8 Match Star Ratings For WWE Royal Rumble 2020
7. KICKOFF: Andrade Vs. Humberto Carillo - United States Championship Match
There is a clear edict expressed to the talent working these absolutely pointless Kickoff shows: slow it down, don't get too much sh*t in, don't go too long, ease the crowd into it, go home.
The panel chatter is inane. Nobody has ever said anything insightful. There's a perverse bemusement to be had at times, but that's about it. What should have proved welcome reprieve did not; weirdly, since this was set up by a Ladder match and an injury angle, this badly lacked in heat, intensity and energy.
After a hot enough start, Andrade and Carillo laboured through a contrived and tentative lucha exchange to set up a fairly bizarre, immersion-breaking spot. Andrade purposefully ducked Carillo's dive attempt. He saw him modify his movement into a slide, and was still perplexed when he saw that Carillo hadn't...stopped still? on the canvas. It was weird, and Carillo failed quite badly to project the theme of disrespect with his body language. Andrade, for all of his exhilarating work, is guilty of the odd gap in logic. Lucha-adjacent in style, in-house WWE in pace and structure, and met with a mild audience reaction, this was a real disappointment for which internal policy wasn't exclusively at fault.
They worked a far better effort at TLC's Kickoff, and had more to work from, given the recent, profiled events of Monday Night RAW.
Star Rating: ★★½