Royal Rumble 2018

All that is announced so far.

And to make them more thrilling, the first participants for both Rumble matches are Naomi and Elias.

Is anyone excited about the woman's Royal Rumble match? I honestly can't say that I am. And that is nothing against the women at all, it's purely down to having to sit through two Royal Rumble matches in one night. Previous Rumble matches have dragged on a bit and full of people just lying around doing nothing. Now we have two matches like that to look forward to... yay!

I guess we can be sure that the womens match will be at least half as long as the mens as there are so many fewer women on the roster. Even if they put everyt woman they have in both brands in the match, can they make 15 competitors?

*Edit, just checked, with all the active wrestlers, they could put in 21 competitors, and that's everyone! So yeah, I expect it to be between 10 and 15 girls coming out to play, and maybe a few returning vets to shake things up a little...

Last edited by Gorgrim (Wed-20-Dec-2017 22:01:12)

There's already talk on whether they'll include NXT women as well to try and make it up to 30.

I am interested where they go with the Womens Rumble although I only see it ending one way: Asuka wins, possibly from #1 spot.

Both Rumbles will be shit. Can't remember the last one I properly enjoyed. It's become like Mania to me. A lot of hype and build up, but usually a huge letdown because of how it's booked. If they put the effort into these like they do some of the smaller PPVs, then they would be fantastic, but they seem to think that name value alone is enough. I'll be very surprised if I find one of the Rumble matches entertaining, nevermind having two on one night.

Personally I'd rather have two good women's title matches.

The women's rumble will undoubtedly be half the length of the men's, as Gorgrim said.  This wouldn't look bad if they halved the total competitors involved. Sensible path is to do that, and the match being shorter will make sense. Do a sort of top 10 or 12 of roster women and add a handful of surprises. Make it 15 and then halve the match appropriately. Don't throw a bunch of greenhorns in there just to pad it out. Hell, bring the wait time for next entrant down to 45 seconds or a minute.

Agreeing with Ninjak here. Two good women's title matches would work way better.

Card updated.

They've confirmed that it will be 30 wrestlers for each Rumble match. So a lot of surprise entrants for the women expected, as there's only 18 active women wrestlers and 2 of them won't be in it since they're champions. Apparently we won't be seeing a champion vs champion match as they did that recently so they're likely be left off the card since everyone else is in the Rumble. Probably won't have the time to do two more title matches either as the Rumbles will take ages.

WWE title match will probably steal the show... followed by the Raw tag title match.

Card updated.

They've confirmed that it will be 30 wrestlers for each Rumble match. So a lot of surprise entrants for the women expected, as there's only 18 active women wrestlers and 2 of them won't be in it since they're champions. Apparently we won't be seeing a champion vs champion match as they did that recently so they're likely be left off the card since everyone else is in the Rumble. Probably won't have the time to do two more title matches either as the Rumbles will take ages.

WWE title match will probably steal the show... followed by the Raw tag title match.

To be fair, there's nothing stopping them doing a Womens Title match/es, and having the losers of said matches enter the Rumble.

Card updated.

They've confirmed that it will be 30 wrestlers for each Rumble match. So a lot of surprise entrants for the women expected, as there's only 18 active women wrestlers and 2 of them won't be in it since they're champions. Apparently we won't be seeing a champion vs champion match as they did that recently so they're likely be left off the card since everyone else is in the Rumble. Probably won't have the time to do two more title matches either as the Rumbles will take ages.

WWE title match will probably steal the show... followed by the Raw tag title match.

To be fair, there's nothing stopping them doing a Womens Title match/es, and having the losers of said matches enter the Rumble.

I'm working on the logic of there won't be enough time to do both, and why choose one and not the other. I don't think there'll be a womens title match at all.

As noted, Paige and Samoa Joe have been pulled from their respective 30-person Royal Rumble matches at the upcoming joint-brand WWE pay-per-view. While they have yanked two people from the list, the company has also announced some new names for each match.

Titus O'Neil, Apollo Crews, Dana Brooke, and Alicia Fox have all been announced as confirmed participants in both Royal Rumble matches. With the addition of Brooke and Fox, the remaining spots in the all-women Royal Rumble match will have to be past talents, NXT talents, or current WWE personalities that aren't included on the official active women talent roster.

List of entrants in the opening post have been updated

For the build up to the Rumble, WWE's videos for them are usually pretty great. So here's one about the top 10 infamous Royal Rumble match intruders of all-time.

Card is updated by removing the Cruiserweight title match. There's no replacement up on wwe.com yet so just looks like it's been removed and they've not decided what to do with the vacant title yet. Wouldn't have thought it would be difficult to throw a match together personally. I half expect them to throw a match together for it though.

The latest edition of WWE Top 10, which looks at the top ten most incredible Royal Rumble match saves in WWE history.

Card is updated by removing the Cruiserweight title match. There's no replacement up on wwe.com yet so just looks like it's been removed and they've not decided what to do with the vacant title yet. Wouldn't have thought it would be difficult to throw a match together personally. I half expect them to throw a match together for it though.

They are adding a GM to 205 Live and that person is deciding the future of the title hence why they didn't book a title match at the Rumble.

Not that anyone had her picked but Alicia Fox is out of the women’s Rumble. http://www.wwe.com/shows/royalrumble/ar … 80527984=1

SPOILER ALERT

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Just watched the rumble match. The first time I've watched anything current since like 2012 or so. Heaps of new faces to me, most of them I had seen or heard of or knew a bit about, really fun match I enjoyed watching.

Loved Finn Balor (I'd seen a few clips of his wrestling and promos and I thought I would like him), loved Shinsuke's really high energy and badass look, they were both white hot and I'm happy they both had such long stints in the match. Winning after a long performance adds to the experience in my mind, proving how bad you want the win.

I lost my shit seeing The Hurricane enter as he is my favourite male wrestler of all time. He was psychotically over as a midcarder just as I was getting into wrestling initially, and he really struck a chord with me. Wished they did more with him in the match.

Also marked out when Rey entered, and had such a strong showing. By how strong they booked him in the match, it looks like they may be planning one more upper-midcard run for him putting over some other young hopefully small guys? Rey could seriously go at age 43, sick watching him fly around like a 20 year old in the match.

Hated seeing Roman Reigns. This is actually the first time I've ever watched him wrestle (because i live under a rock). He's so un-over that any time he had much offense you could feel the air come out of the audience's lungs and any intensity just dissipated. He needs to take notes from Cena about how to handle the crowd booing you, as Cena was a true pro in this match imo. Had a lot of fun with the crowd booing him, didn't take it too seriously, and responded to it directly.

Class act that John Cena, <- never thought I'd write that lololol what year is it

The match would have been so much better without Reigns, or if they gave the established-main-eventer-former-champ-who-may-win-but-is-less-over-than-the-winner-and-ends-up-coming-second spot to someone else, maybe Orton or Miz or even Sheamus or maybe even someone like Jinder.

Also seeing Randy Orton with grey hairs is hilarious. I remember him giving promos as a 24-year-old World Heavyweight Champ about how accomplished he is for a 24-year-old, and now watching him age is just funny.

Very satisfied viewer. Very happy for Shinsuke Nakamura and I hope he has a classic against AJ Styles at Wrestlemania 38 or whatever number theyre up to now lol

Funny story from the Rumble. They made a big deal of the knee that Strowman gave to Lesnar, but really the punch Lesnar replied with was worse. The replay of that showed Strowman's head took a proper pounding. So the funny part is that that was Lesnars way of telling Strowman to calm down... nothing says calm down like a nice solid punch to the head.

-- As posted yesterday, Braun Strowman kneed Brock Lesnar in the head pretty hard during their Royal Rumble match, which prompted Lesnar to respond by punching Strowman in the head. This fueled online rumors suggesting that there is now legitimate heat between the two.

-- According to those who know, this is completely false and there are no ill feelings from either side as this was simply a case of two wrestlers addressing the issue on their own. During the incident, all Lesnar really said to Strowman was to "calm down" as he gave him a stiff shot and Strowman immediately understood. It is a complete non-issue beyond that.