30 Men, No Winners: The Story Of the 2022 Men’s Royal Rumble Match

Thirty men, one winner.

That’s one of the taglines WWE uses for the men’s Royal Rumble Match. In reality, this was the more accurate tagline for the 2022 edition:

Thirty men, no winners.

That was the scenario that played out on Saturday night in St. Louis. Sure, Brock Lesnar technically won. But Brock, like pretty much all the others, walked out of the match, at best, at the exact level as he was when he walked into it.

It’s truly an incredible feat to get no one over in a 30-man match.

But that’s exactly what WWE did in this year’s men’s Rumble, which will go down as one of the most poorly booked Rumble matches in company history.

All the teased storylines that could’ve led to bigger things for the superstars involved went absolutely nowhere.

Dominik Mysterio eliminating Rey Mysterio (or vice versa) would’ve instantly added intrigue to a future story between the two. Instead, despite teasing it for weeks, they weren’t even in the match at the same time.

Austin Theory has had segment after segment with Vince McMahon on Raw, which is an obvious indication WWE at least sees something in the guy. What did he do in the Rumble?

No, seriously. What did he do? I legitimately don’t remember.

A more determined Big E on a quest to regain his WWE title was one of the easiest stories you could tell. Maybe he comes in and throws people out left and right before eventually losing to Brock. That’s infinitely more interesting than Big E being thrown out like a jobber to little or no reaction. And even if a planned spot with Kofi Kingston went awry due to Kofi not sticking his landing, I’m not sure it changes Big E’s trajectory all that much.

The list goes on and on.

Randy Orton, who came out to a huge pop in his hometown, did very little of note. Neither did Riddle.

Omos was already a beast, and his showcase sequence was nothing we haven’t seen before. Even his elimination was lackluster.

Rather than build interesting stories with weekly headliners like Kevin Owens and Drew McIntyre (I’m sorry, but I don’t count the Happy Corbin story as interesting), both men had to sell for Shane McMahon. Owens, who main evented a premium live event a month ago, was lucky enough to be eliminated by Shane.

Bad Bunny was entertaining as always, but when he and Shane are in the “save the Rumble spots,” it says a lot about the state of the company.

And where were Cesaro and Finn Balor? Did the thought of the ropes breaking scare Balor away from the match (a perfect example of a story with no direction)?

The match was so uninteresting that not even Veer could reach his climax.

WWE can do all the “inside the numbers” Royal Rumble features it wants for this one, but here are the only ones you need to know:

Zero stars built. Zero must-see stories told. Zero character development of any significance.

Here’s something else that needs to be said, and I’m not sure why some suggest it outside of being tired of seeing him on their television:

Brock winning the Rumble isn’t Brock’s fault.

If I was Brock, I’d do the same thing. Eat, sleep, cash checks, repeat. Thank you, come again.

WWE’s inability to build anyone on its current men’s roster, outside of Roman Reigns (and maybe Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre), into a credible, main-event level star, week after week after week, is why Brock keeps finding himself in the same role.

Brock winning the Rumble was predictable. And to an extent, it made sense. But that was not the glaring problem. The bigger problem was the road to get there was paved with a lack of anything even remotely riveting.

Wrestling can be predictable as long as it’s not boring. But it can’t be both.

Yet, here we are. A boring, predictable Rumble that did nothing for anyone. The winner, Brock Lesnar, doesn’t come out of it with any more momentum than he had before. You could argue he comes out of it with less simply because he goes from playing a fresh babyface character to the “Brock wins again” prototype that has aggravated fans for years.

Brock didn’t win because fans wanted him to win. Brock won because WWE has little confidence in anyone else.

The current roster superstars in the match are exactly where they were before. Or perhaps even more disappointing, they are worse off.

If the long-running WWE releases tell us anything, it’s this: Unless the company thinks you can main event WrestleMania, you’re just another person on the roster that can be plugged into any role at any time. And never was that more evident than the men’s 2022 Royal Rumble.

The winner is headed to the main event of WrestleMania. Everyone else isn’t even in the same stratosphere.

If stars sell tickets, wouldn’t it make sense to build more stars to, well, sell more tickets? When it’s the same top stars in the same matches, over and over again, that sense of intrigue and excitement drops a little more each time you see it.

There’s a certain part of the audience that will always deflect WWE’s issues by proclaiming “WWE is a business, WWE makes more money than anyone else and, therefore, WWE is No. 1 and can do no wrong.”

The difficulty with that ideology, of course, is that most fans don’t watch to support WWE’s business. Most fans watch to be entertained.

Tell them a story. Give them characters to get invested in. Make them smile and laugh. But please don’t bore them or waste their time because, at some point, they’ll stop caring (see: WWE ratings and viewership trends over the past decade).

Coming out of the 2022 men’s Rumble match, what incentive is there to care about anyone other than Brock Lesnar? No fascinating storylines were developed, no “hooks” were set to keep you watching. The Rumble match displayed a roster devoid of any true stars outside of the person who won it, and the fan reaction when the next midcarder’s theme hit told the story.

And that’s where WWE failed with this year’s version of the most “exciting” match in wrestling.

It wasn’t a failure confined to the Rumble match. It’s a failure that’s the result of weekly 50/50 booking, stories with little or no direction outside of the top two or three programs, and a general disregard for fans’ intelligence.

But maybe it’s a matter of expectations. Looking at WWE as a pro wrestling company that can create compelling storylines and multi-dimensional characters each week may no longer be a smart move since it’s all about sports entertainment.

However, if you also struggle to sports entertain, what’s left?

Then again, maybe this is all a huge overreaction. And I’m sure there are those who think it’s being too pessimistic. To me though, there’s a difference between negativity for the sake of negativity and seeing things for what they actually are.

But I suppose there’s one trick that WWE does have up its sleeve. And it’s the most used one in the playbook for those who tow the company line no matter what:

Let it play out.

Follow that advice at your own risk.

If you do, don’t be surprised if, just like the 2022 men’s Rumble match, all roads lead to more losers than winners.