Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey Royal Rumble Wins Highlight WWE’s Biggest Problem

WWE, if nothing else, is very confident in what it wants as its brand: a few megastars, some moments and names that draw outside attention. Everything else is largely an afterthought. 

Saturday night’s Royal Rumble hammered home this idea in dramatic fashion…from the opening gun all the way to midnight on the East Coast. 

The first big landmark was the big Ronda Rousey return. The internet age doesn’t leave much wiggle room for secrets nowadays, but that didn’t stop the former UFC star’s rumored return from getting a big pop. 

To WWE’s credit, it played with fan expectations at least a bit, putting the women’s Rumble match right in the middle of the show. Wandering minds would have expected, if Rousey were to return, the women’s match would close the show; wandering minds also might have expected her return would happen 30th, not a few spots prior, which made the shocker all the better.

Call the manipulation of simple expectations a nice surprise. 

But that’s about it. Rousey wins a match that had roughly half of its participants not even be full-time Superstars, and she’ll be the main talk of the division for the next two months. She’s angling as a heel, too, which was cemented after the fact in a not-great promo:  

Rousey’s going to undoubtedly go at Charlotte Flair or Becky Lynch. This might be where they try to rehab the latter’s so-so heel run after she returned from pregnancy to derail Bianca Belair’s title run with a pair of moves. The EST of WWE and everyone else are stuck as an afterthought in the process. 

The next landmark was predictably the title match between Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar. 

We could have hypothesized for a long time that WWE would do whatever it takes to get Reigns vs. Lesnar back on track for WrestleMania. It’s the money matchup, no matter how many times it has been seen, but this time with a fresh twist as The Beast Incarnate is the supposed underdog and babyface to Reigns’ heel. 

And indeed, WWE derailed its entire men’s Rumble match to get Reigns-Lesnar back on track after The Tribal Chief missed Day 1 due to COVID-19 and The Beast inexplicably got added to the Raw men’s title match.

Lashley won on Saturday night, but only because Reigns came out to throw interference. It was a cool story moment when Paul Heyman betrayed Lesnar and walked out with The Head of the Table. But the minute Reigns showed up, everyone knew Lesnar was going to win the men’s match later in the night. 

And the whole thing leaves Lashley looking like a chump without an opponent and his title an afterthought. He got whipped for most of the match and lucked into a win.

Now he doesn’t have an opponent for ‘Mania and with the way it got treated, why would fans care when the programming emphatically says it’s only SmackDown’s title scene that matters? 

Some of this could have been forgiven if the men’s match had been any good. But Kofi Kingston missed his escape spot, and the contest was littered with mid-carders and the predictable, groan-worthy attempt to make Omos look like a monster. A guy like Big E—who just got sacrificed at Day 1 for Lesnar—was unceremoniously dumped over the top rope with barely a mention. AJ Styles, international legend and future Hall of Famer, got dumped by Madcap Moss? Hard to remember who. Shane McMahon was one of the final three. 

So, when Lesnar came out, yeah, the crowd popped, but that’s about it. He got his win, WWE has its big star matchup and the 2022 Royal Rumble will be remembered for, well, it’s hard to say. By comparison, who complains if Big E gets his win? They can still throw Lesnar at Reigns. Who complains if Styles wins? 

It’s not that the emphasis on stars, social media and YouTube numbers is predictable—it’s that it’s so disappointing. WWE has the best roster on the planet and the most reach, and yet, it feels like nothing matters. It’s especially disappointing because of two factors: 

• The reliance on part-timers to pop ratings back in the day was because it needed to sell pay-per-view buys. Now, not so much. 
• One would think with legitimate competition such as All Elite Wrestling, WWE would take a back-against-the-wall stance, not double-down on its formula. 

Imagine, for a moment, there’s a lapsed fan out there who was going to give this a chance. To their disdain, the big event was again used to set up Lesnar-Reigns. There’s a twist, but it’s a mild one and probably not one that encourages the fan to keep coming back. 

But if it wasn’t apparent before, WWE isn’t really interested in that lapsed fan. Rousey’s name makes a big non-wrestling splash and so will the Lesnar-Reigns matchup. The latter, based on WWE’s double-down, will likely win at The Show of Shows before holding the belt until the next ‘Mania in California, where he’ll face The Rock, but that’s a different discussion.  

The current discussion is that the more things seem to change outside of WWE, the more its desire to prioritize moments and only certain stars doesn’t. It’s unfortunate, and while it gets the greatly desired outside attention, it’s a double down that only digs the inability to build new stars or meaningful non-WrestleMania season content an even deeper hole. 

This year’s ‘Mania could still be fun, but WWE’s biggest problem just made the journey begin with a stumble.