Not the Hero We Needed, But the One We Deserved!
(A pretty good match with an ending we all saw from a thousand mile away)
Storytelling: 4/5 Stars
Match Quality: 3/5 Stars
Finish: 2/5 Stars
Winner: 3/5 Stars
Extracurriculars: 2/5 Stars-some awful commentating wars mixed with a few odd choices for surprises
TOTAL: 14/25 Stars
Great Moment You May Have Forgotten: Another fun Rhodes Brothers duel, but the biggest in-ring surprise was upstart NXT star Bo Dallas lasting 20 minutes and eliminating Wade Barrett.
Moment you Wish You Weren't Reminded Of: Returning surprise The Godfather makes a triumphant appearance with all his ho's....and was eliminated in 5 seconds by Dolph Ziggler.
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In order to truly understand why this match is not ranked higher than it's current placement, we need to go back in time to explain the circumstances.
At Wrestlemania 28 during the previous April, John Cena and the Rock competed in a match that was transcendent of the time period, a truly "Once in a Lifetime" affair. After a year of buildup and name calling, the match went on as the main event and was good. Not great, there were certainly pacing issues and the Rock's out of shape cardio, but good enough to fit the build as a generational match.
Fast forward to around Summerslam, and The Rock announces his intentions to challenge for the WWE Title at Rumble against CM Punk, who turns heel. At about that point you started to get the atmospheric sense that they were building towards a "Twice in a Lifetime" match, even worse for the WWE Title. The months continued and it became more and more apparent that they were going to do this, screwing Punk out of his deserved Mania main event match. Say what you want about the great quality of his match with Taker at 29, Punk should've been the WWE Champion come Mania.
So when the week of Royal Rumble rolls around and John Cena cuts his "Me first, must recover from my bad year" promo, you knew he was gonna win the Rumble, but didn't want to believe it. What followed is a 30-man clash fest with hope, any kind of hope, that someone else would shock the world and win that match.
The 2013 Rumble starts off great, with one of the expected hopefuls Dolph Ziggler taking on a shocking return of Chris Jericho. Jericho's line "I never lost it!" after the "You still got it!" chants was brilliant. Then afterwards Cody Rhodes, who eventually eliminated his brother Goldust in another surprising return, and Kofi (who performed a Conchairto of sorts to avoid elimination) enter. Then Santino provides his usual brand of comic relief, albeit to no avail.
This Rumble was actually rather fun and some great moments. There is the Dust battle, the Kingston spot, and the Bo Dallas shocking elimination of Wade Barrett, who proceeds to do the heeling thing and eliminate Bo right back. You had a wonderful sequence between Team Hell No, where after eliminating Not So Great Khali, D-Bry eliminates Kane. Cesaro (future WWE champion, he better be) eliminates Bryan and Kane catches him outside, with the option to save him, decides against it and knocks Bryan to the ground, manifesting the hilarious tension that was Team Hell No. Finally, you have the greatest faction of the last 5 years, 3MB, doing their namesake proud by jobbing out the only way they know how, hilariously painful.
There were also some baffling and poor choices in this match. The bickering between JBL and Cole got overly infuriating, as they argued over pointless facts and who was more right about an elimination. The Godfather's quick elimination was poor. Just say "original Sin Cara" and you know it was terrible. Plus a boatload of jobbers, such as Albert/A-Train/Hip-Hop Hippo/Tensai/Sweet T/Jason Albert/Matt Bloom who received the Shelton Benjamin treatment. (Side note: I don't know if it was intentional, but it seemed a lot of the minority wrestlers were the ones being mistreated in this match, watch it and you"ll see what I am referring to).
But when it was all down to the brass ring names, we knew this was the Cena show. He came in at number 19 and started throwing out a few names, and then hid in the corner until about the end. After Ryback came in at 30 and did his best Goldberg impression, we were eventually down to 6. Jericho did his specialty moves and looked great, until Dolph Ziggler kicked him back into semi retirement. Orton started hitting the RKO OUTTA NOWHERE on everyone!!!, until Goldback knocked him out. Ziggler showed off (pun) his impressive skills, including his ability to sell as Sheamus kicked him out.
So our final three were Cena, Lameus, and Ryberg. So many problems with that, the biggest one being absolutely no believability that anyone other than Cena is going to win that match. Sheamus is the defending champion without the namesake to win two in a row, and Ryback is green and up and coming, not the right winning choice. Even when you have a pretty obvious winner, you need a believable second place person who could pull the upset, which was not present here.
Well the ending kinda sucks and each do their signature moves and eventually LOLCenaWinsLOL. I know shocking. On the one hand, I do give WWE credit for telling a great story for the Mania match by picking the right winner. The problem is that the only people who wanted that story were the WWE, the fans had already seen it, not to mention that the best wrestler on the planet at the time is relegated to a pawn in a feud between a guy who wrestles a few times a year and a guy whose gimmick is played out...FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW!!!! FOR THE TITLE!!!! It's a good Rumble match and great storytelling for the story no one wanted, and most of you know how that ended so you can make your own opinions of "Twice in a Lifetime" (I was there, and I had a blast, but that's because of me and my fellow fans around me).
We're officially halfway done! You can watch the match on the network, and like 3MB, you have a 1/10 chance of winning! There have been a lot of weird and controversial endings to Rumble matches, but tomorrow's entry might be the weirdest. Plus several wrestlers get mutilated by everyone else in the ring. What do I mean? Only time will tell.
