10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About 2022
9. The Royal Rumble Disaster
Triple H has a huge opportunity to further restore fan good will at the upcoming Royal Rumble Premium Live Event, because Vince McMahon contrived to ruin an event with a robust mathematical formula for dramatic, feel-good excitement.
He ruined it more generally by often picking the very last person you wanted to see headline the biggest show of the year to win while, at the same time, treating your favourite wrestlers like complete geeks. Across 2018 and 2021, he did a fairly decent job with the most theoretically exciting event of the year, but he really Vinced it in 2022.
Brock Lesnar, after fellow babyface Bobby Lashley celebrated a tainted win over him like a geek, just had to enter the men's Rumble and win it. What might have scanned as yet another short-sighted, lazy decision was actually sharp relief because Shane McMahon - off his own back - booked himself to look like a more legit fighter than Matt Riddle. This was rather hard to take seriously when he couldn't even jump up to take his own elimination - and since Lesnar eliminated him, it shouldn't have taken any doing. Leave it to that un-athletic egomaniac to make Brock Lesnar look weak.
Nobody knew the themes in the crowd, which is some indictment. It's not as if they go to watch the wrestling.
Can Triple H do a job of which Pat Patterson would be proud (even though he allegedly tried to get one of the most intelligent producers in WWE history out of the room as he rose to power, so probably isn't too fussed about that)?
On the following evidence, perhaps not...