7 Ups And 10 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2017

A show-stealing title bout, but a Rumble leaving much to be desired.

by Scott Carlson
john cena wwe
WWE.com

Show of hands: Who thinks WWE knows right now what all the major matches at WrestleMania are going to be?

After watching the Royal Rumble Sunday night, you might easily be convinced to keep your hand down. WWE had a somewhat open field of top contenders to win the 30th annual Royal Rumble match and delivered what had to be termed an unexpected winner in Randy Orton, a guy who has been in a tag team for the past few months.

Couple that with the decisions to have John Cena win the WWE World Championship, keep the WWE Universal Championship on Kevin Owens (for now), and have Roman Reigns pull double duty – presumably to fans could boo more – and you’ve got some open spots on your booking sheet. Or in the case of Cena/Orton XL, you’ve got a match that is the very opposite of fresh and exciting for Mania.

Despite that, the Royal Rumble PPV delivered a bunch of really good matches, with the Cena/AJ Styles title match giving fans heart palpitations. Charlotte Flair/Bayley also delivered the goods, and Neville’s coronation was a nice moment. The Rumble itself had some good moments, but overall it once again was a disappointment.

With that said, what tossed a bunch of unsuspecting jabronis and what got Santino Marella’d? Let’s get to it…

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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.