6 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 6)

1. Rumble Announcement Flummoxes

Brock Lesnar Paul Heyman
WWE.com

If you happened to log onto Twitter moments after Paul Heyman’s “unprecedented” announcement that Brock Lesnar would enter the Royal Rumble match at #1, you would have seen quite the reaction.

The only problem is that it wasn’t was WWE likely anticipated.

Fans immediately started wondering whether the WWE Championship would be on the line, as it was in 2016 when Roman Reigns entered at #1 as the champ. (Maybe Brock will do the same thing as Roman and take a nap for half the Rumble.) Or is Brock simply trying to win a guaranteed title shot at WrestleMania and is going to challenge The Fiend for the WWE Universal Championship?

Those are really the only two scenarios here. Otherwise, the Rumble match is utterly pointless, like the Greatest Royal Rumble.

And if the WWE Championship is not up for grabs in the Rumble, then that likely means it won’t be defended until Mania, which would be 133 days between title defenses. That’s an insanely long gap for your company’s top championship.

Bottom line: This announcement was sold as a big deal, and it went over like a fart in church. And it left more questions than exclamation points. Hard pass.

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Contributor
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.