WWE: Has the Royal Rumble lost its importance?

We’re just a couple of weeks away from one of the most anticipated PPVs of the year – the Royal Rumble. Since its inception, Royal Rumble has been seen as the trampoline for one superstar to be launched into the Wrestlemania spotlight. It has been one of the ‘Top 4’ WWE PPVs in a year, and has revolutionized the concept of a PPV in the wrestling industry. Since the initiation of the concept, even other companies such as WCW and TNA have tried to emulate the format of the Royal Rumble, albeit making certain changes (which were brutal), but weren’t as successful as the WWE has been through the formulation and the execution of the concept.

I remember when I was young and when WWE was aired on Star Sports, Royal Rumble was the most exciting, and the most unpredictable match of all the PPVs. You have 30 superstars entering one after the other, and once the ring fills up with all of them, you could see bodies flying everywhere. And back in the day, the most deserving superstar was given the chance to go to Wrestlemania, and win the title. Guys like Shawn Michaels, Austin, Rock, Brock Lesnar, etc used the RR victories to launch their careers to unprecedented heights in the world of professional wrestling. How can we forget the fairytale journey of Chris Benoit, although now seen as a villain; but when he won the Royal Rumble in 2004, it was probably the most emotional, and one of the most deserving victories in the history of the industry. What followed next can happen only once in a decade, with Chris Benoit, in JR’s words, ending his ’18 year odyssey’ by winning the World Heavyweight title at Wrestlemania  20.

So what has changed? It is also true that from ’97 to ’06, WWE had some of the biggest names the industry had ever witnessed. Guys like Austin, Rock, Eddie, Benoit, Jericho, Undertaker, Lesnar, Triple H, Kurt Angle etc. were a part of the regular crew of superstars, and this made the Royal Rumble all the more fascinating. At this point in the WWE, there are only about 5-6 guys who are seen as serious contenders to win the Royal Rumble. That takes away the surprise element, the uncertainty of the nature of the match itself. Moreover, having two titles takes away some of the significance of the Royal Rumble match.

But even that isn’t the main reason why Royal Rumble has lost its importance. Ever since matches like Money in the Bank came into existence, the importance of Royal Rumble has been reduced. That was what the significance of RR was, which made the Chris Benoit win so special. Or when you have a storyline where a guy was denied championship opportunities, and won the Royal Rumble to seal a title shot at WrestleMania, it adds to the importance of the match, and also to the main event of WrestleMania itself. That is where the WWE has lost its plot. Frequenting title opportunities aside, increasing the number of PPVs a year has decreased the stake of Royal Rumble considerably. Apart from that, the lack of quality storylines has hampered the buy rates of all the PPVs, and have reduced the anticipation for the fans. How many of us would like storylines such as the ‘Summer of Punk’ to repeat on a regular basis? The interest it generated was out of the ordinary. Not because it was the best storyline to ever happen in the wrestling business; the same storyline happened when Punk was leaving RoH. The reason behind that was the boring, repetitive storylines in WWE, and in the wrestling business in general.

WrestleMania is termed as the ‘Grand daddy of Entertainment’, and one of the ways you can generate a lot of interest, and collect millions in gate is when you captivate the fans with interesting storylines. How many of us remember Vince Mcmahon winning the Rumble, and the culminating Wrestlemania? The answer, not surprisingly, is a lot of us.

It wasn’t just because of the big name superstars, but it was because of the storyline that followed. WWE banks on big names like Undertaker and Rock to do solid numbers, but if you have a good storyline, the fans will pay to see the matches. This year’s Royal Rumble match has already been over shadowed by Punk-Rock confrontation, and that is bad for business. Even though you have one of the most anticipated matches of the past year happening at Royal Rumble, it has to be made sure that the attention should be on the main match of the PPV. And the fact that Punk-Rock is a bigger selling point of the PPV than the RR match itself proves that the Royal Rumble match, and hence the PPV, has lost its prominence, the one thing that made it special. We can only hope that WWE comes up with better ideas to rectify that in the future.