WWE Royal Rumble (Jan. 27, 2019) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Royal Rumble (2019) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view event and WWE Network event produced by WWE for their Raw, SmackDown, and 205 Live brands. It took place on January 27, 2019, at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona. It was the thirty-second event promoted under the Royal Rumble chronology.

Ten matches were contested at the event, including three on the pre-show. In the main event, Seth Rollins won the men's Royal Rumble match, while Becky Lynch won the women's Royal Rumble match after losing her SmackDown Women's Championship match against Asuka in the opening match. Other prominent matches included Brock Lesnar retaining the Universal Championship against Finn Bálor, Daniel Bryan defeating AJ Styles to retain the WWE Championship, and Ronda Rousey defeating Sasha Banks to retain the Raw Women's Championship.

Pre-Show/Kick-Off Matches:

As usual, I didn't watch the first three matches on the pre-show, but here's the results for them.

Raw Tag Team Champions Bobby Roode and Chad Gable def. the team of Scott Dawson (of The Revival) and Rezar (of AOP)

United States Championship Match - Shinsuke Nakamura def. Rusev (w/ Lana)

WWE Cruiserweight Championship Buddy Murphy def. Akira Tozawa, Hideo Itami, and Kalisto.

SmackDown! Women's Championship Match - Asuka (c) def. Becky Lynch

I thought this was a strong outing for both of these women, even though it was a losing effort for The Man. Given all of this attention going towards the potential WrestleMania main event between Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, and Ronda Rousey, I hope Asuka doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Her and Charlotte Flair had one of the best matches on last year's lackluster WrestleMania card and Asuka deserves to have some shine after being regulated as an afterthought for the bulk of 2018. I have my fingers crossed that WWE has something big in store for her in terms of potential challengers at WrestleMania.

I LOVED the finishing sequence between them in terms of reversals and counters to each others holds and submissions. I think I'll never get tired of seeing Asuka's "catch" variation of the Asuka Lock either.

Whoever told Asuka to trash talk in Japanese deserves a medal. I was loving every second of that while Becky Lynch was staring at her like she wanted to say, "Subtitles, bitch!"

SmackDown! Tag Team Championship Match - The Miz & Shane McMahon def. The Bar (c)

Man, this match almost put me to sleep. The Bar tried to keep this interesting, but this was mostly Shane bumping around until Miz was able to make the save that got them the win at the end. As much as I grew tired with the hundreds of Usos and New Day vs. The Bar match-ups, this was a piss poor replacement in the void and high standard that those tag team matches brought to the table.

I'll admit that I got a kick out of Shane praying before hitting that Shooting Star Press and Miz's dad celebrating with them afterwards, even though Shane had to show the man how to hold the title properly. Why isn't shit like this on the preshow or at least in that dead spot on the card where AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan ended up?

RAW Women's Championship Match - Ronda Rousey (c) def. Sasha Banks

Going into this match, I didn't see Sasha Banks walking away as the winner, despite her strong promos and trash talk on social media. Speaking of promos, there was so much that was cringe-worthy at that I think it's a no brainer at this stage that Sasha and Bayley are going to be the first two women crowned as the "first" title holders of the newly revived Women's Tag Team titles at Elimination Chamber next month.

This match wasn't bad at all, just not as impressive as the opener. It seemed like Sasha was trolling her (in-character) for the first part of this until she got a rude awakening about who she was really in the ring with. Besides after Ronda does her "Festus transformation" once the bell rings, you'd think most of these girls would be ready to run by now.

Becky Lynch wins the 2019 Women's Royal Rumble Match

Noteworthy spots that I was amused by:

• Liv Morgan was eliminated instantly
• Naomi eliminates Mandy Rose as soon as she enters this match, only for Mandy to return the favor after Naomi "Kofi's" her way back into the match
• Kairi Sane's "splat" at ringside, thanks to the Riott Squad, only for Io Shirai to make the save and rescue her best friend from harm
• Seeing Lacey Evans and Charlotte Flair stare down and throw down - REALLY wouldn't mind a program between them down the road
• Rhea Ripley, Io Shirai, Zelina Vega (dressed as Street Fighter's Vega), Xia Li and most of the NXT women showing up in this match getting little to no reaction upon arrival. Not really their faults when WWE's core casual audience aren't even aware of the NXT product as a whole.
• Zelina Vega hiding underneath the ring until Hornswoggle chased her in and out of the ring and out of this match
• Maria Kanellis "teaming up" with Alicia Fox until they had a falling out, causing Foxy to throw a tantrum in the middle of the ring
• Kacy Catanzaro climbing back into the ring like a spider monkey after being tossed out only to get eliminated by Rhea Ripley
• Bayley and Carmella working together briefly, an obvious throwback to their relationship on WWE Breaking Ground
• Natalya breaking the record at 55 minutes as the woman lasting the longest in a Women's Royal Rumble match, shattering Sasha Banks' previous record from last year.

The narrative towards the end of the Women's Rumble was that commentary was selling the fact that Lana was so brave to make the effort to compete tonight even though she twisted her ankle during the preshow/kickoff when she was knocked off the ring apron during the United States Championship Match. Nia Jax came out and attacked her, effectively making her unable to compete. Becky Lynch races out and demands that Fit Finlay call an audible and put her in for SmackDown! Live. Of course he caves and Becky Lynch is able to enter this match. Funny that she was added in at the last second too because this crowd was clearly ready to shit all over the rest of this show if Becky wasn't the winner of this match. When the Becky chants started up in the twenties, that's when I was saying to myself, "Please don't do anything stupid, WWE..." and then they got quiet after Carmella came out, I was like, "Oh boy..." Fortunately for them, they made the right move and added Becky into this match as one of the bottom four.

I want to note that Charlotte Flair looked borderline insane at one point towards the end. That should be her character instead of attempting to be a cheap imitation/rehash of her father. I loved how Charlotte and Becky worked together to eliminate Nia Jax and Becky shouting throughout this when she had a mock injury at the hands of a salty Nia Jax that "You've (Charlotte) stolen enough from me! You're not taking this from me!" That was great storytelling there, showing that it's not all peaches and cream between Charlotte and Becky at all. Their bitter rivalry from 2018 is still painfully apparent with those wounds still fresh. Obviously, Becky Lynch is going to get that match against Ronda Rousey that she was denied previously, but at this stage of the game, I cannot fathom them leaving Charlotte Flair out of the equation if it's going to be WrestleMania main event. At this point, I wouldn't put it past them not to make it a fatal four way with Nia Jax thrown in there too.

I know people nit-picked about this in retrospect, but I applaud WWE for using the talent on the active rosters instead of relying on a ton of returns and one-off appearances for this second Women's Royal Rumble match. It made for a less exciting match in terms of nostalgia, but I still rate this Rumble match better than the Men's one this year.

WWE Championship Match - Daniel Bryan (c) def. AJ Styles

I haven't been following too much of Daniel Bryan's current heel run as the evil Captain Planet, but any reason to give us more AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan matches, I am all for. This match started off slow and picked up over the time that they were given, even though we were past the four hour mark on this card and that's asking a lot from people in terms of their attention spans at this point. That decision, coupled with putting this match in the dead slot on the card following the Women's Rumble match, had Bryan and Styles wrestling to the sound of crickets for the most part. I reiterate - this wasn't a bad match. It was just poor placement on the agenda for tonight to say that this slower paced match was placed this late into the card on a nearly five plus hour card.

I can't speak for anyone else but I uttered, "Meh..." out loud when Erick Rowen came out and chokeslammed Styles for the finish. I guess they are going to give Bryan the returning Bludgeon Bros. as his henchmen in this role as a subtle nod back to their time together in the Wyatt Family.

WWE Universal Championship Match - Brock Lesnar (c) def. Finn Balor

This was exactly what it needed to be. Finn surprising everyone by getting a bit of offense on Brock and managing to "wound" the Beast with those attacks at ringside that rammed him into the corner of the commentary table, giving Brock a literal gut-check. I'm surprised that commentary didn't say anything about his history of having a pretty nasty abdominal infection (i.e. Diverticulitis) that hampered the tail end of his initial UFC and nearly killed him. As a result, Finn was able to get a pretty sweet looking near-fall following a Tornado DDT to counter the F-5 followed by Coup de Grace before going for the cover. Ultimately, Finn fell victim to the Kimura Lock that Brock locked in from this position and retained the title. I don't know why people were surprised at the result as it's the same thing everyone thought what was going to happen when the match was first announced. Sure, it wasn't as fun to watch as AJ Styles versus Brock Lesnar back in 2017 but it was much better than I was expecting on paper. I hope Brock gets more "smaller" guys to toss around like ragdolls. That's more entertaining than him and another "powerhouse" lumbering around slowly for 10-15 minutes only to have Brock kill their aura of invincibility in one fell swoop.

Nothing tickled me more after this match were the two following things: 1) Commentary going on and on, with Michael Cole and Corey Graves shouting, "FINN BALOR MADE BROCK LESNAR BELIEVE!!" as he's beating the piss out of Balor post-match. 2) Paul Heyman tweeting on social media that Brock Lesnar has rewrote the Bible tonight. I thought I was going to die laughing at those two moments.

Seth Rollins wins the 2019 Royal Rumble

Noteworthy spots that I was mildly amused by:

• Jeff Jarrett returns and confronts Elias, only for Elias to eliminate him from this match and stopping him from selling a single portion of that Global Force Gold nonsense... I'll get heat for saying this, but at this point, Double J was better off joining the E machine. Global Force Wrestling was holding on by a whim and a prayer in 2018 and it was going to die within the widespread influence of all of these promotions vying for talent with AEW in the equation now.
• Kurt Angle running out into this match and moving around as if he was in slow motion. Let's just all admit that Kurt's best years are behind him back in TNA/Impact Wrestling. No offense to Kurt in the slightest, but he needs to just call it quits and stop embarrassing himself in this last WWE run. I wouldn't be surprised if he has like one more great match left in him, but all of these jobs he's been doing aren't doing him any favors.
• Mustafa Ali representing 205 Live strong in this match. I don't follow that show at all but I read the results here and there, but I'm glad that WWE finally gave him a solid spot and push on the SmackDown! Live roster.
• NXT being well-represented in this match with Johnny Gargano and Aleister Black making their main roster debuts in this match. I seriously doubt that these were call-ups but merely testing the waters at them on the main roster.
• The biggest surprise was Nia Jax laying out R-Truth and taking the #30 spot. I didn't understand the tweets and reactions by people on social media, acting like it was so revolutionary for a woman to be in the Men's Royal Rumble match when it's actually the FOURTH time it's happened - Chyna first, then Kharma/Awesome Kong, Beth Phoenix (I'm probably mixing those two up...), and now Nia Jax. The argument online was talking about the next part of the women's "evolution" in professional wrestling is to allow intergender matches in WWE as the norm. I don't mind them in Lucha Underground, but seeing it here in WWE just came off as damn odd. Watching live, I could tell the crowd couldn't tell what to make of it either - at least until that pop when Nia got hit with that Super Kick from Dolph Ziggler, followed by the 619 by Rey Mysterio and finally the RKO from Randy Orton in rapid succession.
• Much like the Women's Rumble Match, I'm glad that they didn't bank on a ton of returns/nostalgia to plague this Rumble Match. WWE has more than enough talent signed to their roster(s) and there's no excuse to not use it for filling up big matches like this. 

You could tell that they were rushing people out at random intervals by this point in the card as they were just trying to wrap up this show since they were nearing the SEVEN hour mark if you've been watching since the start of the preshow/kick-off. You would think by now that WWE would have learned that doing these marathon length live broadcasts are simultaneously burning out their talent and the audiences - watching live in the venue and at home. Seriously, Vince, most adults have work in the morning and kids have school the next day. I can't be staying up past midnight for this shit regularly.

That being said, this wasn't a bad Rumble match - it's just a consequence of this show dragging on 5-7+ hours at this point. I thought Strowman was going to pick up the win here for sure, but I'm glad that Rollins sneaked out that win with the Curb Stomp on the ring apron of all places. As of this writing (2/1/19), RAW already happened and Brock F-5'd Rollins into oblivion, so we know we're getting the most sensible match for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania and that's Brock vs. Rollins since Rollins has been ducking that one-on-one match since his first World Championship win.