This Sunday is the Royal Rumble pay-per-view headlined by the Royal Rumble match. This one holds a special place in history for me because it will be the first one I will be in attendance for, but that’s not what this article is about. What I’m going to talk about is how the royal rumble can be unpredictable, yet predictable at the same time.
The rumble match is promoted by unpredictability and an “anything can happen” hook. That holds true every year with the entry order because you never know who going to come out, when they’re entering, and you seem to always have a couple surprises. That aspect makes the match unique. The most unpredictable moment for me was the 2008 rumble where John Cena was the surprise 30th entrant. Nobody knew he was coming back that soon. At the same time, it became predictable because once he was in the match, you knew he was winning, taking the element of surprise out of the rest of that match.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGIqAiUGdLI[/youtube]
What makes the royal rumble match predictable is the stipulation of the winner receiving a championship match at WrestleMania. While that is the main selling point, it eliminates most participates from consideration. That’s not necessarily a good thing in what is supposed to be the most exciting, unpredictable match of the year. You know when a mid-carder, opening match participant, or a random surprise entrant comes out, they are not winning. In fact, most of the time, you only have a couple wrestlers who actually have any chance of winning. Sometimes, such as in 1998 with Steve Austin, 2002 with Triple H, 2003 with Brock Lesnar, and 2013 with John Cena, those were the only options to win, and I would say most of the fans watching already knew the outcome to those particular rumbles before the match started.
This years will be more of the same, it’s unpredictable, yet predictable. You don’t know who’s coming out or when, with the exception of CM Punk, but you can easily see that only a few people such as Batista, Punk, and Daniel Bryan, who isn’t even announced, but WWE can’t be stupid enough to leave him out, they just can’t be. Anyway, I’m sure it will be exciting no matter what, it usually is.
Until next time, predictable the unpredictable,
-Nick
