(Late) WWE Royal Rumble 2008 Thoughts: By Matthew Evans (10/02/2008)

The Royal Rumble has been described as “The Most Exciting 60 Minutes In Sports Entertainment”, but previous “Rumble” offerings have proved otherwise.

Take last year’s for example. Up until the riveting exchanges between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels during the closing moments, there was nothing else of note to come from the 30-man elimination bout.

With that in mind, it’s worth pointing out that the Royal Rumble is still a unique annual tradition, that unlike Survivor Series (which is essentially “just another PPV” these days), has remained unchanged since its inception in 1988.

Kicking off the under card of this year’s Rumble was a (cough! Ahem!) “Career Threatening Match” between Ric “I Will Never Retire” Flair and MVP.

For an opener, this was good, though it was the usual, predictable “Nature Boy” fare (I should also point out that if WWE insist on having “Slic Ric” cut a Flair promo where he talks about past matches that none of the current WWE audience are old enough to remember, then this “Quest To Retirement At WM” will wear very thin indeed).

The finish saw Flair reverse MVP’s “Play-Maker” into a Figure-Four Leg-Lock for the tap-out victory for “The Nature Boy”. So, Flair’s career lives for another day. Until No Way Out, anyway (oh, come on: Can you really envision Flair losing any of these matches? Can you really see him retiring at all?).

In my opinion, JBL did not look in “wrestling shape” for his grudge match against Chris Jericho (honestly, it’s like the man hopped out of the announce booth and without any training, climbed back into the ring after a near 2-year absence).

Bradshaw’s bout with “Y2J” wasn’t much of a match (it ended before it could really have got going), but the post-match drama was very effective (after getting disqualified for using a chair, a crimson-drenched Jericho ripped into JBL and used some ringside cable to hang JBL from the top rope). Overall, a mediocre match, but the aftermath got me interested in a possible gimmick bout between the two.

You have to be on your toes when it comes to a New York crowd. These guys like to “go against the grain” and be brutally honest when it comes to accepting wrestlers as “one of their own”. But while I could understand their rejection of former 2005 Diva Search Winner Ashley (who got booed even when she sucked up to NY), I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why they would turn on Rey Mysterio.

Perhaps they feel that Rey appeals too much to the younger WWE fans and is no match for the “cool” heel sensation Edge. Each to their own, I guess, but what I DO know is that the hostility they displayed towards poor Rey succeeded in taking away from Mysterio’s underdog plight, as he really needed to have the crowd behind him in order for the Vicky Guerrero “betrayal” to work later on.

It was an entertaining match, although Rey’s timing was a little off on occasion. Edge’s hangers on (Hawkins and Ryder, who have already become one-dimensional) got banished from ringside (how embarrassing is it though when 90 % of the live audience CHEERS two dastardly heels beating on a babyface?), but new SD! GM Vicky Guerrero stuck her neck on the line (literally) and got an (inadvertent) “619” for her trouble.

As Rey froze in horror at what he had accidentally done, Edge finished him off with a stunning mid-air Spear to retain his World Title.

After all the slick video packages and the praise that Raw announcers Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler had heaped upon Jeff Hardy in the weeks leading up to the Royal Rumble, you would have expected to see a true barn burner from Hardy and WWE Champion Randy Orton.

But all we got was a disappointing, typical “Legend Killer” match (you know, chin-locks, rest-holds etc). Hardy took some risks but it was clear from the glum look on his face BEFORE the match that this wouldn’t be his night.

The finish (where Orton hit an “RKO” from out of nowhere) looked great, but overall this was a huge letdown (and despite strong audience reactions for Hardy prior to the Rumble, the atmosphere just wasn’t there on the night). I believe that Jeff can bounce back from this, but I’m afraid that he’ll struggle to get a look in main-event wise after WrestleMania.

The 2008 Royal Rumble match lived up to the hype. It beat the trousers off of last year’s (and some prior to that) and the addition of Michael Buffer was appropriate (although he did screw up when he announced the #2 entrant Shawn Michaels as “The Heart Break Kid” and nothing else).

The action was pacey and exciting and the addition of HOF Legends Jimmy Snuka and Roddy Piper worked well (they weren’t in there long and the fans gave them a nice nostalgic reaction).

The masterstroke came with the #30 entrant. After WWE announced in October that John Cena was looking at 6-12 month layoff from in-ring action (and Cena himself said in an interview that he would NOT be at WM 24 in any capacity), the last man fans expected to see in the Rumble was the former “Champ”.

But that’s exactly what they got. NY’s hostile reaction proved that absence doesn’t necessarily make the heart grow fonder, but as always, Cena battled through the negativity before it came down to him and just HHH.

If it were up to the fans in MSG, then “The Game” would have been “WM-bound”. But the bookers had already worked their magic and Cena was “The Chosen One”. He eventually eliminated HHH with an FU as a stunned audience looked on.

So now it seems that the man who looked destined to miss this year’s Mania’ entirely will be (provided that he beats Randy Orton at No Way Out) headlining the damn thing on March 30. Now who could have predicted that?

Previously seen on Smash Wrestling:

http://www.firetank.com/smashwrestling/