6 Match Star Ratings For WWE Royal Rumble 2021
1. Men's Royal Rumble Match
A mostly very good Rumble match that felt weirdly flat in a way that is difficult to articulate.
Perhaps it was a drab first half only really highlighted by the return of Carlito that cloaked everything in an underwhelming vibe.
Is one Rumble match enough on the night? Is the stipulation itself showing its age? Is it just a virtual crowd thing? Have all the (sensible) trademark moments become clichés? Again, difficult to articulate, but that might be why, for example, Damian Priest's Diesel-adjacent sequence didn't really pop like the best of them. Nor did Daniel Bryan's half-hour Iron Man stint.
It was never going to resonate in parallel with Edge's all-the-way-from-#1 run, but it never felt like Seth Rollins had crushed his dreams of headlining WrestleMania before he heavily considered retirement. If the aim was to mirror Shawn Michaels' heartache of 2010, it wasn't realised. Bryan Vs. Seth Rollins will bang, if that is indeed the direction, but - and this isn't promising - this needs to be fleshed out on TV now.
The shock return of Christian was handled quite beautifully under the circumstances. The serendipity of his returning just one year after his old storyline brother fulfilled WWE's remit of putting smiles on people's faces, even if those faces were lagging and grainy.
It's odd, because there was so much to appreciate about the Rumble and little to earnestly love. Edge has spent two hours, 43 minutes and 39 seconds in the ring across his four return matches. His coming back is another indictment of WWE's ability to create new stars, but he's not doing it by halves - and he created much suspense around the central question of the match by hovering perilously close to elimination across several impressive and well-timed moments.
And although his presence hung over a match that felt like it would only kick in when he returned, Randy Orton's selling was sensational. It genuinely felt like something had gone awry for a while there, but the last jump scare could have been drawn out a bit. He got tossed almost immediately, which undermined any sense that this was some masterplan.
There wasn't much in the way of standout action, and too many opportunities were missed to pen subplots heading towards a WrestleMania season WWE hasn't done anywhere near enough to build.
Star Rating: ★★★½