11 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2018

1. Rousey Upstages Asuka

Ronda Rousey Charlotte Flair Asuka Alexa Bliss
WWE.com

This is easily the most controversial thing that happened at the Royal Rumble. Depending on your perspective, you either agree or think the frustration is misplaced.

But Ronda Rousey’s debut Sunday night was done in about the worst way you could script it.

Truth: Rousey is a huge star who could give WWE’s women’s division immediate credibility and crossover appeal. She apparently has signed a fulltime deal and is not going to be a female version of Brock Lesnar, showing up once a month for a paycheck.

That said, Asuka had just won the first women’s Royal Rumble match and was celebrating this historic moment… and Rousey came out, smiled, waved and pointed at the WrestleMania sign repeatedly. Her arrival immediately overshadowed the Empress of Tomorrow and made the moment all about Ronda. (Yes, it wasn’t her decision.)

There was no perfect way to debut Rousey, and a PPV that had a lot of eyes on it was an appealing platform. But this is going to go down as a questionable decision for a while.

All that said, Rousey still has the potential to be a huge asset to the women’s division and WWE as a whole, so this is not an indictment on her or her joining WWE, but merely how she debuted.

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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.