5 Missed Opportunities from WWE Royal Rumble 2021
Royal Rumble 2021 is now in the history books, and one could call it the best show of the Pandemic Era.
Despite the lack of an actual audience, which plays a big role in making matches like the Royal Rumble a huge success, WWE somehow continued their five-year long trend of starting the year with a marvellous pay per view.
Bianca Belair and Edge literally went past the entire field of superstars, after entering the Royal Rumble match at number three and number one, to win the 30-Superstar matches and booked their tickets to World Title bouts at WrestleMania 37.
Drew McIntyre, Sasha Banks and Roman Reigns continued their respective World Title runs, with the first one demolishing Goldberg in a short match and the latter two in highly competitive matches, that ranged from good to absolutely brilliant.
However, despite all the plus points of the show, WWE missed a few opportunities with the Royal Rumble, some of which could have actually helped elevate the show from the level of a great show to one of the best of all time.
Here are five missed opportunities from this year's Royal Rumble.
#1 Lack of big returns in Women's Royal Rumble match
Ever since the Women's Royal Rumble match was introduced in 2018, a lot of former stars, returning stars and NXT performers have appeared in the match, and have managed to leave a strong mark.
Be it The Bella Twins, Trish Stratus and Lita from 2018, Rhea Ripley and Io Shirai from 2019 or Beth Pheonix and Naomi from last year, at least one of the surprise entrants managed to leave a mark on the match. Compared to the past three years, WWE failed to hit the target this time.
Victoria, Torrie Wilson, Alicia Fox and Jillian Hall - These are the four former superstars who appeared in the Royal Rumble match, and none of them had a real impact. Their combined stay lasted only 20 minutes, and none managed to eliminate even a single performer.
The appearance of Victoria, after a decade, was a nice surprise, but the other 3 added absolutely nothing to the match. Jillian spent most of the time along with Billy Kay, only to end up getting eliminated by her, and Fox got involved in the 24/7 Title picture while being in the match, which made little sense.
WWE could have done a lot better with their choice of returning superstars with the Women's Royal Rumble match like they did with the Men's version, but they left a lot to be desired for next year.