WrestleMania season starts this weekend with the Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia. The WWE has taken Saudi blood money for years, hosting multiple events in the country since the late 2010’s. But this is the first time the WWE has hosted a tentpole event in the petro-state dictatorship. I guess they’re getting us ready for when they host WrestleMania 43 there next year.
For what it is worth, I attended Raw at Barclay’s Center earlier this month, and the crowd booed every commercial for Riyadh Season. That’s not going to get us much. WWE’s holding company, TKO, is firmly in bed with the brutal dictatorship that is attempting to sports wash its well-deserved horrible reputation.
Anyway, this WrestleMania season feels a bit cold. The last two years featured long-running stories including The Rock, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns and The Bloodline, Seth Rollins, and John Cena. This year, there doesn’t seem to be much of an obvious direction for things to head in. The John Cena retirement tour is over, Seth Rollins is injured (and filling his time doing play-by-play for skyscraper climbers in Asia), and Roman Reigns has been aimless since he lost the championship two years ago. On top of that, the same Cody Crybabies that willed him to win a championship at WrestleMania XL just two years ago have turned on him because he’s done nothing but be himself this whole time.
CM Punk and Drew McIntyre are doing a serviceable job as champions of their respective brands, but their championship reigns both started off rather quietly. Punk won his on Saturday Night’s Main Event because Rollins was injured and had to forfeit the title, and Drew won his on an episode of Smackdown. There was no big premium live event pay off for either.
Given all that, it’s anybody’s guess who is going to get hot and get a push for one of the two coveted main event slots at WrestleMania 42. In fact, it’s anybody’s guess who will even be holding the two championships that weekend. This makes the Royal Rumble extremely pivotal this year, the WWE must give us something to be surprised and excited about now. I’ll take a stab at predicting what will happen.
Drew McIntyre (c) vs. Sami Zayn in a Singles match for the Undisputed WWE Championship
This is a curious matchup that came out of nowhere when Sammy won his way into the number one contender spot on Raw. It seems highly unlikely that Sammy is going to carry the title to WrestleMania. This is likely a match to get some heat on Drew for his nascent championship run.
Prediction: Winner and still champion: Drew McIntyre
AJ Styles vs. Gunther in a Career Threatening match, if Styles loses, he will be forced to retire from in-ring competition
All the complainers about John Cena’s career-ending loss to Gunther are missing the point. That match wasn’t about John Cena; it was about John Cena paying it forward to the next guy. Gunther is red hot right now, the fans despise him and he gloats about it to them. He can claim that he forced the retirement of both Goldberg and Cena in one year, and that is the perfect setup for this match.
AJ Styles had a reasonably good decade-long run with the WWE. He certainly won’t be revered at the level that Goldberg and Cena are, but the fans have respect for him and will be sad to see him go when Gunther does it again and ends the career of a third WWE legend.
Prediction: Winner, Gunther
Women’s Royal Rumble Match
As usual, the women’s division is a directionless mess with only a small handful of talents that can carry a match. Check out season two of WWE Unreal on Netflix for more details on how bad the in-ring ability some of them have. They blow spots so badly that they either embarrass themselves or badly injure their opponents.
There won’t be a women’s match in either WrestleMania main event this year, the best they can hope for is an opening match slot.
As an added bonus, the women on this card will be subject to Saudi decency standards and will have to dress modestly. It just adds insult to injury.
Prediction: Lots of awkward and blown spots with an uninspiring winner at the end.
Men’s Royal Rumble Match
The only intriguing match on this card is the Men’s Royal Rumble. As of this writing, only 22 entrants have been announced. Two of them, Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar were added rather clumsily just this week with no storyline build at all.
The elephant in the room is that fans expect 55-year-old Chris Jericho to return to the WWE as a surprise entrant in the rumble. It is mind-boggling to me that fans are clamoring for his return. He was never as good as he says he is in his prime. From what little I know about AEW is that his career fizzled out there as fans would chant “Please retire!” during his matches. Why these same fans want him to return to WWE is beyond me. Even if he does return, there is zero chance he wins and goes on to headline WrestleMania, there are too many better positioned full-time talents on the roster ahead of him.
There is some intrigue around the main-event level characters in this match. Gunther is working double-duty, Jey Uso is a former winner, and Cody Rhodes is looking to tie Stone Cold Steve Austin’s record of three lifetime Royal Rumble wins. All members of The Vision are in the match and stated their intent to ensure a Bron Breakker victory. But is this alliance tenuous in an every-man-for-himself match?
Realistically, there are only a small number of wrestlers who make sense to win the match this Saturday. I’ll group them by category:
No Chance in Hell:
- Dragon Lee
- Jacob Fatu
- Austin Theory
- Je’Von Evans
- Oba Femi
- Rey Mysterio
- Trick Williams
- The Miz
- Ilja Dragunov
- Matt Cardona
Darkhorse Possibility:
- Penta
- Solo Sikoa
- Randy Orton
- Jey Uso
- Bronson Reed
- Damian Priest
Most Likely to Win:
- Cody Rhodes
- Gunther
- Roman Reigns
- Bron Breakker
- Logan Paul
- Brock Lesnar
I’ll be happy if it isn’t Jericho. I’ll be even happier if he doesn’t return at all.
The North Jersey Nonconformist 