WWE Royal Rumble 2018: Predicting The Quality Of All 6 Matches
2. Women's Royal Rumble Match
Commentary is crucial in the presentation of match. Commentators require gravitas, wit and enthusiasm to immerse the televised audience into the action. Stephanie McMahon is an insincere and shrill egotist. Her personality is completely incompatible with the art. That's one star removed.
Fortunately, the real stars promise to deliver, and with expectations rampant, the motivation to make this work - in conjunction with the goodwill afforded by a fanbase who want it to work - should converge to craft something memorable and dramatic. For the sake of the bloated wider card, and to mitigate the inevitable mid-match field of inexperienced NXT fodder from falling apart at the seams, this should play out at a rip-roaring pace, directed by experienced heads, prior to the third act. That isn't a prerequisite of quality. What is is the order of entrants; a handful of women on the main roster proper struggle to remember cues in relatively simpler singles bouts, and the prospect of Tamina, Lana and Nia Jax sharing the same ring is frightening. This, to be clear, is not institutionalised sexism: it's a simple matter of precedent, in that the Women's Traditional Survivor Series match suffered from this exact problem.
The vaunted "firsts" have yielded mixed results. The first Women's Hell In A Cell match was let down by a seemingly cursed finish. The first Iron Man match, in contrast, was so good that its heel antagonist actually drew authentic, fabled heel heat. The first Women's Money In The Bank delivered in the ring, but not in the writer's room.
There is no real way of knowing - but since the multi-women matches that littered 2017 were far from trash in execution, there is also precedent for a match as thrilling as it is momentous.
Anticipated Star Rating: ***1/2