We all knew form the beginning that The Corre and the New Nexus would be in there before it was actually announced. They are/were the leading stable on Raw and a part of them even has taken over Smackdown now. There is no way to have them not in the Rumble. This points out a big problem however ...because from the nine guys we are talking about here at least seven have to be considered as rookies i.e. are as green as fresh grass in the ring i.e. will expose how bad their in-ring ability really is if they are in there alone and have to actually do something that doesn't include standing around and looking like idiots.
Oh, and these guys are not CM Punk and Wade Barrett. CM Punk of course, but the other guy who I think can survive a Rumble without making it worse is Justin Gabriel. He started wrestling Africa sometime around 1997 - if you are interested: the other seven remaining rookies statistically started their careers in 2007, and yes, that was two years ago - and as his match with Edge on last weeks Smackdown showed, he is at least able to hang in there with the right people.
That said if this was a 30 people match and seven of these guys would have been rookies, we'd already had a 23% chance of seeing crap. It's the truth and it's ugly.
Now going on to the other participants. 28 people who will take part in the Rumble were already announced beforehead, so if you substract the nine (former) members of Nexus there are 17 men left to take a look at. These guys are: Alberto del Rio, Cody Rhodes, R-Truth, Rey Mysterio, John Cena, Sheamus, Daniel Bryan, John Morrison, Ted DiBiase, Mark Henry, Darren Young, David Hart Smith, Primo, Tyson Kidd, William Regal, Yoshi Tatsu, Zack Ryder, Jack Swagger and Drew McInytre (thank you Wikipedia).
Before I say anything else let me remind you what a Royal Rumble is about: elevating young talent by sending them in the ring with a a certain amount of veterans who know how to work the crowd and keep them enterained even if the rookies fail to deliver. Furthermore the older guys of course have recall value because they have been with the company for years and therefor have a certain fanbase.
Sounds logical. Problem: we have a lot of rookies, we have a lot of younger guys who have been with the company for only a few years, we have some in-between guys and we also have only a handful veterans left. The balance is shifting heavily towards the young wrestlers here.
To explain this I take a look at last years Royal Rumble. Our vets were Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Kane, Chris Jericho and Edge ...you could probably count Mark Henry and Big Show too if you wanted to be overly fair. That's 7 veterans out of 30 people, what sums up to 23% as we saw earlier.
This year he have... well, no Shawn Michaels, no Chris Jericho, no Undertaker because he is out on injury, and probably not even a Triple H. That leaves us with Kane, Edge, Rey Mysterio (who was in a singles match last year), Big Show, Mark Henry and Christian if we a very, very lucky. That's six veterans out of 40 participants, which equals 15%, which equals a big "Ouch!". Another problem is that we lost wrestlers who can carry a match. Big Show and Mark Henry might be "threats" but they can't hold a candle in match quality to a Shawn Michaels or a Chris Jericho.
That leaves us with a lot of middle guys - to continue explaining with the numbers nine out of all 28 wrestlers named for the Royal Rumble have been wrestling since before 2000 and of these nine only four wrestled since or before the year 1995 (namely Rey Mysterio, CM Punk, Tyson Kidd and William Regal).
So what he have thus far are seven rookies and six veterans. That's 18% and 15% each with leaves us with 67% of other guys, what isn't the best distribution you can have but it's also not the worst - by way of comparison if there had been only 30 men in the match it would have been 23% and 20% with 57% other wrestlers remaining. The difference is simply that both vets and rookies don't matter as much as they would otherwise, or in other words that you can bring the inexperienced guys in and get rid of them fast without affecting the over-all match quality or length very much.
Let's finally get down to the 17 participants I already mentioned before. The very good thing about them is that nearly all of them can work good matches. There is no real guy in there who makes you want to close your eyes and gag when you hear his name - okay, probably R-Truth, but let's be honest the music is more horrible than is in ring work is on most days. Mark Henry isn't the best worker either, but he's just in there as a "threat" and to give his fellow wrestlers someone to gang up on. Aside from them the mix looks really promising with great workers such as Daniel Bryan and John Morrison in there together with the big names like the golden boy John Cena and fella Sheamus.
However there are still 12 free spots remaining. Some of them could probably turn out to be wrestlers who make a one-time appearance just for the sake of the fans, others will be well known faces in the Rumble. I definitely think that Kane will be in there, what would make this his 15th participation in a Royal Rumble - a number that will never be beaten because every man who has at least seven appearances would be extremly lucky to even be in one more Rumble (okay, maybe Trips can up his stat from eight to ten, but that's about it).
But Kane is only one guy and that leaves me with another 11 wrestlers to put in there. Okay, here go Chris Masters, Kofi Kingston, The Big Show, Santino Marella, Vladimir Kozlov, Tyler Reks and The Uso brothers. I want Masters in because he earned it in a ton of Superstars matches, Big Show, Santino and Kozlov are obviously for the comedy, Kingston and Tyler Reks because I feel like it and the Uso's because it's not their fault that WWE ditched the Tag Teams about a year ago, plus they desperately need some air-time.
That leaves another four spots to fill. First of all Christian could come back for the Rumble. I don't really know how good his injury has healed, but he his a great worker and would be a nice addition for the Rumble. A-RY could possibly get a number too, even if I'm still not sure if they'll allow him to be in after he has to be in a match with Miz beforehand. Then there is obviously the guy everyone is talking about in Triple H. If he his ready to go again I say let him in, another veteran in there can never hurt. The last spot goes to the Great Khalie because I'm honestly out of ideas right now - there are simply no wrestlers left to fill in!
...if this Royal Rumble had been a 50 men match WWE would have seriously had a problem here, because save for Chavo Guerrero, Michael Tarver, Curt Hawkins and Trent Barreta everyone who is not out on injury or a current NXT rookie is in thatt f***ing Rumble right now! ...I mean, hell, they'd have to give spots to the Divas!
All things considered I'm not really a fan of having 40 men in that Royal Rumble, but if it helps to conceal the weaknesses of the new guys and puts over some of the mid-card talent in return I'm game. That is what is considered great booking in wrestling: hide your weaknesses and concentrate on your strengths. You have to have all Nexus guys in there? Fine, put enough good worker in the ring with them and you can still make a great match out of it. There will moments where no real talent is in the Rumble? Put a comedy guy like Santino in there to at least make it entertaining - because that is what wrestling is, pure entertainment. You have to make it enjoyable for people to watch because in the end that's the only thing that counts. If the audience is happy with the outcome it just doesn't matter if a few spots in-between were slow paced or lacked some action.
So I say let the WWE go with it. If the Rumble is well done no one will complain afterwards and if it isn't they won't do it again - that's how easy it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment