5 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2022

1. Creatively Bankrupt Company, Part 2

Bad Bunny

WWE.comIn addition to how crappy the pairing of the winners were, the worst development of the two Royal Rumble matches is how few actual developments there were. Rumbles are great opportunities to jumpstart feuds, further rivalries, or plant seeds for a future conflict.

Think about it for a second… there were no other big angles to come out of either Rumble: Ripley wasn’t eliminated by Nikki ASH (or vice versa); After a couple weeks of teasing, Rey and Dominik Mysterio weren’t even in the Rumble at the same time; RK-Bro barely had enough time together in the ring to shake hands before becoming cannon fodder for Brock; Bianca Belair didn’t eliminate anyone, despite being on a lot of people’s cards as a possible winner; Big E went out quiet as a mouse four weeks after losing his world title.

Bad Bunny got more attention and time to shine than the vast majority of the roster. Guys like Montez Ford, Rhea Ripley and Austin Theory could have had career-making performances, but they did nothing of note. Again, think for a second: Did anyone have a truly memorable performance outside of the winners?

If you can think of one good undercard storyline that was seeded during either Rumble, please speak up, because none are readily apparent. And that’s a clear sign that WWE was phoning this in and lost all creativity.

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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.