9 Reasons WWE Royal Rumble 2017 Match Was The Worst Of The Decade

The Royal Rumble is a bout that calls for brains and strategy as much as it does brawn and brawling. In this match we got a lot of the latter and very little of the former. Chris Jericho employed the crafty ol' heel strategy of lying around outside the ring and avoiding conflict, except when he ignored that completely and attempted to challenge guys one-on-one that had him outmatched.

And in that same vein, there were numerous times where guys had their opponents in a position to easily dispatch them from the ring yet decided to inflict more punishment instead. The aforementioned Jericho was being held in the air by by Big Show, but rather than dump him over the top Show lowered him to the ground and hit him with a WMD.

Lesnar was also quite guilty of this. When he made his entrance, he went on a murderous rampage, but rather than easily chucking dudes over the ropes he just hit them with suplexes and F5s instead. Same with The Undertaker chokeslamming guys onto the mat rather than over the ropes.

That's not to mention the numerous examples of guys breaking up near-eliminations of people they had no alliance with or allegiance to whatsoever, just for the sake of doing it. I recognize that we as wrestling fans have to suspend our disbelief, but this year felt like a bit much when it comes to guys employing braindead strategies.

What did you think of The Royal Rumble? Is it the worst one we've seen since 2010? Sound off in the comments.