That's my point tho. If you weren't building to that god-awful ending spot, those stories would've had a chance to develop.

Bray had a nice open, doing the monster heel thing, but his ending was basically 10 minutes of hiding followed by getting quickly tossed to set up Reigns v. Authority. If that's not the ending, he has a chance to tell a complete story (and Ziggler has a chance to do something other than get punched in the face and tossed...to set up Reigns v. Authority).

The Dusts could've had a few minutes to work with each other and Mizdow could've had more than 30 seconds to really do well and actually further a "Miz gets jealous" angle that could have paid off.

Instead, everything is rushed and has to be neatly tidied up before it's time for Reigns v. Authority, which completely killed the story telling ability of otherwise decent plots.

Edit: I realize that isn't a hot take at all currently, I just think it's interesting how much the decided upon ending managed to **** on the rest of the Rumble despite it's not directly involving those parts.

Thought the Rumble was just garbage even ignoring all booking considerations. There were really long periods in the match that were completely boring, the end was super anti climactic and shoddy, there were no real memorable moments, etc.

Some of this might be hard to separate from the booking -- it's possible that it seemed more boring because it was so insanely obvious what they were doing at every step. I think they've started to over-choreograph the Rumble a bit.

The 3 way I have close to 4 stars because it really got me thinking about how stupid it is that 95% of moves never beat anybody anywhere.

I'm somebody that tends to like non-traditional matches a lot and I dig the Rumble match concept in particular and I would give it negative stars. Horrific combination of idiotic decision making and boring action.

Yup.

There's a rumor the Vince was pissed about the Titus O'Neil elimination. Apparently it was supposed to be 1 second, tying Santino's record.

Of all the things to be upset regarding the rumble....

Also Pat Patterson used to be the one doing much of the choreographing, and he actually had an ability to make utterly scripted things seem organic.

Rumor has it Vince was mad enough about this error he's going to punish Titus by putting him on the next PPV.

This was pretty obvious when it happened. Why give Santino company like that? Santino was great.

Everyone came out worse from that RR except maybe Bubba.

It would be great if WWE kept trying to top the Santino record and botched it like 10 straight Rumbles.

Curtis Axel should have the record now at 0 seconds.

Don't you mean.......

Yep this is very true, it was hurt especially by Cole's commentary.

It was like he had to spell everything out the whole way....

"Everyone remember Bray Wyatt is doing the thing where he lasts a long time and loses"

"Hey Kane has just set the record eliminations"

etc etc etc.

Felt so by the numbers

Didn't Curtis win the Rumble?

dammit, that is so much better

The office was good show

You were mostly a funny guy

I actually thought that the commentary for the rumble wasn't bad.

Or maybe my expectation for commentary is very low now, while my expectation of the rumble match was still reasonably high.

I really think it was closer to a normal Rumble match most of the way than is stated here and you guys are making too much of the other stuff because of the pre-ambience of the flatulent ending that everyone knew was coming.

Not that it was great or anything, but I think if you suspended disbelief for a moment there was enough stuff there early on (a couple of actual fun old timers that people like returning instead of Hacksaw Jim Duggan, the Wyatt stuff) that the first part of it was at least acceptable.

I'll give that it was a little paint-by-numbers (Dust brothers fight!, um, Kofi has landed on everything else except this outside the ring but we have to do that, etc), but it wasn't terrible for what it was.

I don't think that end sequence was comparable to most Rumbles. Even a casual fan who doesn't read dirt sheets or otherwise know what the rumors are would know full well that Big Show or Kane aren't winning the Rumble, so using them to neuter everyone that isn't Reigns just makes zero sense. Once it got down to a final three then the audience could basically know to a certainty who was winning. They really didn't even make an attempt to make the ending dramatic at all.

No, I agree, the ending was compete AIDS. I'm talking about the first maybe 60% or so of the match. I think a lot of people's perception of the first part is heavily colored by the stench of what we knew was coming from roughly the time Bryan got tossed out.

There's nothing else to talk about though. There was no cool spots or showdowns or anything that usually makes the rumbles fun. Bully was a cool surprise but that was early. What else was there?

he has to have them reassemble the ring so he can climb into it first

before they can do that they have to have a contract signing between The Authority and the guys who put the ring together

so, tune in Monday night!

Haha

His current tweets are legit by far the best thing he has done in WWE.