The 2017 Rumble (the first to be a four-hour show) and its main event took a lot of flak at the time, mostly due to the booking which was admittedly pretty unexciting. No one new was positioned to be "made" with this match; it centered around the "safe" choices and we didn't get the expected Samoa Joe debut or a Kurt Angle return. However we did get a very unpredictable Rumble with a larger field of potential winners than we'd had in a very long time. There were easily ten or so guys who could reasonably have walked away with the WrestleMania title shot, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Aside from that, the Rumble match had a couple little surprises, like Tye Dillinger entering at #10 and Jack Gallagher making the most hilarious use of an umbrella I've ever seen. Other highlights were Jericho as the long man once again (lasting just over an hour), Braun Strowman pulling a 1994 Diesel and killing a buncha guys before being eliminated, Goldberg besting Brock Lesnar for the second time, and Roman Reigns eliminating The Undertaker and setting up their WrestleMania match. This Rumble match was not unlike the 2001 version in some ways - the surprise entrants were minor but the match had a good amount of star power and primarily served to reinforce the established names. The real issue with this Rumble match, as is often the case with WWE, was the follow-up. Randy Orton won the match, turned on his supposed friend (and by this time WWE Champion) Bray Wyatt, and proceeded to have the worst feud of 2017 (if not his whole career). I had few gripes about this Rumble match itself - it was fine in a vacuum. It unfortunately led directly to a road of shit.
But what really made this show stand out was the undercard. I say without hesitation this was the finest Rumble undercard WWE has ever produced. Two stellar Title matches and two solid title matches, with not one stinker on the entire PPV. One can't really ask for more than that out of a Royal Rumble undercard, which generally trends toward uneven at best.
The Women's Title match opened the show and this was the absolute right move to get the San Antonio crowd invested. Charlotte vs. Bayley felt like the first match in a series, and they got a respectable 13 minutes to tell a story. This match didn't blow the doors off the place but it wasn't designed to - it felt just about right for its place on the card, and the finish was novel if sudden - Charlotte nailed Natural Selection on the ring apron before rolling Bayley away from the ropes and scoring the pin. Good opener.
Next up was the first of two monster Title bouts, as Kevin Owens defended against Roman Reigns in a No DQ match with Chris Jericho in a shark cage above the ring. Unlike their lackluster Roadblock match the month before, this was an energetic, wild brawl that made great use of tables and chairs (though Jericho got less on-camera time for comedy than I was hoping for). After multiple table powerbomb spots, Reigns seemed a lock to win the Universal Title when Braun Strowman appeared and decimated the unpopular Samoan, allowing Owens a cheap win and leading to a months-long feud between them. This was a fun bells & whistles kinda match.
The weakest match of the night, by default, was the Rich Swann-Neville Cruiserweight Title match. But there was nothing wrong here, other than the fact that the audience still didn't care at all about these Cruisers. Neville captured the Title in 14 minutes with The Rings of Saturn and went on to have easily the best title reign to date of this version of the Cruiserweight division before leaving the company several months later.
The show stealer, as expected, was AJ Styles vs. John Cena for the WWE Title. Goddamn this was great. AJ and Cena delivered a strong showing at 2016's Money in the Bank and an insane spotfest at Summerslam, and tonally this match fell somewhere in the middle. There was more storytelling here than at Summerslam but the traded finishers and kickouts were still prevalent. Cena finally avenged his two losses to tie Ric Flair's 16-time Championship record, but Styles was kept looking really strong in defeat, kicking out of multiple AAs and only falling to a double AA. This ranks right up there with the best Rumble undercard matches in history.
So I had almost no complaints about this show as a standalone PPV. Every match was good or great, the crowd was hot, the Rumble was unpredictable. Aside from the mostly terrible aftermath of this show there was little to find fault with. A pretty great Rumble PPV.
Best Match: AJ Styles vs. John Cena
Worst Match: Rich Swann vs. Neville
What I'd Change: I'd have debuted Samoa Joe and had him murder a buncha guys in the Rumble
Most Disappointing Match: I wouldn't say anything was really disappointing
Most Pleasant Surprise: That the Rumble winner was under 40
Overall Rating: 9/10
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2016
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