The Royal Rumble Kick-Off show this year featured a four way tag team match thrown together seemingly at random, with the two members of the winning team advancing to the Royal Rumble match itself. The teams involved? The Dudley Boyz, The Ascension, Mark Henry & Jack Swagger and Damien Sandow & Darren Young. First things first, the match itself was as boring as they come. The Kick-Off serves to give the crowd some entertainment before the big event, and if anything this did quite the opposite. Not to say the crowd weren't invested though, they certainly were. The problem is they were invested in the wrong person. If you combined the popularity of the seven other men in the match, it still wouldn't come close to how popular Damien Sandow was with this crowd. The lack of interest WWE has in doing anything with Sandow is mindboggling, considering his talent and popularity. Mark Henry & Jack Swagger won the match, something most predicted due to the name value the two add to the match. Well, due to the name value Mark Henry adds anyway. As this is most likely Henry's final in-ring year the man deserved one last Rumble match. Well, he got it, but it lasted all of 30 seconds. His partner fared worse, getting dumped by Brock Lesnar after only 15 seconds. What point was there to the kick-off show for such a pathetic performance in the Rumble itself?
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
