The 2024 WWE Royal Rumble PLE came and went in a blur of malaise thanks to sickening sexual assault allegations against former WWE boss, Vince McMahon, a lack of true surprises, and an overall predictable outcome that not even a well built story could fully overcome.
Everything was fine, just not good. The men’s and women’s Rumble matches had their moments in the moment, but contained nothing fans will be talking about in the years to come. The filler matches on the card were bogged down by finishes that would barely be serviceable on a week of bad WWE television. Toss in Triple H’s out of touch remarks about his father in-law at the post-Royal Rumble event press conference and you understand quick how much WWE as a company wants to forget about this event much like fans eventually will.
Here are my Brass Ring Ratings for the show and here’s how they work … I call it like I see it. Period.
Women’s Royal Rumble Match
The match of the night. Some mid-tier surprises like Naomi, TNA Knockouts Champion, Jordynne Grace, and a returning Liv Morgan made for a spicer match than the men’s one later in the night.
The real stars of the match were Chelsea Green, who took a thorough beating in fun ways during the middle part of the match, Nia Jax, who dominated throughout in the perfect setup for Jade Cargill, and then Cargill herself, who seemed ready for her big moment and debut that will force fans to see her as a star moving forward. For those that were wondering about the Jax push to this point, this was the first payoff. Jax positioned as a threat very much helped get Cargill over big during her first major appearance in WWE.
Bayley winning made sense and was the right call with one PLE left before WrestleMania. Bayley vs. Iyo Sky and two Damage CNTRL members colliding works as a mid-card title match at WrestleMania. The Royal Rumble win for Bayley was the easiest way for WWE to get there. If Bayley turns babyface in the build here, look for a return to the hugger Bayley buddy gimmick that made her hugely popular in NXT.
Heydorn’s Brass Ring Rating - OOO
Roman Reigns vs. Randy Orton vs. AJ Styles vs. LA Knight - WWE Universal Championship
Habitually, championship matches are tough to pull off at the Royal Rumble given it’s proximity to WrestleMania and the focus on the show being put on other things like the Rumble matches themselves. This fatal four-way was the perfect example, but worse thanks to four guys who seemed to know their spot on the card and simply not wanting to do much to elevate their piece of work on the show.
Spots like Solo Sikoa stacking all of Roman’s opponents only for them all to kick out of the pin attempt stood out as entertaining, but there just wasn’t a lot of drama and it was almost impossible to expect them to create it. Reigns was winning. So, the story was more about how they’d get there and instead of something new and fresh, they went with The Bloodline interfering.
Much like the show as a whole, it was what it was and they got where they needed to go.
Heydorn’s Brass Ring Rating - OO 1/2
Logan Paul vs. Kevin Owens - WWE United States Championship
Both Paul and Owens played off each other well and had chemistry that was fun to watch. The match itself was good, but the finish was the ultimate WWE-style eye-roll. Paul tried to use brass knuckles. Owens used them instead, was caught, and then disqualified? Man, talk about backwards psychology. The crowd didn’t know whether to cheer or boo and it left everything flat.
Clearly a rematch is in the cards here, but a beautiful thing about Kevin Owens as a star is that he can do top tier jobs like this one and be just fine. Paul needed to either win clean or win by cheating himself — not the other way around.
Heydorn’s Brass Ring Rating - OO 1/2
Men’s Royal Rumble Match
If you were paying attention to the build of the match this year, the final four of Drew McIntyre, Gunther, CM Punk, and Cody Rhodes was no surprise to you. They were the prime players in terms of guys who were focused on weekly that could reasonably win and they all got to the end. That may ruffle some feathers due to the predictability of that booking, but sometimes predictable is ok in pro wrestling.
The road to this point and the road after this point were cloudy in execution. Much of the early part of the match was filled with mini stories that just didn’t deserve the amount of focus they got. Example? The Karrion Kross and Bobby Lashley angle very much forced people to sit on their hands. Nobody reacted to the brawl and even less did for Lashley eliminating Kross. The R-Truth stuff, while funny, made a mockery of a premiere match that WWE puts on every year. Was it worth it? No.
Going with Punk and Cody as the final two makes sense on paper because both men had an avenue to finish their story with a Rumble win. In practice, it hurt. The audience didn’t seem to want to see Cody and Punk go at it to finish the match because it placed one of them on the outside looking in for WrestleMania. The fans want to see both guys finish their story and pitting them against one another made the audience choose and they didn’t want to. The result was a fight with a tempered audience that was unsure what to feel.
Rhodes winning in the end is a perfectly suitable outcome. His story has always been Roman Reigns and now he’ll get his shot at Reigns for the second year in a row at WrestleMania.