Like every other year the Royal Rumble is when we embark in the Road to WrestleMania. But what a difference a year can make. At this point in 2025 the WWE was coming off it’s biggest year ever and looked like an unstoppable machine that answered all the big questions in the best way imaginable. Now, while they are not in any kind of real actual trouble, they do find themselves with a fanbase that is less satisfied than it has been in years and that is more irritated than it has been since 2019. Last year’s big onscreen story was the John Cena farewell tour, which promised to be the greatest send off ever but instead was an up and down trek with an ending that left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths. But there were offscreen stories that were equally frustrating. Escalating ticket prices and a switch over to ESPN that made watching PLEs less convenient and more expensive, and personnel moves like bungling the contract situation of the beloved R-Truth, exacerbated every creative misstep.
Adding even more gas to the fire was the ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ release of the second season of WWE Unreal, which portrayed the creative team as a bunch of simpletons as they were shown on camera struggling to come with ideas for Chelsea Green while saying on camera how they felt about her place in the pecking order, while they weren’t busy patting themselves on the back when they did nail Seth Rollins fake injury and Money in the Bank cash-in at Summerslam. If anything is clear it’s that HHH honeymoon is dead and buried, and he is now subject to the same kind of scrutiny both fair and fair that Tony Khan receives, and that Vince McMahon once took head on every week. So with all that in mind this was a chance to set things on a good path again; would they meet the challenge?
Women’s Rumble
For the third straight year the women’s rumble opened the show. It started with Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss doing the Ax and Smash bit from 1990, except this time they did not fight each other and instead teased it for a couple of minutes before waiting on number 3. We would eventually get the team unity straining moment when Charlotte would go to eliminate Nia Jax and take out Alexa in the process. And it was some A+ storytelling when Charlotte would go from sorrow to rage when her old friend and enemy Becky Lynch’s music hit and they would rekindle their never ending rivalry
Betrayal, both accidental and intentional, would happen a couple of other times when Iyo Sky would cause Kairi Sane to eliminate her abusive tag partner Asuka and Liv Morgan would take advantage of her partner Raquel Rodriguez’s back being turned to eliminate her. But that wasn’t the only thing going on. There were some standpoint performances from newer ladies – Kiana James would come in at 3 and would put an impressive display for the 27 minutes she was in there, Sol Ruca would come in at number 10 and last until the very end, being the next to last elimination, and Lash Legend would live up to her last name coming in at 15 and throwing out not only Flair but Sky and then both Nikki and Brie Bella at the same time! Brie was the one and only surprise entry and got the biggest pop for her entrance of anyone in the match. I never have a problem with anyone from the Divas era or before coming back for this; they never got a chance to be in one during their primes and were done wrong for years by Vince and the other bigwigs so they all deserve it. That being said I think it’s good to not have several of them come in every year because it can get stale especially since none of them are going to win it.
I gotta admit I was disappointed when number 30 came out and it was Tiffany Stratton; I and a lot of other people were hoping for Bianca Belair to make her return on this night so to not see her was a huge letdown. And now it looks like she won’t be there for Mania at all since she is having surgery on her injured finger. Once she didn’t make it the winner was obvious. Liv Morgan has come a long way in eight years and has the pedigree to be a Rumble winner (3 time Smackdown/Women’s World Champ, Money in the Bank Winner, multi time tag champ), and a ready made Mania story with the tension in her Judgement Day faction. After being a runner up in 2023 and 2024 she finally pulled it off.
All in all I thought this was one of the best Women’s Rumble matches they’ve had, from the people involved to the storylines that played out to the winner. Definitely a big step up over last year’s match, where too many people stayed in the ring too long and had to be cleared out in one fell swoop that just took the air out of the balloon for the match, and the 2023 version where the crowd was dead for much of the match because there were so many people in the match that got little to no reaction.
AJ Styles vs Gunther
This looks as if it truly is the end for Styles, at least based on what we’ve seen in the week or so since. While I won’t put it past him to do a few more dates here or there in the future I think it’s definitely safe to assume that this isn’t just an angle, and that he is finished as a full time performer. This match was a worthy final chapter to that and it adds to Gunther’s tally of men he’s sent into the great beyond. My big question remains as to what this is supposed to lead to for Gunther – the last guy they did this kind of thing for was Brock Lesnar and he went on an almost decade long run as the Thanos or Darkseid of WWE, with the box office receipts to match, and given who exists in the top tier or the men’s roster and any measurable metrics it’s hard to see where Gunther becomes that. But if it ultimately leads to a big, certifying win for somebody like Oba Femi then that’s perfectly fine, too.
All that being said, AJ deserves a big thank you from us all for 10 great years in WWE and as great a second (or third, depending on how you’re counting) act in wrestling as anyone could hope for. You can’t make an All Decade Top 10 for either the 2000s or 2010s without including him on it, and if you make an All 2000s Top 10 for the entire 25 years then he’s a top 5 guy in my opinion. He’s also one of the top most successful 5 people to come to modern day WWE after a long tenure outside the company (Daniel Bryan, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and Asuka would be the other four on my list). AJ also quickly become one of my favorite wrestlers in the company. So I’m bummed out that his final year in WWE would end in January, but if that’s his call then I can’t be mad about it.
WWE Universal Title: Drew McIntyre (c) vs Sami Zayn
I zoned out a bit during this match but what I saw was very good. I didn’t think Sami would win but they built it enough over the prior two weeks to at least make the result interesting. Drew is a breath of fresh air as champion and it would have been foolish to end in after just a few weeks. It looks like he’s going to take it all the way until WrestleMania. Getting the belt off of Cody was a must from where I’m sitting; he’d held it for 16 of the past 20 months and his second reign was playing out like he was gonna just be sitting on the belt for God knows how long. Drew has several potential challengers in Jacob Fatu, Randy Orton, Damien Priest, Trick Williams and Cody to tie him over for the next several months and even beyond WrestleMania. As of right now LA Knight, Orton and Rhodes have qualified for the Elimination Chamber so we’ll see who emerges soon.
Men’s Rumble
I liked the Women’s Rumble better but I thought this was good, too. Oba Femi showed out in a major way in his main roster ring debut and JeVon Evans had a good showing as well. The big shocker was Bron Breakker, a favorite on some people’s betting sheets, getting eliminated first when he was jumped by a masked man and laid out for Femi to dump him early. We’ll see where that leads but it was a bit of a head scratcher, as was the not quite well enough explained absence of Finn Balor. He wasn’t allowed in the match for some reason that wasn’t spelled out very well other than that they’re going to do another match between he and CM Punk soon (Chamber?). No surprise entries here; the expectation of Chris Jericho has turned out to be another case of us talking ourselves into something that was barely hinted at and never promised and Seth Rollins would not have another rush job recovery to make it back again.
We did get a big glimpse of the future in the forms of Femi, Trick Williams and JeVon Evans.
Femi’s interaction with Brock Lesnar was for sure a foreshadowing of a future match, and Oba was the big star of the match with the most eliminations of anyone.
The winner was pretty obvious. I had Roman Reigns winning this match as early as last Fall. He’s the biggest star in the company by far, has been openly talking about becoming champion again since then and hasn’t sniffed a title since he lost to Cody at Mania 40 in 2024. It’s time for him to get back in that lane. If not him, then who? Cody winning it for the third time in four years is a non starter. My prediction was either Roman or Orton and what do you know, they were both in the final four. Sorry guys, but you should know by now that Oba or Trick Williams, or even LA Knight was not winning.
So what’s next?
Roman didn’t waste any time picking who he would go after at WrestleMania. He and CM Punk did everything that was needed to get us on board for what’s going to be the Night Two main event at WrestleMania:
As of this writing Morgan is still choosing who to challenge between Stephanie Vaquer and Jade Cargill. Vaquer is the obvious choice but we have been thrown curveballs before in 2018, 2020, and 2023. (I’ll update this if she chooses tonight). But whichever way she goes that leads us to our next question:
Where do they go from here?
Morgan’s choice will seal up all but one of the top title matches for WrestleMania 42. As it stands right now I’d bet on either Cody or Orton to win the Chamber to face McIntyre. Cody is a clear choice but Randy is red hot right now and has enough history with Drew to make a story for the match. Plus, Cody and Jacob Fatu still haven’t settled things so a match between them at Mania remains a possibility. As for the women’s chamber I’d bet on Tiffany Stratton right now to win it and get her rematch for the WWE Women’s Title against Jade. Then of course there are all the other dominoes we are waiting to fall between now and mid April – all three tag team titles, the men’s and women’s US and Intercontinental Titles, and whatever other matches they cook up along the way. There’s a lot to suss out right now but they have two months to do it. I think there is an outside chance that we get a women’s main event on night one this year. If they load up the women’s tag team title match with Rhea/Iyo, the Bellas, and Charlotte/Alexa plus one or two other teams and make it a TLC match, that’s a big enough match to close night one over the Universal Title match and it would be a fitting capper to what has been the best use of women in the tag team division ever.
I’m holding out hope for that to come about; quite frankly it would be a use of imagination that the women’s division and the company as a whole have been lacking since WrestleMania 40. Outside of Cena’s last year most of WWE booking has, in my opinion, played out like a series of checking boxes to give this man or woman a title win and reign and to make sure the big things happen on the big days on the calendar. A result of that has been that the women’s division is often booked as if the creative team is playing WWE 2k and picking what to do from a menu – interrupted promo this week, one on one match with a run in the next week, a tag team match of some kind in the third and one last promo that ends in fisticuffs during the fourth week leading to a match on the PLE. That kind of paint by numbers booking treats women’s PLE matches as part of a routine and not a big deal, which then leads to them not being anticipated enough to put in the main event, which is why there has only been one women’s match to main event a PLE since HHH took over. Putting in the time and effort to develop the characters on the various teams and seed some bigger, more intense conflict between them that could then get people excited enough about the match to have it headline night 1 would be a great move.
Final Verdict
From where I’m sitting this was the best PLE that they’ve run on ESPN so far. I give it a solid B+. None of the matches were bad and the Rumble matches had a lot of great moments and set up lots of things for the future while having two good and worthy winners. My only real knock on the show is that with only four matches it still ran for four hours. We can find a way to get one more match in there guys, if it’s going to be just as long regardless. Was this show enough to silence the doubters for now? Probably not. The issue right now is that they need a single topline story to drive the train and capture the audiences attention. The Bloodline carried that mantle for four years, but that ended on January 6 of last year and the thing that was supposed to pick up the torch (Cena’s farewell) failed to do so in a fully satisfying way, which of course opened the door to pay more attention and be more critical of everything else. And it’s being reflected in the tickets not moving as fast for this year’s Mania as they did for last year. A lot, dare I say most, of that can be blamed on prices and the location – Las Vegas is pretty inconvenient for most of us to get to and doing it two years in a row is a bridge too far for a lot of people. So it looks this year is one where they’re just going to have to power through, put on their best possible product, and build goodwill for 2027. When it comes to that goal I think they made a good start.
Stroke of Genius 