Why WWE Is Getting The Royal Rumble Wrong

The Rumble is in the midst of an identity crisis; both WWE and the audience alike have no idea how to promote or what to expect from a match with no rules. And, all the while, WWE is creating several expectations that are impossible to fulfil. And, invited to do the same, so do we.

Every time the seconds elapse, and entrant #30 makes his (now their) appearance, we expect a megastar’s theme to blare over the PA. It was never a thing until it became a thing—Tugboat, Warlord, Duke ‘The Dumpster’ Droese—and joined all the other things we’ve come to expect. In particular, John Cena’s shocker of an appearance in 2008 created an expectation impossible to fulfil subsequently. That is on the fans, not the company—but WWE has spent so long serving the fans with nostalgia and shock value that that possibility, like all others, still exists. That last sentence seems drastically at odds with your writer’s output. The irony isn’t lost, but it does illustrate the wider argument: you can’t please us snarky pricks. Not all of us at once, anyway.

Under the latter day, fan-service-gone-f*cking-apesh*t approach, WWE is almost getting its signature battle royal as backwards as Vince Russo did. Unfortunately, discipline is required to correct the course—a discipline shown by a company that has just recently added ‘Worlds Collide’ to its stupidly-stacked schedule.

The psychological make-up of the match feels antiquated in 2019, too.

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