Has a professional wrestling match ever been so defined by someone that was never even booked to be in it? As the buzzer sounded to herald the 30th and final entry into the Royal Rumble, the crowd held in one final breath before what must be their hero, the man everyone and their dog wanted to run to the ring and clean house, Daniel Bryan. Instead, poor old Rey Mysterio headed to the ring and received the most negative reaction of any superstar entering the match. The booking of Rey as number 30 still makes little sense today, unless the drawing of numbers actually is random. The final five to enter included Alberto Del Rio and Ryback both heels at the time - wouldn't one of them made more sense? As it was, the crowd gave approximately zero poops to the match from here on out, and if anything, this match is worth watching back just for the vitriol in the revolt of the crowd. To make matters worse, this match marked the final time we would see CM Punk in a professional wresting ring (for now). Awful.
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.
