10 Things I Hate About The Royal Rumble
6. It Emphasises The Glass Ceiling
It’s not just the winner, though. If the Royal Rumble does anything really well - and that's debatable - it's underlining and foregrounding the disparity between how WWE treats promising midcarders and established main eventers.
Ever since the pipebomb, talk of the WWE's very real glass ceiling and very fake brass ring has been at a consistent high. Fans and critics have latched onto this dual metaphor as finally speaking aloud something many of us have suspected for some time: WWE doesn't really believe that the action beneath the main event draws.
It's the only explanation that makes sense, the only possible justification for raising the top title(s) so far out of everyone else's reach. For the majority of the wrestlers in the WWE, the WWE World Championship might as well be at the top of Mount Everest; the Universal Championship, less so, but only just.
And the booking of the Royal Rumble match, by and large, accurately reflects that. The majority of the men in the match are there to make up the numbers, and at no point does anyone expect them to be successful. In point of fact, the second that a big name arrives in the match, it becomes a given that one, probably two and possibly even three of the men already in the ring will be pitched out in the next sixty seconds, helpless in the face of all that star wattage.
At this year's Royal Rumble, almost all the focus will be on Brock Lesnar, Goldberg and the Undertaker. Special mention will no doubt be made of Braun Strowman and the Big Show, and whichever surprise entrants fall into the 'serious menace' category, as opposed to the 'comedy gimmick' category that the WWE reserves for midgets, announcers, legends who don’t hit the gym anymore and (sadly) women.
No doubt there will also be iron man spots for old school workhorses like Ambrose and Jericho. The rest, however, are just marking time until someone important comes to chuck them over the top rope, at which point they will lose the use of their opposable thumbs and plummet bonelessly to the floor, their mission accomplished: make the top guys look strong.