WWE Royal Rumble 2019 Men's Rumble: How Every Elimination Happened
Seth Rollins triumph where 29 others falter.
Last year's men's Royal Rumble was hailed an instant classic seconds after Shinsuke Nakamura was declared the winner, quickly joining legendary bouts like the 1992 and 2001 incarnations in those ever-popular G.O.A.T. debates.
2019's won't be met with similar enthusiasm, and justifiably so.
Every bit as uneven as the average episode of Raw, it was a near-perfect microcosm of the main roster product as a whole. A lack of huge surprises, lame comedy, rudimentary storyline progression, fun gif-worthy moments, and, for several periods, an overwhelming sense of pointlessness. The bout possessed all these traits and more, but the most WWE thing of all was its failure to meet expectations.
This isn't to say it was a bad match. Far from it, in fact: this was a decent-to-good Rumble, but we should demand more from this historic event, particularly after last year's highs.
Nonetheless, Seth Rollins will prove a popular winner, and with Brock Lesnar's thrilling win over Finn Balor as evidence, his Universal TItle challenge should be riveting. He triumphed on the back of a well-agented closing stretch, after a match that brought contrasting connotations for the 29 men lobbed over the top rope...