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I know wrestling and WWE still gets a bad rap, but they get it right it's can be some of the most brilliant entertainment to watch and holy crap nuts wasn't this year's Royal Rumble just amazing!
The whole weekend was incredible! If you haven't already or don't have the WWE Network get on it and watch the Royal Rumble and especially NXT: Philadelphia.
It's free for the first 30 days and it's 100% worth it for these two events as the both Royal Rumble matches and the whole NXT (WWE's B-team brand/ developmental) card with the main event being one of the best matches you'll see in 2018.
Let's talk about what happened on last night's (Sunday 28th January) WWE Pay-Per-View.
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The first match of the night was champion AJ Style vs Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn in a handicap match for the WWE Championship title.
With how the evening played out this was a decent place for this match to get the crowd and viewers at home going for a long night ahead of them (with the whole PPV being over four hours & that's without the pre-show stuff!) with an entertaining boat to kick things off.
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The well-paced match was full of near-falls and it showed Styles as clever and courageous champion using Owens; injury against him. The ending created an interesting narrative moving forward as even though The Phenomenal One retained it looked like Owens was ever actually tagged.
All three have had better matches, even against each other, and I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusion of this story will end at the during a SmackDown TV show or at the PPV for the blue brand, Fastlane, in a Last Man Standing match.
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Staying with SmackDown, the next match was a 2-out-of-3 falls match for the SmackDown Tag Team titles between current champs The Usos against Chad Gable & Shelton Benjamin.
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Even though The Usos are the best tag team in WWE at the moment, I did think we could see an upset to help build the team of Gable and Benjamin and it looked WWE were going to do that with near-falls for both sides.
However, WWE went a different and actually surprising route as after a series of superkicks the champs picked up the first win and shortly after The Usos picked up the clean sweep with a roll-up pin.
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This win continues the build The Usos as an elite tag team and will make their eventual loss even more important, but the question is what do you do with Gable & Benjamin as they've lost all momentum.
My guess is they'll be a number one contenders match at Fastlane to fight The Usos at WrestleMania or a tag team tournament throughout the coming weeks on SmackDown and a title match at Fastlane moving towards New Orleans. Whatever happens, it'll be The Usos vs The Bludgeon Brothers at WM34.
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After the two warm-up matches, it was time for the first (of two) main events with the Men's Royal Rumble match and what a f*cking brilliant match it was too! It was full of subplots, genuine shocks & surprises and a winner that'll make every WWE fan happy.
The match started with Rusev, who is so incredibly over it's crazy and Finn Balor, my pick to win. Balor was able to get rid of Baron Corbin early, but who left strong and a monster laying out both the Bulgarian and Irishman respectfully.
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Meanwhile, Elias sang a song and was interrupted by NXT champion Andrade "Cien" Almas, who put in an incredibly impressive showing 24 hours after his battle to retain his title.
Seth Rollins, Shinsuke Nakamura, The New Day and Woken Matt Hardy were among the next batch of entrants.
There were more surprises with The Hurricane popping up, Rey Mysterio and NXT's Adam Cole all entered. At one-point Cole was battling with the likes of John Cena, Randy Orton, Roman Reigns and proves how much WWE things of him and he should be on the main roster now.
Near the end, there was a nice moment with the two generations & a sort of passing of the torch moment with Cena, Orton and Mysterio on one side and Reigns, Nakamura and Balor on the other.
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The final four was Nakamura, Cena, Balor and Reigns. Cena eliminated Balor and was taken out by The King of Strong Style who went on to oust The Big Dog to win the Royal Rumble.
Nakamura winning was both a shock and refreshing and will live in the memory for a long time and now we have the mouth-watering dream match of AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura for the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania and this should be the headline main event.
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Elsewhere, Balor's Iron Man performance will be a major boost to his career hopefully getting into the main event scene. Both Cole and Almas has given NXT a great platform and showed they will work on the main roster, Cole will be on Raw and Almas on SmackDown post-WM or maybe in Almas' case post-Summerslam.
Finally, this Royal Rumble match was a firm showing of WWE embracing the New Era.
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Sadly, it was the Raw tag team title match next and the crowd just couldn't get their energy up for this match after the Royal Rumble and to be honest I was skipping through this match myself.
Anyway, it was champs Seth Rollins & Jason Jordan vs Sheamus & Cesaro in a one-sided affair as the gutty Rollins spent the whole boat fighting off both challengers after Jordan suffered a concussion. In the end, Rollins couldn't fight anymore and found himself on the end of a three count with The Bar as the new Raw Tag Team Champions.
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This loss will build on the continued animosity between Rollins and Jordan with a fight between the two at or after the next Raw PPV Elimination Chamber.
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Next up was demolition derby match of Kane vs Brawn Stroman vs Brock Lesnar for the Universal title.
This match was everything we expected it was going to be, three men destroying everything around them and it was entertaining to watch.
It was a mixture of hard strikes, power moves and bodies going through tables. Kane stopped The Monster Among Men finishing off the champ to only find himself becoming the victim The Beasts F-5 onto a chair to take the pin and Lesnar retaining the Universal championship.
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This match proves Stroman will probably win the title at WrestleMania (after winning the number one contenders match at Elimination Chamber though I wouldn't be surprised if Balor wins it) with Brock's contract ending and possibly leaving for UFC.
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Finally, we come to the main event and something WWE fans have been waiting years for as we finally got a Women's Royal Rumble match.
WWE's chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon was sitting on commentary, despite not actually doing or adding anything.
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The match began with Sasha Banks (in her special Wonder Woman ring gear) and Beck Lynch and it didn't take too long for the first surprise veteran to return with Lita (wearing a Times Up shirt) and then Mae Young Classic winner and NXT's Kari Sane charged in and took out her opponents.
One of the standouts was a returning Michelle McCool, who was impressive taking out four women and WWE should think about bringing her back as part of the main roster or NXT and the same goes for Kelly Kelly.
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It was wonderful to see Vickie Guerrero back and shouting and maybe be throughout of a GM role. Nia Jax was impressive steamrolling her opposition and was soon facing off against Beth Phoenix.
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Once Asuka entered her was laying waste to everyone including Camella and the legend Trish Stratus entered at 30 and rightly so.
It was great to see the call back to Stratus' old-rivalry with Mickie James and facing off against The Boss before getting eliminated.
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The final four was The Bella Twins, Banks and Asuka with Brie, Nikki and Sasha ganging up on The Empress of Tomorrow until the twins removed Banks and Nikki taking out her own sister until Asuka kicked Nikki off the ring apron to become the last woman standing.
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During her celebration and picking her opponent for WrestleMania, Ronda Rousey entertained the ring confirming both she's joined WWE and she'll be in New Orleans then shared an intense staredown with Asuka.
This main event was great Women's Royal Rumble it was entertaining and fun from beginning to end, it was a massive shame Alicia Fox & Paige missed out due to injury.
While Rousey's Roddy Piper-inspired gear was great and by all counts was wearing Piper's actual jacket, it did take away from the moment a little bit as well as having a weird ending as I'm sure plenty of WWE fans wanted to know who Asuka will be facing probably being Alexa Bliss for the Raw Women's title.
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While it was great to see some returning faces like Torrie Wilson etc and as I said above both Kelly Kelly and McCool could be apart of WWE it would've been nice to see 5-6 returning faces with 4-5 NXT/Mae Young Classic wrestlers, like the Iconic Duo Billie Kay & Peyton Royce, instead of WWE blowing their load at the first one, but who can blame them.
Additionally, this could be the beginning of a Sasha Banks heel turn.
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