WWE: Was the Greatest Royal Rumble a glorified house show?

The WWE held the Greatest Royal Rumble Friday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was a stacked card that saw every title except for the two women’s titles being defended. We also saw Undertaker beat Rusev and John Cena defeated Triple H. However, the main event of the evening was a 50 man Royal Rumble.  We ended up seeing Braun Strowman eliminate Big Cass to go on and win the event. The Rumble match itself would end up seeing two records being broken. The first one was Daniel Bryan was in the match for over an hour. He ended up breaking Rey Mysterio’s time of 62 minutes. In addition, Braun Strowman would end up breaking Roman Reign’s record of most eliminations by eliminating 13.

For starters, we didn’t get the major shocks of a Rumble. The “shock” returns were Mark Henry, Hornswoggle, and Hiroki Sumi. You can’t say that Rey Mysterio was a shock return because he was in the promotional material for some time. I am glad the Braun Strowman won the event, but if there is nothing from this, then it was pointless. I said it before and I will say it again. Whomever won the Rumble should be able to main event SummerSlam. Even if you don’t go the main event route, then at least give them a shot at either the WWE title or the Universal title.

As far as the matches themselves, there was nothing that shocked me. Cedric Alexander, Seth Rollins, Bludgeon Brothers, AJ Styles, and Brock Lesnar all retained their titles. The only title that changed was the Raw tag team titles. Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt would end up winning them over the Bar. This wasn’t a shock at all because the WWE had been pushing Wyatt and Hardy, so not putting the belts on them would have been bad.

The biggest moment was the fact that Roman Reigns got screwed out of the Universal title. It was clear that Reigns’ feet touched first. My guess is that they didn’t want to take the belt off of Lesnar because they wanted him to surpass Punk’s 434 reign.

There was really nothing taken from this event and I don’t feel that it furthered any storylines.

Jon Blayne

Jon is a diehard wrestling fan but still takes time to show his devotion to the Giants, Mets, and Knicks