10 Things I Hate About The Royal Rumble

Giving a battle royale this kind of prestige makes absolutely no sense. Fair enough, to determine the winner of some meaningless makework trophy, or the number one contenders for something like the tag team championships, where literally any team could win without changing things noticeably for the company’s plans… but to determine who will face the a WWF/E world title holder at the biggest show of the year?

That’s ridiculous, and because of this weird blind spot that fans have when it comes to the Rumble, it’s a ridiculousness that’s been left more or less unexamined for over two decades. Why on earth, in kayfabe, should such a top spot be gifted to the last man left in the ring in a match where wrestlers are eliminated, not by being out-wrestled or out-fought, but by being muscled over the top rope?

Every year, the biggest and strongest men in the company - huge, huge dudes like Mark Henry, Big Show, Khali, Kane etc - arrive in the Rumble to awed whispers on commentary and a melodramatic, concerted effort by multiple performers to manhandle them over the top. And that’s fair enough, because a battle royale isn’t about being good at wrestling. It’s not about any of the things that are supposed to make a champion in WWE.

The biggest and strongest men are the ones with the best shot at winning, because they find it easier to lift people up and because people find it hard to lift them up. Of course, because no one really wants to see huge, huge dudes like Mark Henry, Big Show, Khali, Kane etc actually win, they end up eliminating each other, or are ganged up on by five little guys at once.

There’s a false equivalency at work with the Rumble that says that the man who wins it actually deserves a WrestleMania world title shot, when all of the rest of the year, the kayfabe criteria for getting a world title shot is by earning it; by grimly working your way up the card, developing a reputation, an aura that says you could be the best by beating the best.

Battle royales aren’t supposed to be important; they’re not supposed to mean something significant. The Royal Rumble is no different, and nowhere was this more evident than in 2015, when Kane and the Big Show, working in tandem in the pay of the Authority, knocked out and unceremoniously dumped over the top some of the crowd’s favourite performers like they were nothing… because of course they could. They were the biggest and strongest guys there.

Battle royales should be cheerfully inconsequential exhibitions of strength and heelish low cunning, and if there’s a prize of any sort, it should have the same flavour of cheerful inconsequence to it. And WWE have been sending mixed signals on this point for years, regularly booking arthritic legends, announcers, midgets or (sigh) women as comedy entrants, despite the supposed high drama and stakes involved.