8 Ups And 12 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2021
3. Lack Of Cohesive Stories
Maybe it’s the fact this writer watched the 2010 Royal Rumble – one of the best Rumbles ever – but the women’s Rumble was just lacking in terms of cohesion.
One of the things that held the 2010 Rumble together so well wasn’t just the great action, it was the mini-storylines: CM Punk’s straight-edge tirades at the beginning, Triple H and Shawn Michaels teaming up, HBK on a quest to get back to WrestleMania and Undertaker, Edge returning and getting revenge on former partner Chris Jericho, and so on.
The women’s Rumble had Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler as wacky tag partners, Lana getting revenge on Nia, Lacey Evans and Charlotte Flair continuing their rivalry, and Rhea Ripley rekindling her feud with Charlotte. But those elements were spread out, downplayed and underwhelming. They didn’t hold the match together – in fact, there wasn’t much that held things together in terms of flow. It just felt like bodies piling up.
This is a bigger problem with WWE today: you have wrestlers who have no real storylines or anything going on. Naomi, Mickie James and Nikki Cross all apparently are on Raw, but haven’t been seen on TV in eons. Throw in three legends and six women from NXT and you have nearly half the field without any kind of backstory for the casual fan to follow.
WWE loves to say they’re all about telling stories, but the Rumble is the ultimate storytelling device: a full hour with 30 characters, many of whom intertwine with each other in strange and wonderful ways. Do it right and you have a masterpiece. Do it wrong and you have a mess.