5 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2022

2. Creatively Bankrupt Company Defaults

Brock Lesnar
WWE.com

If you ever needed proof that WWE is creatively bankrupt and desperate, look no further than its two Royal Rumble winners Saturday night.

The Rumble long has been an opportunity to elevate a superstar and thrust them into the spotlight. We’ve seen it recently with Drew McIntyre and Bianca Belair. But WWE clearly had a “break glass” moment by signing Ronda Rousey and having her win the women’s Rumble, then have Brock Lesnar do a shock entry into the men’s Rumble, toss five men in minutes and win.

Lesnar had an easy path back to Roman after Reigns cost him the WWE Championship. There was no reason for him to win the Rumble and take away a storytelling vehicle for someone else – unless WWE hasn’t figured out who is going to be challenging for the WWE Championship yet.

Rousey winning isn’t a bad thing, but combined with Lesnar, it smacks of desperation – two wrestlers who had been out of the company for a while and were brought back to juice business, at the expense of elevating anyone else.

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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.