On Sunday night, I attended the 2018 Royal Rumble at the Wells Fargo Center in Philly. Let me tell you, the show was absolutely incredible and the crowd was electric.
It started during the pre-show with the whole crowd practicing counting down from 10, moved to a fun pair of matches from the Smackdown roster (AJ Styles and the Uso's retained) and went right into the Men's Royal Rumble.
The men's Rumble starting in the middle of the show at about 8:15pm signaled that not only was the Women's Rumble closing the show, it could only mean one thing: Ronda Rousey.
But first, the men's rumble. A few highlights and thoughts:
-Thunderous chants of Rusev Day for the first entrant, and perhaps an even louder pop for Finn. You knew Finn would be the ironman of this Rumble
-Corbin getting tossed quickly and losing his mind was awesome to see and led to Heath Slater's comedy spot
-Elias sang a nice tune which included the line "i walked up to the Rocky statue, and spit right in his face"
-Sheamus got eliminated...in 2 seconds...by Heath Slater...on his birthday. Ouch!
-It is never not fun signing along to Cena's theme to the tune of "john cena sucks"
-Really happy Cien Almas and Adam Cole were rewarded with Rumble spots for their work in NXT. Almas was probably MVP of the weekend between his Takeover epic and going 20 plus mins in the Rumble
-Big E needs a singles push
-REY FREAKING MYSTERIO IS BACK! He deserved the crowd reaction he got after getting booed out of the building years ago simply because he wasn't Daniel Bryan
-Happy Dolph is back but he should have trolled the audience by coming out to daniel bryan's theme song
-The final four of Cena, Roman, Nakamura, and Finn was a perfect choice. The crowd was realllllly hot and the result very unpredictable. I was happy they gave it all a lot of time too.
-Nakamura winning was great...but I was rooting for Roman Reigns
After that, poor Seth Rollins and The Bar had to work their ass off for a dead crowd, but that was to be expected. Personally, I took a break after the Rumble because I was so exhausted from cheering, and most of the audience did the same.
Brock/Braun/Kane was a fun quick brawl with some stiff shots, which has been typical of Brock's matches. Then began the first ever women's Royal Rumble:
-LITA!
-Molly Holly!
-Trish Stratus!
-Trish Startus! Man, she's still got 'it'
-Kelly Kelly...also still has 'it'
-Feel bad for Alicia Fox and Paige getting injured and missing out on this
-A lot of people popped for the Beth Phoenix / Natalya moment but I couldn't care less. Nattie stinks and Beth shouldn't be in the hall of fame
-Always fun to see Vickie Guerrero, and shout out to her for taking a bump
-This match was so well planned an executed. Literally every entrant got a huge ovation.
-Great to see the Bellas back and I was rooting for Nikki to win. Nikki eliminating Brie will be fun for Total Divas
-I don't get why Sasha rolled out of the ring so much. In fact, the women were often outside the ring under the bottom rope which isn't typical of the men's rumble so I wonder why that was.
-Sasha lasted the longest in both Rumbles besides Finn Balor
-No one is ready for Asuka. No one.
-Wild to see WWE go with 2 Japanese natives to win the Rumbles. Wonder if its a response at all to the rise of New Japan?
-The show closing with Asuka, Ronda Rousey, Charlotte, and Alexa all in the ring is a great tease of what is to come in that division
-Rousey did not "ruin" Asuka's moment and those who think so are just not understanding what Sports Entertainment is all about
Arguably this was the best WWE show I have ever been to!