After winning the brutal Last Man Standing match that opened the show, Dean Ambrose entered the Royal Rumble at #19 and racked up another half-hour of in-ring time. Ambrose made it all the way to the end of the match, finally suffering the elimination that gave winner Triple H the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Many fans likely expected Roman Reigns to factor into the finish of the match, but given that Triple H-Reigns is clearly the WrestleMania main event (like it or not), it made sense for the champion to be eliminated a bit earlier. That way, the heat was shifted away from Reigns and HHH. Ambrose, as an ultra-popular midcarder, was a reasonable choice to go toe to toe with "The Game" in the end, but it was still a stunner to see it play out that way. Truth be told, it doesn't mean much to be Rumble runner-up - Santino Marella did it in 2011. Still, Ambrose's convincing performance led to brief moments where it looked like he could pull off the impossible, and he came away looking better for it.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
