10 Things I Hate About The Royal Rumble

There’s a reason that multi-man pile-ups like the Money In The Bank ladder match and the triple threat/fatal four way tend to focus on two performers at once while the others sell supposed semi-consciousness at ringside until it’s time to get their stuff in. It’s contrived and kind of silly, like when the bad guys attack the hero one at a time in cheap kung fu movies, but it’s far easier to choreograph.

More to the point, it’s also far more exciting to watch and far easier to follow. The Royal Rumble is what happens when you turn off the parental controls on wrestling’s remote; when you have a ridiculous number of people fighting all at once in a confined space. Forget the live audience, even the TV production crew can’t follow the action - that’s why a good third of all eliminations are barely caught by the cameras.

Because everything’s happening at once, nothing can really happen. There’s no space for genuine wrestling action, no room for the heated melodrama of the squared circle. It’s basically punch-kick-heave-punch-kick-heave. Two or three men may get to pull off high spots (cf the Morrison/Kingston ‘Floor Is Lava’ Spot). That’s pretty much it.

So, it’s an hour long match in which almost nothing happens, and you can’t follow half of what does. What does the crowd pop for?

Entrances. The countdown starts, the crowd starts chanting along, a familiar theme kicks in, and… IT’S DEAN AMBROSE! Deano slouches to the ring, peeling off his jacket with a cartoon mean look on his face. He intends to kick ass or chew gum, yet no gum is evident! He slinks between the ropes, exuding rebel-without-a-clue cool… and then it’s punch-kick-heave, and the buzz flatlines again.

No pop has ever died faster than the pop a Rumble entrant gets, because the second they get between the ropes, the fun is over. That is, unless you’re one of the aforementioned main event stars earmarked to clean house, in which case those cheers will last as long as your final hapless victim - then it’s punch-kick-heave, and the crowd cranes their neck back to the stage again to wait for the next five-count.

There are exceptions, of course. The 2010 Rumble, for example, featured a stellar turn from from a megalomaniacal, messianic CM Punk in the early going, and some peerless work from Shawn Michaels in the second half, desperately gambling on winning that title shot and fulfilling his obsession with forcing a rematch with the Dead Man. But those are exceptions, not the rule.