BRM Reviews WWE Royal Rumble 2023

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews WWE Royal Rumble 2023

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 29th, '23, 22:39

WWE Royal Rumble 2023 (1/28/2023)- San Antonio, TX


PAT MCAFEE IS BACK- I like McAfee a lot, but Graves and Cole are overreacting to a ridiculous degree.

MEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH- 8.5/10
Gunther was #1 and Sheamus was #2. They hit each other very hard. Miz was #3. They did some good stuff with him being a chicken-sh*t. More people came in. When Brock came in, he ran wild on everyone (including nearly killing Santos Escobar) until Lashley threw him out. Then he proceeded to have a temper tantrum and attack Baron Corbin and a referee.
Rey was supposed to be in it but he never showed up, and Dominik came out afterwards, wearing Rey’s mask, so the Judgement Day probably took Rey out. Priest and Balor were in soon after Dominik, and they all worked together. Edge took the two big guys out but was then eliminated by Dom, with help from the others. They brawled up the ramp until Rhea came out and attacked Edge, but the Beth Phoenix came out and speared Rhea. Only then did security come out to try to break this up.
Next in was Omos, followed by Braun Strowman. They had a face-off that didn’t feel like a big deal because we’ve seen it so many times already. Braun eliminated Omos.
Logan Paul was in at #29 and got a big spot with Ricochet where they collided in mid air after both trying springboard crossbodies. Cody was #30, and they did their best make sure the crowd wouldn’t turn on him for not being Sami. Having him- big pre-announced name- at #30 was part of this, as was making sure that he got to eliminate people who the fans always boo, like Logan Paul and Dominik. Another part of this was making sure that even though he was #30, he was in there for a long time (fifteen minutes) so that his win didn’t feel cheap. He and Gunther had a heck of a “final two” segment together, and his stuff with Rollins before that was also very good.
As a result of the choice to have the end of this go quite long and to have Gunther be in there the whole time, Gunther set a new record for time in a (non-Saudi) Royal Rumble, shattering the previous record by almost ten minutes. That’s a good consolation prize for him, and I like doing it with him in particular, because he’s someone who someone might look at and assume he doesn’t have the cardio for that sort of thing.
There was a little bit of an over-arching story about teams working together (mostly Sheamus and Drew and Judgement Day, but Bruan and Ricochet as well). That and Gunther’s run were the only real storylines throughout. This did suffer a big from the predictability of Cody’s win (no one else felt like they even had a shot), but last ten minutes or so were good enough that that really didn’t hurt the match.

Pat McAfee referee to Peacock as “the cock.” I’m sure that will make the folks at NBC-Universal happy.

PITCH BLACK MATCH: L.A. Knight vs. Bray Wyatt- 3.5/10
It’s just a no DQs match… with glow-in-the-dark ropes and graphics on the ring, and the wrestlers were nice enough to wear glow-in-the-dark gear and paint. Do these people not understand what “pitch black” means? When one of the commentary tables broke, glow-in-the-dark stuff exploded out of it. Even the f*cking Kendo stick glows in the dark. The match was short, and the lighting made it impossible to take things seriously.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- here we go again
Bray went to the turnbuckle and his face-paint turned red. He went to attack Knight. Knight tried to run away. Bray no-sold a bunch of Kendo stick shots, then put Knight out with a Mandible Claw. The area that Knight happened to run just happened to be where Uncle Howdy was hanging out, standing on top of a tall…thing. He did a senton off of it and Knight through the stage. Then fire shot up from the stage, because if you add a special effect to something, stupid people won’t notice how vapid this Bray Wyatt bullsh*t is. The life-sized puppet people were watching from the thing that Uncle Howdy jumped off of.

WWE RAW WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Bianca Belair(c) vs. Alexa Bliss- 5/10
This was not a PPV quality match. Bianca won cleanly. On the bright side, Alexa did nothing Bray Wyatt-ish during the match.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- A bunch of Bray Wyatt-y videos played on the TitanTron. Alexa was very scared.

WOMEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH- 7.25/10
The overarching stories here were Liv and Rhea going the distance like Shawn and Bulldog in 1995,and Damage CTRL working together to control the match for a while. Unlike the men’s match, this one had some NXT appearances (Roxanne Perez and Zoey Stark). Booker T was the one legend cameo in the men’s match. The only one in the women’s match was Michelle McCool, who was in the front row. The announcers wondered if she knew she was going to be in the match, which annoyed me because SHE HAD HER F*CKING GEAR ON!
I was also annoyed by the referee not letting Xia Li bring her Kendo stick into the ring. It’s a freakin’ no DQs match!
Asuka returned and got a HUGE pop (second only to Becky). Nattie returned and went for revenge on Shayna Baszler for breaking her nose. They were eliminated by Damage CTRL while trying to eliminated each other, then they brawled to the back.
PIPER NIVEN IS BACK! WITH HER NON-STUPID NAME!
Chelsea Green debuted… and got to be the loser who gets eliminated immediately. At least she didn’t get injured.
Zelina Vega did crossover promotion cosplay for a the new Street Fighter game. This led to Pat McAfee screaming “HADUKEN!” as Zelina and Xia Li traded strikes on the apron.
Nia Jax’s music played before the count-down for #30 started. No one is safe. If we’re all lucky, she’ll concuss Michelle McCool and Taker will get her fired. Everyone ganged up on her and eventually eliminated her.
They mostly continued the feuds that were already going on in the division, and this match suffered from the predictability issue a lot more than the men’s match did. Or, rather, the stuff they did at the end wasn’t compelling enough to overcome it like it was in the men’s match.
Having Rhea and Liv go the distance was a bad idea. It has gotten to the point where it doesn’t seem spectacular anymore, and that’s a very bad thig if you want to have doing that be a tool in your toolbox that you can occasionally use to get someone over (like they tried to do with Gunther tonight). I think the whole reason that Rhea was #1 was because they thought that if she was #1 people would think that she wouldn’t win, but that’s not a good reason to do something. With Liv, it was totally unnecessary. If you want to fight predictability, BUILD OTHER PEOPLE UP IN THE WEEKS BEFORE THE SHOW SO THAT THEY SEEM LIKE THEY HAVE A CHANCE!


WWE UNDISPUED TITLE MATCH: Roman Reigns(c) (w/Paul Heyman & Sami Zayn) vs. Kevin Owens- 8.25/10
I laughed my ass off at the “Tribal Queef” sign.
These two had a hard-hitting match with a lot of false-finishes, but everyone knew that we weren’t going to get a finish without something happening with Sami first, and everyone knew that Owens wasn’t going to win, so that worked against the match. What worked for the match was the absolute BRUTALITY of it, especially some of the stuff Roman did to Owens towards the end. Owens got a visual pinfall on Roman. Not much happened on the Sami front. He hesitated to give Romann a chair once, and he showed real concern for Owens, but that was about it.


POST-MATCH SEGMENT- TREMENDOUS!
The rest of the Bloodline came out. They were about to give Sami his ceremonial lei of official membership, but Roman stopped it and told the Usos to assault Kevin Owens first. Solo also joined in. They handcuffed Owens to the ropes and kept superkicking him. The fans all chanted for Sami to help. Roman was going to hit Owens with a chair, but Sami stepped in the way and tried to talk him down. Roman responded to this by offering the chair to Sami and telling him to hit Owens with it.
Sami wouldn’t do it. Roman bullying him and getting in his face and Sami briefly got in Roman’s face but then turned away… and then Roman turned to yell at Owens… and Sami hit him in the back with the chair.
Sami turned to the Usos and dropped the chair. He still wants to be friends with them because the Bloodline was about more than Roman; it was about all of them together… right? Jey was almost at the point of tears because he was so disappointed in Sami. Jimmy was furious, and nailed Sami with a superkick. Jimmy started pounding on Sami. Solo pulled him off, but just so he could hit Sami with a Samoan Spike.
Roman got back up, and he is pissed, seemingly at Sami and at himself for turning his back to Sami. He watches as Jimmy and Solo beat on Sami. Jey just watches, but without the animated thirst for revenge of Roman.
Now the fans are all chanting for Jey. Roman and Jimmy take notice. “This isn’t your brother! We are!” Jimmy shouts. Jey rolls out of the ring. He cries as he walks up the ramp. Roman starts to absolutely destroy Sami with the chair. There are loud “F*CK YOU, ROMAN!” chants. He starts destroying the ceremonial lei meant for Sami, then leaves.
I wish the announcers would have hammered home the idea that no one is coming out to help Owens and Zayn because of their history of being heels, but other than that, this was tremendous. The brutality of the match did a wonderful job of getting Sami to the place of concern for Owens that he needed to be to make this work. Sami so badly wanted to be a member of this group, but he realized that the cost to his soul was too high.

So yeah. That was excellent, but I have one concern: After watching this segment, I am much more interested in Sami vs. Roman than I am in Cody vs. Roman. Hell, I’m almost as interested in Jey vs. Roman as I am in Cody vs. Roman.
I think what they did with Jey here is meant to set up Jey coming back into the Bloodline fold in a way that feels like enough of a betrayal of Sami that it makes Sami & Owens vs. the Usos into a big match for Mania, but at that point I’d still be worried that fans will turn on Cody, who I think has to beat Roman in order to elevate him to the level that WWE needs him to be at. There has been a lot of speculation that Cody will only challenge for the WWE World Heavyweight Title instead of for both belts and claim that that is the one his father always wanted to hold, but I don’t see how you get into a position where Cody can go out and say that without sounding kind of stupid for essentially turning down a shot at a second world title at the same time. The other alternative is Cody losing, but at that point he almost has to turn heel, and the natural way to do that would be to have him be upset at the fans for being behind Sami instead of him, but they just did that with Edge and Bryan two years ago.

This was a pretty good show from WWE. The two rumbles (especially the men’s one) and the main event both delivered, and the angle to end the show is something that we will be talking about in twenty years. The stuff in the middle was bad (and destroyed any hope I had of anything involving Bray Wyatt not being terrible, but I thought the show as a whole was quite enjoyable.
Notably, this was the first year since they have started doing two Royal Rumbles where the second one has not felt like a slog. I think a big reason for that was the lack of the usual tropes. We only got one pointless legends cameo in each match, almost no one making a pointless cameo from NXT (and the two who did were both in the women’s match, rather than one in each), we only had one person stay on the outside for a while before entering (Miz) and only one person sit on the outside when we were all supposed to forget that they weren’t eliminated (Logan Paul). We got no Kofi Kingston silliness and abuse of the rules (he botched it for the second year in a row. Hopefully they’ll smarten up and just stop doing it), and no one tried any such silliness in the women’s match. Hopefully this continues into future years (I’ve given up all hope of them trying to tell coherent, overarching stories in either match).
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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