3. How Not To Book A Rumble
Lets just ignore who won The Rumble (for a minute), and focus on how the rest of the match was booked. It was pretty weak. For starters, the majority of the main roster wrestlers arent over enough to get anyone excited. Big E, Adam Rose, R-Truth, Sin Cara, Titus ONeil and Fandango could have easily been left out for some names that would have made the match more fun. How about D-Von Dudley? Shelton Benjamin? Chris Masters? Kenzo Suzuki? The booking was also incredibly careless with how fan favorites were tossed out. Dolph Ziggler had huge momentum at Survivor Series in November. Two months later he was taken out of The Rumble in two minutes. Bray Wyatt had a long outing, but his elimination was about as suspenseful as Zack Ryders. Dean Ambrose did nothing of consequence, and Cesaro and Wade Barrett were just bodies to fill out the match. And Daniel Bryan? Wow. It felt like Vince McMahon has a personal vendetta against the fans. If WWE had no plans for Bryan, they should have just given him another month off, so people wouldnt have got their hopes up. In the end, two of the last four men were lumbering giants from the Attitude Era. Everyone knew they had no chance of winning (try to imagine Kane vs. Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania with a two month build), which meant there was only one viable option. No drama, no suspense, just a sad inevitability. The fans reacted accordingly.
Andrew Soucek
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
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