12 WWE Royal Rumble 2018 Impulse Reactions
Get Rowdy
This year's Royal Rumble was all about firsts. The historic first ever Women's Royal Rumble was an overdue addition to the annual calendar - a 'Rumble for all'.
Elsewhere, Braun Strowman was still in the hunt for his first Universal Championship. The SmackDown Live! WWE Championship match offered the possibility of the first ever co-Champions storyline on top in tribute to the Intercontinental Title variation between Chris Jericho and Chyna nearly twenty years earlier. Seth Rollins wore bargain basement flames on his tights for the first time.
All these inaugural incidents paled in comparison to the most important first of all. Shinsuke Nakamura's 30-man victory was the first time in this decade the live audience reacted with unanimous positivity to the winner. It was a much-needed tonic to the reactions ranging from indifferent-to-incandescent since 2010.
It was (if nothing else, at times) a show that aimed to please with the outcomes most matches and the worst-kept secret saved for the very end of the show. The battle royals themselves were acts of contrition from WWE towards a fanbase in danger of permanently distancing themselves from the magic of the company's most revered stipulation. Quite literally in fact - Roman Reigns was showered with boos from the Philadelphia natives just as he was in 2015, though that year lacked a 'King Of Strong Style' to kick through the glass ceiling and point upwards to the iconic giant sign...
12. Returning The Favour
The previously unannounced kickoff match between The Revival and The Bálor Club was as ineffectual as the Raw 25 squash that triggered it, made worse by the fact that none of the men even had a sniff of a position in the Royal Rumble match later on with the battle royal predominantly dedicated to the bloated singles rosters across either show.
Thrown together alongside some pedestrian Cruiserweight action in the absence of former champion Enzo Amore, the performers fittingly wore the expressions of those with better places to be.
Watched by less than half of those that idly looked past two moribund minutes of in-ring action to get a glimpse of DX d*cking about in the Manhattan Center on Monday, this match offered little indication of the plans for either going forward and failed to repair the damage done to Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder.
Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson weren't covered in glory by the win either, as they weren't exactly a year earlier when they lifted the tag team titles from The Bar on the 2017 curtain-raiser. Sheamus and Cesaro bounced back from that setback, can The Club fail upwards from their winning fall?