Happy New Year!
The Royal Rumble, the beginning of Wrestlemania season had returned once again. We’ve had a mixed bag of Rumble’s in the last 5 years, so let’s rank them from worst to best.
5. 2015
The 2015 Rumble was absolutely atrocious. I’m not only saying this because of Daniel Bryan’s early elimination. The climax of the match was just simply boring. It featured The Big Show and Kane just dumping superstars out of the ring. Which eventually left Big Show, Kane and Roman Reigns in the ring and with the help of The Rock Reigns was able to fend them off which left Reigns to a chorus of boos and jeers. Rusev returns from under the ring to try and eliminate Reigns but Reigns throws him out to win the match.
A highlight of the match was Kofi Kingston being saved by the Rosebuds. Apart from that, this was a snooze fest.
4. 2016
The following year gave us a slightly better event but it wasn’t that good, to be honest, the story going into the match with Reigns defending his title in the match itself was good. However, the result was too predictable. It was extremely obvious that Triple H was going to win and there was no shock factor which really set it down in the rankings for me.
Some positives of the match were Aj Styles making his debut, and R Truth putting a ladder in the middle of the ring and climbing it to retrieve an imaginary Money in the Bank briefcase.
3. 2019
The most recent edition of the match is featured next. It was an average match with a few NXT call ups in Aleister Black, Johnny Gargano and Pete Dunne which made the match more interesting. However, what really made this Royal Rumble memorable was Nia Jax replacing R Truth at number 30 was insane. It was completely unexpected and Nia put on a great show taking a superkick from Dolph Ziggler, a 619 from Rey Mysterio and an RKO from Randy Orton before getting eliminated from the match. Seth Rollins won eliminating Braun Strowman. Would’ve loved to see Braun win instead, however, Seth went to Mania.
2. 2017
This match was decent, yet my main problem with it was that everything fell into place way too easily. Nothing felt natural. Superstars with feuds all appeared with entrances next to each other. Lesnar, Undertaker and Goldberg all appeared into the match in the last 10 entrances. Also, Roman Reigns, Oh, Roman Reigns. Why was he number 30? Everyone was predicting the likes of Samoa Joe to be the last entrant into the match but we got Roman Reigns. Randy Orton won, eliminating Reigns. I think the star power in this match saved it from being a bad Rumble.
1. 2018
This was the best Rumble by far, to be honest. There’s no competition from any other in the last 5 years. It was a star-filled lineup with the best of the company going at each other. Baron Corbin went on a rampage leaving everyone laid out for an Elias performance. Heath Slater eliminated Sheamus and Tye Dillinger coming in at 10 was scuppered by Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. Adam Cole and Andrade Cien Almas made their rumble debuts and Rey Mysterio returned as well looking great after some work on the indie scene.
The final 4 were WWE’s blue-chip projects, John Cena and Roman Reigns vs 2 of NJPW’s best in Finn Balor, who entered at number 2 and eventual winner Shinsuke Nakamura. Nakamura eliminated Reigns for the win leaving us with one of the best Rumble matches we’ve seen.
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