Mark Henry was just there, as much as possible. The last few minutes made the match, as all excitingly ambiguously finishes do – you know all Bryan needed to do was drop down to the floor, but you honestly wondered if Show could actually pull him up and back into the match with just one gigantic arm.
The match clocked in at nine minutes, and for understandable reasons. Any longer would have exposed Henry’s current limitations due to injury. For what it was, however, it was good. The bad part was that it wasn’t much.
After this followed a pretty amazing John Cena video promo to hype up the match with the Rock at Wrestlemania. Top-notch work by Adam the Video Guy once again.
A massive eight-woman Divas tag match followed next, much to everyone’s dismay. A Divas match is usually bad enough (for those who are the type who easily dismiss the Divas division), but an unannounced one is even worse. It was merely a vehicle for the Divas Champion Beth Phoenix, who had been inexplicably absent from TV all month, ending the match on the usual note with the Glam Slam. One unsettling truth to be gleaned from the match, though, is that Kelly Kelly still commands a notable crowd reaction despite legitimately being the worst wrestler among all eight women.
The much-touted Cena vs. Kane came in third but fell victim to “to-be-continued” booking, the most blatant of which having no place on a PPV, where conclusions even minor must be drawn from each matchup. I knew there was going to be something amiss when I realized there were no special stipulations added; such a blood feud would be too much to be contained within a standard match. I figured it was likely going to end in a DQ finish when somebody brandishes a weapon from somewhere under the ring, but we got a double-countout instead. Poor Zack Ryder also became a victim when Kane chanced upon his locker room and dragged him to the ring for a Tombstone Piledriver.
The match itself was solid while it was going on in the ring; both men have been known to put out good, physical bouts when called to, and tonight was no different. It was just bogged down by its storytelling, the very thing that made it notable. Look forward to all frustrations being taken out inside the punishing steel-chain walls of the Elimination Chamber in February.
The counterpart Rock video package to Cena’s earlier one is shown, and it is equally impressive.
A bizarre match-up between Brodus Clay and Drew McIntyre was next. While it served its purpose well, it was exactly the kind of thing that had no place on a PPV. By this point, the entire show had seemed like a better-than-average TV taping, and that’s not a good look for a Big Four event. What I did notice though that McIntyre did manage to get in relatively substantial offense before being squashed, and that means two things: 1) there is tangible progression in Brodus’s opponents, and 2) McIntyre is definitely not at the bottom of the totem pole. Both men would’ve better served in the Rumble match itself, though.
The WWE Championship match between CM Punk and Dolph Ziggler was the second to the last of the show, and it was slightly disappointing, but through no fault of anyone actually involved. First, there was a slight bait-and-switch with regards to Laurinaitis’s role; instead of actually refereeing inside the ring, he became more of a ringside enforcer. This is a loss because having him present inside the ring provides an actual, constantly tense dynamic between all three men: Laurinaitis would act as impartial as he can in order to save his job, trying not to be too favorable towards Ziggler and unfair towards Punk, and Punk interpreting every slight misstep to be a small part of a ploy by Laurinaitis. We never got that until the last few minutes, and it had so much potential.
Second was that the match was only given around fifteen minutes. That’s acceptable… for a TV main event or a PPV midcard match. Not for the company’s top accolade, and certainly not for two of its best workers. And speaking of which, both men definitely made the most of the time they were given, putting out a more than solid bout. Ziggler really shined, epitomizing his pedigree with one beautiful counter of the Go To Sleep to his signature Fameasser.
Now, the Royal Rumble. Two things – either you loved it or you hated it, because you were either entertained or not entertained. It’s easy to spot the flaws, but it was also easier to be entertained by the whole thing (i.e. those who made it to the final four, and Sheamus winning), parts of it (i.e. Cobra vs. Socko, Lawler and Booker actually commentating in their gear all night, Ricardo Rodriguez as Alberto del Rio, Kofi’s handstand save, Kharma's return), or both, as a Royal Rumble always does.
However, this year’s return to the 30-man format exposes the need for a perhaps permanent expansion of the match to 40 men. Most everybody who is anybody was in the match, but it was not enough, as it was lacking big names, such as Kane (a Rumble institution), John Cena, and Brodus Clay. The match was also overcomplicated in its advertising, but to no avail – much ado was made about the new stipulation that everybody being eligible to join the Rumble, but we saw no world champions nor anybody notable that would’ve really taken advantage of that stipulation.
The final few minutes, though, were golden. Fans nowadays are also used to quick final eliminations, but the final two men, Chris Jericho and Sheamus, really duked it out to be the last man standing. (A side note on Jericho: the man did promise to end the world as we know it during the event, and lost. Some people are taking the loss to be another act of trolling; I actually think the match really was his honest try, and he was then booked to come up short. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.) After a back-and-forth battle, Sheamus finally managed to dump Jericho over the top rope and win.
I have no problems with this result. Sheamus was one of the four people whom I identified to be in need of a Rumble win (the other three were Wade Barrett, Kofi, and the Miz, all of which made it to the latter stages of the match, signifying their credible contendership). The win finally re-injects Sheamus, as well as some freshness, back into SmackDown’s main event scene before the stories involving Daniel Bryan, Big Show, and Mark Henry wear thin. I guess the question now is whether Daniel Bryan really will still be on the opposite side of the marquee come Wrestlemania, but that remains to be unfolded.
All in all, if you can sit through the undercard filler and make it to the Rumble, you should be fine. It was a show that set up too many expectations (in almost all the matches, actually) and suddenly decided not to deliver on them at the last minute, for one reason or another. The quality of what was good neutralizes the quality of what was bad, and the viewer’s personal entertainment becomes the tiebreaker, pushing the score up or dragging it down. In my case, I walked away entertained, but I feel for the people who actually had to pay for this. But I was entertained. C+
Get fed!