10 Ups And 12 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 34

8. Rumble Winners Fail

aj styles shinsuke nakamuara
WWE.com

You’d think with a couple dozen writers on staff that someone would have noticed that WWE had booked both Royal Rumble match winners, who both are Japanese megastars, to lose their title matches at WrestleMania.

After so much was made about Asuka winning the first women’s Royal Rumble, she went and lost her title match (and her undefeated streak). Then, Shinsuke Nakamura lost his WWE Championship bout against AJ Styles, rendering his title shot useless as well.

It’s fine in one sense, as a Rumble win doesn’t guarantee the title, but when you have two winners and both lose like that? Come on. If you weren’t going to have one of them win, then book someone else to win the Rumble.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.