Monday 30 January 2017

2017 ROYAL RUMBLE

why *not* Randy Orton (middle)
(my thanks to my old friend Big White Tosh for bringing this picture to my attention)
FRIENDS AS WE BEGIN LET US FIRST AGREE that to have any interest, enthusiasm, or concern in any respect for the things or ways of World Wrestling Entertainment (its very name a dumbness) in this the year of our lord 2017 is an indictment against taste levels (or lvlz) from which few if any of us are likely to recover; to do so constitutes an ownage, indeed a self-ownage (we speak of these things less now but they are no less with us than in ġēardagum [yore-days]). What is there here beyond muck, shit, and despair? Entrances, I guess? Shame on those apologists or fools (one can be both) who thought Shinsuke Nakamura's arrival here last year (such as it has been, mired as he is in the three-hundred-seat house shows of Florida) would be anything but what it has been: a crime against art yeah against art. Do not speak to me of his match against Sami Zayn, Nakamura's worst singles main event in years, as a counterexample; do speak to me, though, of his bafflingly awful bouts with Samoa Joe, because we need to figure out how those have even been possible. "But A.J. Styles!" one will doubtless interject to defend this dreck, to which I will reply that yes his WWE matches have been uniformly excellent so far if you don't want matches to have the match part of the match. How has this all gone so poorly? How has WWE taken two of the top five (or at worst top ten) disingenuous græpplørz in all the land (this land of earth) and turned them to this? Thank you for asking, I think I know this one: it is because all of their ideas are terrible, and the wrestlers who wrestle for them are compelled to do so in a house style that is deliberately dumb and the worst and that runs counter to the precepts of real techniques + real emotion upon which all great art (in either the strong style or Romantic traditions which are in truth the same tradition which is in truth Tradition) is founded and through which it manifests. There is nothing here; this is un-art; this is anti-art; this destroys art.

BUT IT IS TIME TO RUMBLE IT IS TIME TO ROOOOOOOOOYAL RUMBLE YAAAAAHHHH THE NIHILISM OF THE CAPITALIST SPECTACLE IS WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE FOR EITHER YOUR SOUL OR THE WORLD DON'T BE STUCK UP IT'S GOING TO BE GREAT and actually last year's Royal Rumble proper (the match itself, I don't remember the other bits) was totally a good one so maybe this one will be too despite the reservations and indeed revulsions we should all have about and against all of this YAAAAAHHHH WELCOME EVERYONE YAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

THEN NOW FOREVER Lord Christ I hope not but those are the words under which all that is to follow will follow THERE IS A PLACE UNLIKE ANY OTHER A PLACE WHERE ONE GREAT OPPORTUNITY HAS CREATED COUNTLESS LEGENDS A PLACE WE ALL REMEMBER YEAR AFTER YEAR MOMENT AFTER MOMENT MEMORY AFTER MEMORY WE WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER TONIGHT LIVE FROM SAN ANTONIO'S ALAMODOME WE'LL REMEMBER THE DEFINITIVE BATTLE WE WILL REMEMBER THE DOMINANCE WE'LL REMEMBER THE LINE IN THE SAND AND ABOVE ALL ELSE REMEMBER THE RUMBLE TONIGHT IT'S FRIEND VERSUS FRIEND FOE VERSUS FOE (that's not different that's just normal) IT'S EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF TONIGHT AN EVENT THIRTY YEARS IN THE MAKING FOREVER AND ALWAYS WE WILL REMEMBER THIS ROYAL RUMBLE oh wow okay I guess this is the thirtieth one isn't it but will it produce a moment on par with Stone Cold Steve Austin's look of horror and disbelief as Bret Hart strode purposively down the enormous aisle of this self-same Alamodome in a moment that seems not just recorded in but to have emerged out of the collective græppzconscious? Well probably not but let us remain hopeful. 

BAYLEY IS A HUGGER but hasn't been all that much of anything since she has come up, has she, it's sad. Please, again, before we go any further let me again reiterate that as I surely denigrate so much of what is to come (prove me wrong, 2017 Royal Rumble!) my quarrel is not with the calibre of the artists here assembled but rather with their shackled art. Bayley and her offset top-knottish ponytail connoting youthful innocence (she is I don't know thirty?) here faces Charlotte for the WWE Women's Championship which is signified by a large belt that looks like a Josten's class ring like the other WWE belts and we are supposed to understand this as a step up from the one that had butterflies on it but if you think class rings are superior to butterflies you have a lot to learn about the things you can think and still be okay. Of course the demise of the term Diva is welcome and long overdue but in my view its deletion serves only to mask how bullshit this all still is with its single-stripper-named competitors (I know some of them have two stripper names; I feel this only strengthens my claim) and overall aesthetic nonsense. There is nothing woke here, I subtweet now to Woke Wrestling Twitter (itself neither paradox nor dialectic but mere absurdity: woke enough to be woke, insufficiently woke to stop watching fvkkn WWE, please get either more woke or less), who seem enamoured of this sadness: to the extent to which you support this you are either the victim of false consciousness or in league with actual evil and either way the path to Truth and Light is through the Crush Gals versus the Jumping Bomb Angels. It is important for me that anyone reading this post here at RUMBLEMETRICS take a good hard look at themselves and also their views and then come away agreeing with my correct ones, thank you everyone who has thoughts that are different. Bayley does this springboard cross-body out of the corner that took longer to set up than it took me to admonish everyone just now, yikes, let's maybe drop a couple steps of it. Bayley hits a fine top-rope elbow, not on the level of Randy Savage or Shawn Michaels but roughly on par with Kazuchika Okada, I think, and obviously it is lifetimes of waza (technique) beyond the abomination C.M. Punk inflicted for years upon his foes but mostly upon us. That none of the people I have just now named has anything on the elbow droppery of Kairi Hojo is self-evident and hardly worth even noting. The finish comes on (or perhaps off) Charlotte's "Natural Selection" flipping little cutter on the apron and it's a way better move than when she does a figure-four and then bridges and we are senselessly told it is a figure-eight. 

Kevin Owens whose best matches are all behind him and none remain before defends his Universal Championship (this is a thing they have) next against Roman Reigns with Chris Jericho, who vacillates between person you are sadly tired of and low-key heel genius, suspended above the ring in Chekhov's shark cage. It looks like this is a no disqualification match, a genre I don't really like because without the law we are nothing ("Man must be governed," the RZA once said with sad wisdom), and also I don't like all the elaborate weapons set-ups like this pyramid of chairs Owens builds. He takes a moment away from this task to do his inverted cannonball or whatever against Reigns against the barricade and that's a move I think anyone could get behind. A powerbomb from the apron into the chairamid? No; no, not yet. A suplex into them? No again. Kevin Owens wears a shirt recalling the old RAW IS WAR logo atop the body of which he is plainly ashamed. And yet his ring gear is on the whole more revealing than Reigns', which is odd because one assumes that between the shoulders we can see and the drug failure we know about (what of those we do not?) there is every reason to believe Reigns probably looks good as hell out of body armour. He is a beautiful man with glorious Nathan Explosion hair and has proven to be absolutely no worse than "good" at this debased WWE main event style and at times "very good" at same; the only problem that remains for him, as I see it, is he an enormous and laughable döøf. Even that could be used in his favour with proper booking but it is not my business to care about that. Kevin Owens frog-splashes Roman Reigns through a table on the outside and the people enjoy it. 
    
The emerging convention of near-fall close-up crowd reaction shots of essentially the same moderately contemptible youngish man time after time is a bold step in the wrong  direction both for the presentation and for the culture and I fear for both. There is one such shot here (not the first, nowhere near the last, I am sure) just after Chris Jericho drops brass knuckles to his (best) friend Kevin Owens who then employs them in an übermensch punch that Roman Reigns kicks out of in the second match on this show (I understand there were matches on a "pre-show" but come on; come on). I am reminded of the last PWG show I saw, in which a burning hammer was kicked out of in the opening match and it was like "oh okay I just don't like this and will live a life free of it" and so far it has gone pretty well. 

SUPERPLEX INTO THE CHAIRAMID NO WAIT A SUPERMAN PUNCH INTO IT WHICH IS WAY LESS SIKK THAN WHAT HAD BEEN TEASED and which is a fairly cræftig "spot" in that falling into those chairs is way better than falling to the ground in the absence of those chairs, I don't care how well-developed your ukemi (I do care actually and hope your ukemi serves you well in every instance). Kevin Owens has been powerbombed through the table, also. Much is made of how lame it is when Reigns goes BOOOOOWAAAAAAAAA before he hits his move but to me, as bad as the BOOOOOWWWAAAAAAA is, it is the rope-grabbing back-scratch in the corner accompanied by a deeply false intensity that really gets me. We are spared this grim show in this instance when Braun Strowman, literally the worst name anyone has had, gets a hold of Reigns and brutalizes him, and a seemingly defeated Kevin Owens emerges the victor to the delight of his best friend Chris Jericho. One assumes there have been issues between Roman Reigns and this Straun Browman? And yet the announcers do not detail it. I am at a loss and yet feel no want because of it. 

Enzo and Big Cass are next and to Big Cass' surprise Enzo has conflated his desire for food with his desire for the erotic company of women.

Graves, Cole, and Saxton don't have a table now but have to look serious and it's difficult for them. It is somehow easier for Mauro Ranallo (who kindly authored a piece for the Total MMA PDF newsletter that preceded the Total MMA website that preceded the Total MMA book by my friend Jonathan) as his comically sonorous voice is oddly well-suited to this strange task. There is a cruiserweight division now/again, and its championship is to be contested between Rich Swann, who is definitely below the 205 lbs limit, and Neville, who I have my doubts about in this regard. Neville is mean now and it suits him. Is this "cross-face butterfly armbar" Mauro describes akin to the Rings of Saturn? In time perhaps I will learn. Rich Swann is good for sure and his flying flipping butt attack to the outside is choice but when Mauro says of him "sports entertainment saved his life" it is just a dark, dark thing to say or have said. Neville attempts his suplex where he picks his foe up off the mat and pauses with him in the front-pack position (BABYBJÖRNPLEX) but he does not hit it, to my disappointment. Yes okay it seems Neville's big move is indeed the Rings of Saturn and he is your new champion and it occurs to me I only watched like a week or two of the Cruiserweight Classic and was like oh man this is great I am going to keep up with this one! but I didn't and I probably should have, not because this match was great (it was fine, please do not mistake me) but because the show itself seemed really good, like just in the way it was structured.

JOHN CENA CHALLENGES A.J. STYLES FOR ANOTHER BELT THAT LOOKS LIKE A CLASS RING THIS SHOULD BE GOOD but let me reiterate that their (the) Summerslam match was a ruse and not merely in the sense that this is all a ruse but instead in the sense that only a few minutes in they started huge moves and near-falls and laying there to lure those of insufficient taste level into undo praise. Please do not be so fooled (unless it suits you, what do I care). This match is for the WWE Championship, not the Universal Championship as before, because they have gone back to having two different world titles to go with two different rosters on the two different weekly television shows it is hard to believe anybody watches but I don't know I don't think that worked out very well the last time they did it (I don't mean in terms of business, because what could be less interesting than to know that, but in terms of my enjoyment). 

When people decry A.J. Styles' hair as that of a soccer mom it is a tacit admission of how pretty they think it is and you know what, they're right, it is pretty, and ironed so flat that it flops around and creates an even greater impression of movement than would already be present due to how quickly A.J. Styles moves (he moves very quickly) but let me also note that like Tetsuya Naito the thing that makes A.J. Styles' quickness all the quicker-seeming is how willing he is to just slow down completely for long stretches (Naito takes this to an extreme that is perhaps best described as . . . ingobernable?). I am reminded of how I was not particularly keen to see A.J. Styles wrestle when he was scheduled to appear at a local show at the famed Halifax Forum where Leo Burke once challenged Rick Martel for the AWA Championship in a pretty much perfect wrestling match (that Leo Burke also challenged for the NWA title on more than one occasion is something we have discussed before), but my friend Pete was like no, really, you will like his wrestling, you should go see him wrestle, and I did, and as soon as Styles grabbed a headlock against the local headliner it was like my god. It was also neat that he brought with him the IWGP championship belt! I don't think it had been to the Forum before (or since). 

This match is building more slowly and in my view way better than their (the) Summerslam match in that instead of going to finishers and kickouts after like four minutes they have elected to wait like seven (all figures approximate). Styles looks like Manabu Nakanishi out there with his backbreaker rack (did you see Nakanishi's match with Nagata late last year? it was so good!) into a powerbomb; Cena looks like a vicious yet tactical gorilla of some kind when he clobbers Styles with an enormous lariat. Cena hoists Styles into the "electric chair" position and for an instant one is convinced we will at last see the One-Winged Angel Kentholomew Omega was unable to hit against the great young he-cat Kazuchika Okada in one of the finest bouts of what we might call the Wrestle Kingdom era (six stars seems like a lot but hey it was a lot of match). A nice little bit of katame-waza (grappling technique) from A.J. Styles as he rolls out of a fireman's carry into a hiza-hishigi (knee-crush/calf-slicer) which John Cena then counters with an STF and I would like to thank both John Cena and A.J. Styles for reading TK SCISSORS: A BLOG OF RINGS where I am watching all of the RINGS shows that I have and please believe me when I tell you I have pretty much all of them. This is the best exchange of matwork I have seen in a WWE match in years, certainly, and just now A.J. Styles has applied an ude-hishigi-juji-gatame (arm-crushing-crossmark-hold) and I notice for the first time the kanji on his tights (I cannot read it, I am subliterate, forgive me) only for John Cena to raise him overhead with daki-age (抱上) (high lift) and release him in a thunderous slam. They are doing super right now! Cena jumps off the top for the legdrop he should never ever do but Styles catches him for the Styles Clash which of course John Cena kicks out of and which of course leads to a crowd shot of some bro who is in disbelief and the spell that had been cast through real techniques and the attendant real emotion has been broken utterly and quite possibly irrevocably. Yeah okay John Cena just did a "code red" which is a move at least as stupid as the (really unbelievably stupid) Canadian Destroyer and I would like to just have a nap now. Cena uses a "catapult" into the corner but it's offline so Styles has to hang a right in order to go into the turnbuckles holy shit has this gone of the rails and I guess I mean my own specific rails because the crowd is still way in but I have fallen way out. Styles hits the always sikk ushigoroshi of Hirooki Goto (who has been really really good since joining CHAOS), Cena hits an Attitude Adjustment off the top rope, Styles hits another Styles Clash, they shoot each other with guns, whatever. Two more Attitude Adjustments chained together with a nifty little roll and John Cena is a sixteen-time world champion (they didn't talk that up as much as I thought they might?).  John Cena does not explode into joy but is instead reserved as he raises the belt and then finds a Make-a-Wish kid in the crowd and you know what it is entirely possible I am being trimmed like the merest mark but I think John Cena is probably shoot nice. 

THIS MATCH IS INSTRUCTIVE I THINK at least for me in that I don't think contemporary WWE matches get better than that, and it would be very surprising to me if there is even a comparable WWE match all year, and I don't think there are wrestlers who wrestle WWE style any better than John Cena and A.J. Styles (I don't even really know who would be close), but the style is just fundamentally so dumb that the ceiling for my enjoyment of it is low despite the skill with which that style has just been articulated. That is probably maximum WWE right now, but would it be any better than the fifth-best match on the Wrestle Kingdom in which we dwelt only weeks ago? Plainly, in my view, it is not. And where it would fit into the rugged hierarchy of RINGS, I mean, please. If you say dumb things with perfect enunciation you are still saying dumb things. ANYWAY GREAT JOB JOHN CENA GREAT JOB A.J. STYLES.

lol "distracted by music" is the reason Seth Rollins is not in the Royal Rumble, Michael Cole explains, and I could not be any surer right now that this is not for me Michael Cole but thank you for trying to remove all doubt that is gracious of you  

AND NOW FOR THE ROYAL RUMBLE ITSELF AND THERE IS A LOT OF TIME HERE SO MAYBE THEY WILL EVEN STICK TO THE TWO-MINUTE INTERVALS MORE OR LESS LET US RUMBLE LET US ROOOOOOOOYAL RUMBLE and our first competitor is Big Cass and his methed-out bantam of a pal Enzo Amore comes out and says things that the cretinous sweathøggz in attendance chant along with because other aspects of their lives are insufficiently liturgical and this is how they find solace for that (it's pretty dark). This goes on for like a legit five minutes and it is unbelievably tedious. Ah yes lol so only two men have won from the number one position, one of whom is Shawn Michaels and the other we don't talk about as much as we used to I guess do we. Jericho is in at number two, presumably because he is a savvy veteran of this græppz-game and will be required to direct young galoots. This Big Cass, let me tell you, is well-named! What a big guy! Jericho bounces around for him pretty well for a man of a thousand years. Next in at number three is Kalisto who is super tiny and who would like us to chant LUCHA LUCHA (I don't but it is at least in part because people are sleeping). Jericho just chills in the corner for kind of a while whilst Kalisto runs all over.   

At number four we have Mojo Rawley who I don't think I have ever seen, but I feel like I have heard his name a lot as people discuss guys who are totally the worst (I am not making any such claim because again I think this is the first I have ever seen him). Jericho, we're told, has now been in the Royal Rumble more than four hours and longer than anyone else ever, a feather in his cap, I am sure. Jack Gallagher is a tiny Englishman with charmingly stripy trunks and for some reason an umbrella? I guess because England is rainy? But Jericho is from Winnipeg and it's not like they make Jericho come out with a frozen shithole (haha fvkkoff Winnipeg). 

MARK HENRY AT NUMBER SIX YESSSSSS man it takes a while for him to get to the ring and I guess it is the Alamodome isn't it and I love Mark Henry. Remember how everybody thought he was awful, and then a "Mark Henry is Actually Good" movement took shape I believe first at DVDVR, and actually I think just last year Vinnie of the Bryan and Vinnie show was like "remember when those DVDVR guys were like 'Mark Henry is actually good?'" and I could easily have some or all of this wrong but anyway I think Mark Henry is actually really good as he launches the small English fellow over the top, umbrella in hand. Braun Strowman is in next and man this guy is big as HEKK and there goes Mojo and Big Cass and Kalisto (onto the aforementioned two) and now Strowman and Mark Henry are face to face in a HOSSOFF and you know where my heart lies here noooooooo Mark Henry is out and I reject this. Jericho is still in the match but is laying very low.

SAMI ZAYN IS THE BABIEST FACE he consists entirely of vernix caseosa and ska. I am sure he has had a tonne of great matches since coming to WWE and it has been great for his art but right now he is being tossed around by a giant like he was just some goof, weird. An oddly lean Big Show is in next as lol yeah Jericho is just ducking out and looking shook whenever big people are around and it is delightful. There is talk of Big Show and Shaq at Wrestlemania, right? I understand Phil is Shaq's father (much respect to Phil). Two giant guys bumping into each other sounds like a good idea but can also be stupid as we are seeing right now. Jericho is in briefly and one's thoughts turn to the Jeri-Show era, do they not? Whaaaat, Big Show didn't even last two minutes!

In at number ten is "The Perfect Ten" Tye Dillinger and the sing-songy chumps of NXT say "ten" all the time when he does things so that is happening here as well. It is totally charming and not the worst, don't worry. James Ellesworth is next and I have not seen him wrestle but I did see the gif of A.J. Styles attempting a chinlock against him only for it to slip off because he has no real chin and that, to me, seemed great. THE CROWD ERUPTS FOR DEAN AMBROSE AT NUMBER TWELVE and I voted for Dean Ambrose in the Wrestling Observer Awards under "Worst Gimmick" because really what is going on with that guy. Ohhhh nooooo Braun Stroman just threw Ellsworth over the top and Ambrose didn't catch him or anything, he just landed right on his hip and he might not be ruined by that now but in the fullness of time he is going to feel that.  

BARON CORBIN at number thirteen and I identify with him in a number of ways including his wolf shirt (I have a wolf shirt), his long hair worn despite or perhaps because of/in spite of male pattern baldness (same), and his entry into the world of combat sports (wrestling for him, judo for me) after a successful football career (I am a 1991 Pee-Wee Tackle Football Provincial Champion). Dillinger is out, and woah ok Strowman is out as Corbin is also very very large. Kofi Kingston enters at fourteen and I worry that the pressure of elaborate Rumbling evasion technique must be getting to him; it's a lot to bear for any man. If I am remembering this right, it has been a couple of years since he has avoided elimination in a truly neat way, and maybe it is unfair of us to demand it of him each time, I don't know. THE MIZ is next and before entering the ring he lovingly touches the butt of his beautiful French-Canadian bride Maryse, not unlike the way in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lovingly touched the butt of his beautiful French-Canadian bride Sophie Gregoire in VOGUE that time and if this is an allusion I salute its subtlety and wonder what it might auger. 

SHEAMUS and as you know I favour Sheamus despite what all of you think and not only because the Celtic cross that adorns his tights speaks to his desire for post-secular re-enchantment but not entirely not because of that either. Also, because of how often he "shoot" injures people it adds an air of drama and mystery whenever anybody stays down even slightly longer than you expect. Okay so Kofi's thing this year is to have been knocked from the ring-post but kind of catch himself just before touching the floor and it is quite nice! It is certainly unspectacular given several of his past feats but again maybe we should think about those less than we do. BIG E LANGSTON is kind of great and at once puts Miz in an abdominal stretch and spanks him (how does this play into the Trudeau thing). 

We are all the way up to eighteen and this hasn't been good BUT NOW RUSEV YESSSS HE IS A POET OF THIS AND HERE HE IS WITH LANA HIS BRIDE I WISH THEM ALL THE HAPPINESS THIS LIFE CAN HOLD and usually he is quite handsome to me but he is wearing a protective mask because of a recently broken nose, I am told, so we have been robbed of this. Rusev gives me the same kind of feeling that I used to get from Santino and while there are no doubt many more differences between the two than similarities this is about my feelings right now, please respect that. Cesaro is in now and he is putting everybody in the giant swing and at first I am delighted and reminded of hitting that move endlessly in the (excellent) Tecmo Wrestling of my youth (at the end you wrestle a demon!) but it very quickly diminishing returns as he can't really (giant) swing the bigger people he attempts to (giant) swing and the crowd is like "oh." The pleasant Xavier Woods enters at twenty and yeah this really has not been very good but there are still ten guys to go, and remember the year that it wasn't very good at all until Ryback of all people showed up and all of a sudden it got awesome? We can't rule that out (except for that it will not be Ryback). 

Bray Wyatt's look has changed a little since I have last seen him in that he has shifted from Southern Gothic to Southern Gothic Crust Punk, or Credible Touring Guitarist for Ministry or something. IT'S NOT AN URA NAGE (裏投) IF IT IS NOT A REAR THROW YOU ASSHOLES THAT IS LITERALLY WHAT IT MEANS IT IS A MA-SUTEMI WAZA A REAR SACRIFICE TECHNIQUE. Apollo Crews, in at twenty-two, is plainly so-named because of the depth of Vince McMahon's knowledge of black culture. Sheamus and Cesaro eliminate the New Day (all three), Jericho eliminates Sheamus and Cesaro, and now Sheamus and Cesaro are mad at each other or whatever. 

Randy Orton, who is good, and is Jerry Lawler's pick, is in at number twenty three and surely he has won more of these than just the 2009 one, can Michael Cole be right? I am not about to check. I did not mention that Jerry Lawler came out to announce this match but it's true, he did. Orton hits RKOs (RsKO) on a bunch of dudes as I learn that he is aligned with Bray Wyatt so this is Dark Randy Orton I guess. Dolph Ziggler, out next, has gone completely HBK in attire and also, it would seem, in his enthusiasm for the super kick. And now Luke Harper, who I have not seen much of of late (as I have not seen much of any of this of late) but who I recall to be excellent, turns on Bray Wyatt! Maybe this makes a lot of sense given recent things that have happened but I don't know about any of those so I am shocked by this! We are at number twenty six and this still isn't very good!

HOWEVER here is Brock Lesnar, and there are a lot of people still in the ring so one assumes this will be so many suplexes just so many of them yeeeeaaaaaaahhhh here we go he tosses Dean Ambrose out at once (good, he stinks) and then also Dolph Ziggler and then yeah it is just so many throws. You know what, I have never really liked the F5 as a finisher at all, his finisher in my view should just be extra suplexes. In at 27 is Enzo Amore and I guess the idea here is that this will be a bit of comedy where one would expect rising action but I think this match needs right now is all the rising action we can get because it has been a bit of a dud but here is Enzo in and out in like a minute and I like to think Pat Patterson would agree with me that this was an error (mostly I hope Pat Patterson is well, as he has earned his rest). Yeah exactly see here is Goldberg, why wasn't he in a minute ago in the interests of rising action and let me say that I have never been a Goldberg guy and not just because of the Bret Hart troubles (none of that helps obviously) and I didn't care for the two-minute Lesnar squash at the Survivor Series but it must be said that his entrance has always been quite sikk and the people clearly are super into him so who am I to complain. Woah he eliminates Lesnar at once! They will wrestle at an upcoming wrestling mania, surely. Goldberg approaches Jericho, which calls to mind the glorious tales of Goldberg getting into it with Jericho backstage only to find himself front-choked by a tiny shooter eat shit Bill Goldberg I watched an MMA show where you were a commentator and you kept putting over your own martial artistry but everybody knows *yeah everybody knows* Chris Jericho bested you once and would do it again in the name of Stu Hart and all of his terrible sons.  

The Undertaker is I guess number 29 and he squares off with Goldberg and they are like a hundred if you add it up aren't they? Goldberg does an awful job of eliminating Rusev because he's awful, Undertaker does away with Baron Corbin, Goldberg kind of makes a hash of a Luke Harper elimination (these are good, good wrestlers and Goldberg is just awful pushing them over the ropes) and then Undertaker tips Goldberg out and this is not very good. Sami Zayn and the Miz attack the Undertaker and Sami Zayn's punches are the worst ska-based punches ever and consider what that even means. There's only one guy left and I legitimately have no idea who it could be unless it is a super duper surprise of a guy but lol no it is Roman Reigns lol of course it is. 

The Undertaker takes down the straps of his singlet to communicate the extent to which it is on (this is counterintuitive) but given the shape of things and by that I mean the shape of his things this is a huge misstep. It is not his fault he is this old and broken but it is his fault that he took his shirt down. Miz is out, Zayn is out, Jericho has been in for fifty-nine minutes. It would be neat if he won, though I don't see how or why that would happen. The year Sheamus won and Jericho came second I was so sure it would happen! There were so many Codebreakers! Reigns just tipped the Undertaker over and they stare at each other a while so I guess that's a Wrestlemania match? So why did Braun Strowman attack in the title match before? I don't get it but I am also not trying hard and you literally cannot make me. Reigns eliminates Jericho with a superman punch noooooooooo so I guess it's Bray Wyatt, Reigns, and Orton and I remind you this is Dark Randy Orton (I have learned like fifteen minutes ago) so this is a distinct disadvantage for döøfwave underdog Roman Reigns. Oh okay there goes Wyatt so it's Reigns or Orton and just as I say that Orton catches Reigns coming out of the corner for a spear with an RKO (one can claim it is out of nowhere but I believe that neither philosophically nor theologically) in a pretty tidy bit of technique and then *boop* over the top goes Reigns AAAAAAND RANDY ORTON HAS WON THE ROYAL RUMBLE AND IT IS HARD TO KNOW WHY THAT MIGHT BE BUT HE'S PRETTY GOOD ESPECIALLY WHEN HE DOES THAT NEAT POWERSLAM WHERE HE KIND OF DISAPPEARS UNDER A GUY COMING OFF THE ROPES MAYBE HE WILL DO THAT ELSEWHERE ON THE ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA WHO CAN SAY BUT THIS ROYAL RUMBLE WAS NOT ALL THAT GOOD I HOPE YOU YOURSELF ARE WELL THOUGH PLEASE JOIN ME NEXT YEAR WHEN WE WILL DO IT ALL AGAIN WE WILL RUMBLE WE WILL ROOOOOYAL RUMBLE THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME WATCH FIGHTING NETWORK RINGS EVERYBODY GOOD NIGHT. 

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