In the course of being a living idiot in this whatever the fuck this community is you run into certain events and things that just can’t be avoided because they are part of the fucked up web that brought us all together in the first place and I have noted myself as one of our chroniclers of our shared adventures into heathen winds and things we shouldn’t watch anymore but we do because we just can’t stop ourselves, and such is this year’s Royal Rumble. Of course, you may remember that Kendall used to do these better and more organically livestream than me, but we are different voices, allegedly, and I have decided to be the guy that does that for you, for me, for all of us, for our entire fucked up family.
Now, here’s the thing: going into this I haven’t watched a millisecond of WWE content since, well, the time we did this last year, but wrestling is wrestling and art is art, and it can’t have changed that much, right. RIGHT????
Right.
Drew McIntire vs Goldberg
First off LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL VINCE WENT INSANE HE FINALLY DID IT HE WENT FUCKING INSANE. I had heard about this Thunderdome concept but never actually witnessed it and it is as grotesque and dystopian as only could come from the mind of a man who as a boy used to crush leaves to put into the vaginas of the alleged girls around him. The setup is ludicrous of course, wall to wall neckbearding and teenage affirmation shit that the WWE feeds off of as they double dip into the mental illness well again and again.
Second, WWE has always dreamed of just making the fans do whatever the fuck they wanted, so it makes sense that Vince has gone hypermode into creating a virtual audience that actually doesn’t do a horrible job of simulating what his fever dreamed ideal crowd would sound like. If you just try to forget about it, it becomes background bullshit you don’t need to worry about or ever think about again because the ramifications of thinking about it could turn you into a vegetabled newt ready to be eaten by a bird which will just shit all over your parked car at the beach and maybe even on you at the beach YEAH I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN
Thirdly, and this is where we need to be careful to not overthink think this, I noted at times that when Vince chased a balloon backstage that said MAKE NOISE X, the ALL IN FREAKS LIVECAMMING THEMSELVES WOULD START TO TAKE UP THE WANTED NOISE/RESPONSE and it was at that point that I was sure I was going to just have to post that gif of Martin Sheen coming up from the river water in Apocalypse Now, but no, we move on and try to get our heads around this or completely fucking out of it if we want to be safe.
Anyway, so I guess Goldberg is back making weird faces and snarly noises even though he is 70 years old, and the sad truth is that he still does exude a presence which would incinerate the juice boxes Vince hands out to his performers as they come to the ring.
McIntire is a dude who went through the WWE horror show vortex of existence and then remade himself on the other side with lots of drugs and the sort of shit that makes Vince McMahon think that you have a big penis. The two try to work out a short match of false and burned finishers because fuck it, just get to the last page of the script KEVIN Vince yells from gorilla, the position, not the Monsoon or even the animal although it would be likely that Vince actually transformed into a gorilla and just hooted and threw shit at the wrestlers as they made their last walk down a condemned road into the hell of the WWE experience.
Goldberg is old and hates these punks but he likes it when Vince gives him millions of dollars for being a dude who wrestled in a rival promotion back in the good old days when pro wrestling was still real. He huffs and he puffs but he cannot pin down the younger, hotter version of himself I guess is the story they are going with but lol remember when this dude was caddying for Heath Slater? Anyway, McInitire hits his moves to the awed reverence of the sold out tv monitor emporium and keeps his title which is the WORLD’S TITLE if I am not mistaken.
Sasha Banks vs Carmella
WWE and women’s wrestling is always a loaded box of YOU CAN’T SAY THAT ANYMORE or JUST THROW THE FUCKING ROSES YOU FUCKER, but all that aside, I thought these two did a pretty good job holding up the legit wrestling part of this that Vince probably doesn’t understand but Stephanie reads him a self help book loaded with buzzwords and community outreach goals while he sleeps and yes we’re just dispensing with the fiction that they don’t sleep together.
That one dive for Carmella was pretty lol though, she landed right on her fucking face. But Sasha Banks has a tight, lithe game that works nice with a similarly athletic body and I know certain hooligans are cynically wanting me to turn this into a WOMEN IN PRISON writeup which is understandable as I do the same thing for the men so why hold back but I do recognize and respect that no one has time with that horseshit in women’s wrestling anymore which is earned and acknowledged. And anyway, it is a pretty good match in the style of the day and hopefully I have escaped without Bill reporting me to the FBI. At least not for this.
WOMEN’S RUMBLE
This was fun and moved swiftly enough and I never know how to write about the actual rumbles and this is where it would be considerably easier done live. But anyway, lol it is preposterous that they are trotting out THE KING to call his part of the match given that he is so inextricably entwined with the whole HOLY SHIT JR DID YOU SEE THOSE TITS era of WWE. He kept his dick in his pants for the most part but did uptick noticeably when Torrie Wilson returned who is one of the women he kept on a verbal chain and leash for all those years.
Some who stood out to me were Rhea Ripley, who seems to be good at the whole wrestling thing, and is Alexa Bliss doing a possessed gimmick? Because in the no fans era I could see that going to wild and ridiculous places which I take it has already happened with Randy Orton getting burned alive or whatever the fuck happened a while back. Tamina gets to be a bully because Vince found her dad covered in blood and piss knives and me no speaky English in a hotel room back when Vince and Donald Trump just walked in on those things every so often as just having fun with the boys before they tried to pretend that they were grownups.
Nia Jaxx is big and fat and that’s okay but she also seems like the connected one who gets to be sloppy and legit hurt people and say stupid shit and be ennobled for it because of The Rock or I guess Yokozuna now is the dude they are pushing for whatever dumb reason behind the Pacific Islanders blackmailing Vince because there are probably more than just the one body out there.
I can’t even remember the name of the girl who won but I know it was some prefab ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA OF LIFE productions that the marketing lizards who run this damn company are so proud to have put together. She seems pliable in the role which is all that they ask for like Starlight in The Boys, which is basically what Vince wants WWE to be. Not the actual The Boys show, but Vought International. I mean, it might actually be a biography, we just don’t know.
Who else was interesting? Charlotte is always on the periphery I take it as the BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY go to girl. Bayley as a mean girl or whatever is a thing, I guess. Victoria and Mickie James came back but I though Mickie James already came back but maybe that was during the time that WWE left the Neil reservation. Jillian came back to no one’s care except for Vince getting to say HEY YOU REMEMBER WHEN to JBL who was wandering around this monstrosity like a sober alcoholic.
Oh, I guess Ric Flair is fucking Lacey Evans now? Good for him, I guess. That was the only real spot where you could feel the old King trying to extend his tongue into Ric’s working neurons to live as a parasite for a few moments more. Why is he working against his daughter now? Does it matter? Do we care? Not really. Ric is just being plied with booze and women to literally drool on so he doesn’t get sucked into the AEW nostalgia machine.
It was a women’s rumble, competently held via the rules and regulations of the Heavily Corporate Sponsored America the Beautiful, a cultural event paid for by the people devoted to the election of Donald Trump.
Roman Reigns vs Kevin Owens
See, this is what they should have just done with Roman 6 or 7 years ago or however ludicrously long its been that they tried to turn that sausage factory into a WAR economy factory which failed miserably because the people only knew how to make sausages now and the people below them were fat and sausaged into oblivion.
But Roman as the successor of the Island Mafia is a natural and good way to go with him, and also I would be remiss in that I did not know that Samoa Joe had been retired to the role of commentary luke warm taker with Vince screaming in his ear for four hours and man if only his body held up and/or Vince didn’t just see the value of these dudes back when they were transforming pro wrestling.
Anyway, Roman is just the no nonsense mafia don now and has his weazely lawyer Paul Heyman along to handle the details in a fine casting decision, especially now that Brock is off to do whatever Brock does, fuck Sable and wrestle cows or fuck cows and wrestle Sable, I don’t know how it all works there.
Kevin Owens is neckbearded and t-shirted in a we just pulled this guy out of a bar way, but I like KO, it works for him and you might as well lean into that image and just be the guy who won’t stay down like a Mick Foley for new age nerds to love and champion.
Of course, the first half or whatever of this match is just a numbing pointless hit em with everything debris nonsense drag along which is how these No Fan Cinematic kind of EPICS are built now. Business does pick up as the stakes keep being raised, and at a certain point you are invited to think upon the simple eloquence of Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard fighting to the DEATH over a wooden shard to spike the other guy in the forehead because of course no one would want to be put through that shit. But I also recognize that those days are mostly gone and now it is just this virtuouso bozo superheros hitting each other with their superpowers matches which if you let yourself drift into the medium is effective at creating the requisite drama even if it does feel mostly paint by numbers.
The old handcuff angle is nearly botched when Paul Heyman can’t pick a fucking lock which Vince must have just assumed he could do as a Jew lawyer, and that is not my take but Vince’s, remember that. And, for some reason, the match ends when one of them, Roman, remembers that you can just choke a guy out and leave him snoring for the ten count. Why not fight for that at the beginning, you cretins?
Anyway, EPIC in a way in which EPIC is sold on every street corner.
MEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE
So, lots to unpack here. Anyway, it was a rumble suitably rolled. The Randy Orton injury angle could be seen by the guy the farthest away from his PC cam. I didn’t hate it in the storytelling way of These Two Dudes Just Inexplicably Hate Each Other Forever kind of way. Christian returning to play a role was one of the few that could move the proverbial needle of hey yeah okay I like this. Still, it is striking how Vince is so easily leaning on his tried and true hands who weren’t even the biggest stars from Vince’s DISNEYFICATION of his company. Edge and Orton just out there brawling with each other because Vince doesn’t give a fuck about any of the wrestlers who have shown up to work in the past 15 years.
Oh, I forgot to mention in the women’s title match that I guess Carmella has a slave now? I am only reminded because, well, AJ Styles has a slave. Let us not try to sugar coat it, this is how Vince McMahon sees it and sees the world. It is kind of extraordinary that they are still doing this kind of shit, especially in a New Day WWE World in which those dudes bonded together to survive and thrive despite Vince’s existence as Vince. Big E’s visceral anger at AJ’s slave was a poignant moment during the match that of course was not at all what they were trying to convey, although maybe Big E was, I don’t know, those dudes have somehow managed to live a bubbled autonomous life away from Vince being Vince, which is hard to do, but if you are extra good or extra special like New Day or Daniel Bryan you can pull off.
Speaking of, I was maybe talking myself into getting behind a poetic Daniel Bryan takes the title from Roman at Wrestlemania moment, but lol fuck all that, it isn’t happening and DBry seems set to take his place on Vince’s carefully manicured windowsill of miniatures of dudes he actually respects and will do almost anything for save of course for running as the face of the company.
Kane coming back was not at all surprising and the requisite Team HellNo moment was played okay, but lol Kane is just a fat old goober with horrible beliefs, his irl persona is probably worse than his fictional one.
A lot of shine seemed to be put on Damian Priest, who seems like a big chunk of something that Vince will surely ruin. Bobby Lashley as ersatz Brock is mildly interesting until it is not and I thought for a moment they would go with Seth Rollins because when Vince spins in a circle he always ends up staring into the SHIELD corner like at the end of the Blair Witch Project. But it was all for naught as Randy Orton OMG WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEEN THIS runs in and flails around at Edge but Edge dumps his ass anyway and wins the Royal Rumble because hey fuck it, someone had to.
And that was the 2021 Royal Rumble. See you at Wrestlemania… maybe.
