By Ryan Harless

Ryan Harless is a fourth-year undergraduate at BGSU from Hillsboro, Ohio. He is majoring in Sport Management with a Journalism Minor. Baseball and Professional Wrestling are his primary interests but he is also interested in golf, hockey, and football

February 2, 2024

It is WrestleMania season yet again, the most exciting time of the year for the majority of wrestling fans. Of course, that means it is also ‘Rumble season!’  

They 2024 Royal Rumble took place Saturday, January 27, 2024 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, so I’m here to give you the rundown on what you missed.  

The show kicked off with the seventh annual Women’s Royal Rumble match. To the surprise of no one, this match ruled and in my opinion was the best match of the evening.  

The #2 entrant into the match was the returning Naomi who had been released by the WWE in 2022 and spent her 2023 making her name in Impact (now Total Nonstop Action) Wrestling. She received an amazing ovation from the crowd and looks to start anew following her rumble performance.  

Entrant #5 was the current TNA Knockouts World Champion Jordynne Grace. Grace splits her time between professional wrestling and the world of bodybuilding and showed off her raw power throughout the match.  

Fun Jordynne Grace fact: she won the TNA Knockouts World Championship from Naomi on the 13th of January this year!  

The next big entrant was Biancia Belair at #10. Belair is always in title contention which made her a very viable pick to win.  

Following Belair’s entry into the match, there was a decent section of the match dedicated to filling up the ring. While there were some stars such as Becky Lynch and Shayna Baszler, most of the other entries were mid-carders like Xia Li and Michin. 

At #28 was the long-awaited arrival of AEW’s (All Elite Wrestling) homegrown star, Jade Cargill. Months ago, we saw Cargill introduced to a WWE audience but since then hadn’t gotten to see her in a ring outside of the AEW bubble.  

Cargill looked much like her AEW self which was a relief to All Elite fans like me. Cargill looks like a star and carries herself like one so I’m looking forward to her WrestleMania debut.  

The returning Liv Morgan was the final entrant at #30 and she garnered a huge reaction from the Florida crowd. Morgan’s return was cut short by the eventual winner Bayley.  

This rumble victory has been a long time in the making for Bayley as one of the company’s top stars for well over five years. She is finally going to get her WrestleMania main event, but who she will be facing is still up in the air.  

Following the Women’s Royal Rumble was the WWE Universal Championship four-way match between the champion Roman Reigns and challengers LA Knight, AJ Styles and Randy Orton. 

If you’ve been following WWE for any period of time, you know how this match went. It wasn’t a bad match, but it certainly wasn’t a good match.  

It was another standard Reigns’ championship match. Let the challengers fight, Roman comes in to hit some moves and ends up in a bad spot, and then Roman’s cousin Solo Sikoa comes in for the save and Roman keeps his title.  

Nothing special but it wasn’t offensively bad either. I cannot wait for Roman to (hopefully) lose the belt at WrestleMania. 

After this we got a fun contest over the United States Championship between champion Logan Paul and challenger Kevin Owens.  

This was a super good match. It really irritates me that Logan Paul is such a good professional wrestler in his very limited experience with the business.  

This was a great back and forth contest and was probably Paul’s most violent matchup to date. Towards the end of the match, Paul went to hit Owens with brass knuckles, but Owens caught the punch and put the knucks’ on and dropped Logan with a punch of his own.  

After the punch Kevin Owens went for the pin on Logan but just before the referee counted the three, he saw Owens still had the brass knuckles on and called for a disqualification and allowed Logan to escape with his belt.  

This, although it was meant to be a cooldown match before the Men’s Royal Rumble, was my favorite of the night.  

Now for the main event, the 2024 Men’s Royal Rumble match. I think this continued their trend over the past few years of having very predictable rumbles.  

Sure, the matches are always a fun live watch, but the hour plus long contest is usually only there to fill time before the two wrestlers expected to win are the last two in the ring. They just haven’t done much for me in a while.  

The #4 entrant was yet another AEW star making their return to WWE in Andrade, who had a decent showing despite not making a lot of commotion.  

The purpose of this match was so that we could get the showdown between CM Punk and Cody Rhodes in the final two. Once it got down to the final two, Punk and Rhodes had a little match to build suspense for the finish.  

It is clear that CM Punk can’t go at a high level anymore in the ring. Rhodes had to completely carry Punk through the final stretch in the match before finally dumping him over the top rope.  

With Cody Rhodes’ win again this year, he joins eight other wrestlers as the only ones to ever win multiple rumbles. It only makes sense for him to again challenge Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 40 and FINALLY finish his story of winning the Universal Championship.  

All in all, this was an ok event. Two good matches and two matches that made me go ‘meh’. But nonetheless, we are on the road to WrestleMania and have a fun month ahead of us!