Ask 411 Wrestling: Was the 2016 Royal Rumble A Waste?

Hello, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling, I am your Answer guy, Mathew Sforcina, and it’s nearly Rumble time! I love the Royal Rumble, both the PPV and the match, and as usual I will be slightly-drunkenly live tweeting the event, so do follow me on Twitter if you want to see me melt down when WWE does something stupid again because why not?

Got a question about my melting down? [email protected] is where you send it.

BANNER!

Zeldas!

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Illegal Face Finishers: WWE may well have legalised punches, I may have missed that, but it’s always been closed punches (fingers tight against the palm) that were illegal, open punches (fingers away from palm) were ok. That was always the justification for it. Regal didn’t tend to use the Power of the Punch as a face, although Golden Globes is close, although you can argue he’s not kicking you in the Joy Division, he’s kicking the turnbuckle which just happens to land in your New Order.

Roman’s Not In The Rumble: He’s not announced to be in the Rumble. If he were to be screwed out of the Universal Championship via Jericho sliding The List through the cage and down to the ring, it would be a total WWE Face Move (TM) to have Jinder Mahal found backstage knocked out and his Rumble spot stolen.

But yeah, in retrospect, I think Roman’s not gonna be in the Rumble, in that Reigns/Miz is the best chance of people choosing to not boo Roman…

Because that’s really the kicker. I know Roman/Strowman is the plan, unless WWE is going to throw a massive curveball and we get Reigns/Joe in a SamOff at WM or something, but if you are really, truly insistent on Reigns as champ being cheered, why not put him in there with the guy doing the heel work of his life?

But on the other hand, Strowman is really big, so you can see Vince’s issue.

The Trivia Crown

Who am I? I’m involved in this year’s Royal Rumble, in a way. The longest reigning champion of something, I am a former ‘World’ champion and a former Comedy champion. Former ring names of mine owe something to a cowboy, a seamstress, and a Mystery. My first ever title in wrestling came from beating a guy who’s on the same brand as me currently. My current music wasn’t written by robots, my last match in an indy company was a loss to big rocks, and a rapper and a strong man helped me get into WWE. I am who?

Huh, no takers? OK then.

Who am I? I’m involved in this year’s Royal Rumble, in a way (he has a match at the PPV). The longest reigning champion of something (current WWE Cruiserweight Title), I am a former ‘World’ champion (FIP World Title) and a former Comedy champion (Open the Owarai Gate). Former ring names of mine owe something to a cowboy (Swann Hansen, Stan Hansen), a seamstress (Rich Money, EZ Money) and a Mystery (El Negro Mysterio, Rey Mysterio). My first ever title in wrestling came from beating a guy who’s on the same brand as me currently (beat fellow Cruiserweight Lince Dorado for the RCW Cruiserweight title. My current music wasn’t written by robots (‘Around The World’, but not the Daft Punk song), my last match in an indy company was a loss to big rocks (Lost to Mount Rushmore 2.0 in PWG), and a rapper and a strong man helped me get into WWE (rapper Wale and Mark Henry). I am who? (Rich Swann)

Maraviloso has the question for us this week!

I’m the only person who’s even won two particular and important championships these days. I’ve been super, royalty, related to nobility and a symbol of spirituality. I’ve battled, teamed and trained with beasts, defeated Hall of Famers, being in groups with demons and share a location connection with Don King. One of my nicknames is closely related to someone Jim Cornette hates and England was a big part of one of my greatest days as a wrestler. Who am I?

Getting Down To All The Business

Let’s get some Rumble questions to starts us off, with Gary first.

Whilst catching up on the Rumbles unnoticed a few times where the Rumble winner has been the defending Champion at the following Rumble. How many times has this happened since it all began? I haven’t added in the obligatory “great column” because well if you don’t know it’s great by now why would my opinion matter.

It’s still nice to hear.

OK, so I think you’re asking how often that the winner of the Rumble will be defending a World Title at the next Rumble, yes? It’s either that or of the Rumble winner was in the next one to ‘defend’ the Rumble, but I presume it’s the first one. So, how many times, out of 29 times when a Rumble PPV has been held the year after a Rumble, where the winner of the Rumble the last year was Champ at the Rumble?

Yokozuna in 94, appropriately enough, was the first one. Won the 93 Rumble, defended the WWF title in the 94 Rumble. It wouldn’t happen again until 2003, once there were two World Titles, thus Triple H, the 2002 winner, could defend his World Title against Scott Steiner. Followed by the next year, the 03 winner, Brock Lesnar, defended the WWE title against Hardcore Holly in 04.

What is it with Rumble winners having horrible title matches the following year?

John Cena in 09 was the next one, defending the World Heavyweight title against JBL a year after big shock return win from 08. Edge in 11 followed his shock return and win in 10 too. And finally last year, Reigns was the defending champ in the 16 Rumble after winning the 15 Rumble.

So out of 29 times, 6 times the winner of the Rumble has walked into the next Rumble PPV with a World Title around their waist.

Sam wants some wild speculation out of a specific Rumble moment.

Wild speculation time: at the 1998 Royal Rumble, Shawn Michaels does NOT injure his back and therefore does not need to retire at Mania XIV. How does this impact the careers of Michaels, Austin, McMahon, and Foley (Austin’s first post-Mania feud, which would probably be altered if Shawn is lurking around for a rematch) in the short- and long-term? Any ripple effects for people like Rock and HHH?

Well for starters Shawn would probably be dead right now, as the back injury led to him getting to a dark place quickly which led to him getting to a better one, so Shawn continuing his slow path to destruction would probably not have a happy ending.

But to be a little more lighter, he’d probably jump to WCW as soon as he could, and maybe there was an end-around he’d come up with if he was still wrestling, which would have led to a similar end result for WWF, maybe.

But to actually answer the damn question, assuming Shawn didn’t double cross everyone at WM14, or politic his way out of having to drop the belt, the plan was for something similar to what happened, in that Shawn would vanish for a while, Triple H would blame him for the loss and take over DX, Austin/Foley would happen, and then eventually Shawn would come back to feud with Hunter, which would then probably lead to some sort of HBK/Austin V Foley/HHH thing, which would then lead to WM15 being Austin/HBK 2 where Shawn gets his win back because Shawn would still be Asshole Shawn. And then Shawn would probably pitch for WM2000 to be HBK V HHH.

Rock would be the guy really screwed over, Shawn wasn’t a fan of Rock, and if he was still around, he’d probably do as much as he could to keep Rock down and out. Rock may have forced his way into the main event by sheer force of will, but chances are Shawn would be the Vince surrogate (using the ‘Devil I Know’ logic) and Rock would spend his time jobbing to Triple H and his buddies until he quit or went to WCW or something…

The interesting thing would have been when Hunter and Steph began to drift together, as Asshole Shawn would have seen a threat there and done whatever he could to stop it. Not sure what that would have been, but there’s no way Asshole Shawn lets his little buddy become top dog like that…

That’s the thing about the casket spot, it took Asshole Shawn out, and that was important for WWF’s success, as the guy who was able to, it seemed, get Vince to do what he wanted lost a lot of power. Without that injury, there’s now a big wildcard in play, at least until his contract is up and he runs to WCW for beers and somas with Kev and Scott.

Raza wonders if last year’s Rumble was the best idea.

Triple H winning royal Rumble/ WWE Championship and then drop it on WM 32? Now the obvious problem was that majority of stars were injured. Considering the scenario what do u think would have been a better idea or who should WWE used (out of available roster) to put Reigns over?

The better idea would have been to realise that the Reigns deal wasn’t working, that he wasn’t ready for that spot and, to be honest, was probably too damaged by then to be in that spot for a couple years, and thus use the stips of the Rumble to get the belt off Reigns onto someone else, and then have that person beat Reigns at his rematch at Fastlane due to interference from a midcard heel/s, who Reigns beats at WM in 45 seconds. I mean, I don’t want to say ‘AJ Styles should have won the WWE Title off the bat’, but I’m not not saying that. Given the options, I’d have probably gone with Brock winning the belt, and then the League of Nations cost Roman the rematch, and then Reigns teams with New Day to squish them at WM, then the three legends come out, Reigns punches them all out. Brock defends against Ambrose with Dean going over and Brock getting a bonus to make it look like he cared.

But if you’re insistent on Reigns getting the title back at WM? Then Hunter’s your best option, it made the most sense from a storytelling perspective, plus the idea of Reigns beating up the boss and taking back ‘his’ title that he got ‘screwed’ out of, a boss who is a legend of the game? Yeah, that makes sense, provided you don’t take into account who Reigns is and how people are reacting to him.

Rahil asks if the 98 Rumble had an almost unique occurrence.

Is Clash of the Champions 5, when Jack Victory wrestled as assassin #2 and the Blackmailer and Royal Rumble 98, when foley did dude love, mankind and jack the only shows when a wrestler has competed with different gimmicks on the same event ?????

Goodness no, there’s an indy show every week I’m sure where someone wrestles under a hood in an opener and then comes back out later on as a different wrestler. I’ve been in a Rumble where that happened, for instance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzHqXzcuWuE

Curry Man and Christopher Daniels I believe worked some TNA shows together, although what that has to do with the question I’m not sure. TNA Lockdown 2009 had Suicide and Christopher Daniels on the same show.

Readers, any obvious ones I’m missing here?

Dan wants to discuss a possible WWF title match at a Rumble.

I’ve read in several places that Bret Hart was supposed to defend the WWF title against Jake Roberts at the 1992 Survivor Series and then face the Ultimate Warrior at the ’93 Royal Rumble. Is there any truth to this? And if Bret had defended the title and possibly lost it to Warrior at RR93, would that have put Warrior vs. Yokozuna at WMIX?

All the places you’d have read that would be people quoting Bret Hart, as that’s something Bret has said on occasion. Back in 2012, for instance. And I quote:

On Piper ‘passing the torch’ to him and other wrestlers not doing the same: “For him to pass the torch down to me, kind of thing, was a pretty big step for me. At that time a lot of wrestlers didn’t want to make that kind of effort for me, and I’m not sure why or what their arguments might have been. So many guys when I look back on my career, like even when I won the World Title I was supposed to go over on Warrior, i would have gone over on Warrior at the Rumble… never happened. I was supposed to wrestle Jake Roberts first at Survivor Series… never happened. It’s too bad in the case of Jake Roberts, he’s a guy that, I had this great career and never wrestled Jake Roberts one time.”

So yeah, according to Bret, he was going to beat Roberts (fair enough) and then go over Warrior and then head into WM9 and, presumably, go over Yoko and then build up to him and Hogan at some point where Hogan would put him over and then everyone makes lots of money with a good, clean, wholesome wrestling product.

*3/4 of a Chandler*

And honestly, I believe that Bret believes this was the plan (option B, C and/or D from the Ask 411 Wrestling (by way of ‘Yes, Prime Minister’) Shoot Interview Rule), but while plans change, it also reeks of Vince telling Bret what he wanted to hear. You want to encourage guys, get guys to put in their best work, and for some people, that means you tell them that they’re special and awesome and that things will go well for them because they’re awesome. Other people you need to insult and browbeat.

Bret clearly belongs to the first camp, and so it would not surprise me if Vince made sure to always tell Bret of all the good stuff that was coming up. That doesn’t mean that it would happen, either out of situations changing or because Vince invented alternative facts years ago, but you have to take Bret’s words on what plans were with a grain of salt the size of a baseball or so.

Although Warrior/Yoko… Yikes.

Jorge asks about a famous Rumble mess up.

I just watched the 1992 Royal Rumble (I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it) and I just realized that Randy Savage eliminated himself right after he eliminated Jake the Snake and then came back. The commentators stated that he wasn’t eliminated because he wasn’t thrown out. Was this because he wasn’t supposed to have jump over the top rope? Did Savage made a huge mistake?

Dude, a good 35% of the reason I keep subscribed to the Network is so I can watch the 92 Rumble whenever I want to. I LOVE the 92 Rumble.

Anyway, yes, he wasn’t supposed to jump over the top rope, that was a mess up. You can tell because the announcers start off by saying he eliminated himself because he’s going after Jake, his emotions have gotten the better of him and he doesn’t care about the match, he just wants to kill Jake because Jake Roberts is a Horrible Human Being (TM).

And that totally makes sense, if you were building to Savage/Roberts at WM in a Liz on a Pole match Snake Pit Match, Savage would eliminate himself just to further kills Jake.

But then they get in their ear that Savage isn’t meant to be eliminated, that he just existed the ring over the top rope to get at Jake quicker because of the emotion of the moment but he’s not meant to be eliminated. So they come up with the handwave, which sort of makes sense but doesn’t really as if it was only by other people’s hands you could be eliminated, you could just jump over the top rope all day long, as long as no-one touched you first. And given a bunch of people have eliminated themselves… The workaround is that the refs have the option of waving off a self-elimination, and that they can tell the difference between a deliberate “I wish to leave now” one, ala Drew Carey, and an accidental one, ala Savage.

But yes, it was a mistake.

Moving on from the Rumble now, Stuart wishes to discuss WCW and their World Title.

Having just subscribed to the WWE network i am watching all the old Nitros as i never watched them before as i was and still am a WWE fan. I do have a couple of questions about the WCW title that hopefully you can answer.

Why did WCW not always update the name of the champion on the face page of the world title? Randy tv Savage lost the title to Ric Flair on February 11th 1996 and Flair held the title until he dropped it to the Giant on April 22nd. When the Giant won the belt however the name on the belt read Macho Man who by then had not been the champion for 70 days. So why was this? How hard would it have been to just put a new name plate on the belt each time the title changed hands? I can’t imagine this ever happening in WWE.

Because WCW.

Now there’s a new macro.

But yeah, WCW was never a well run, professional outfit during their lifespan, and…

Oh, my apologies, there’s actually storyline logic here.

See, when Flair won the title from Savage, he kept that nameplate on because he wanted to rub it into Savage’s face that it used to be his belt, and now it was Flair’s. Like how Liz used to be his woman, and now she was Flair’s. Flair was basically rubbing it in Savage’s face, every time you saw him with the title, he’d remind you that it used to be Savage’s, and Flair took it from him.

(A similar sort of thing happened when Hogan won the belt in his nWo persona, that still said ‘Giant’ for pretty much all the time he held it because WCW refused to make Hogan a nameplate because why would they when he spraypainted it nWo?)

Speaking of champs in WCW during the Nitro era, how seriously can you count any of the title runs that took place back then? For example the title changed hands 7 times between October 95 and October 96 and this included two of Ric Flairs supposed legendary 16 title runs. What with the title changes and the number of times it was being defended it just feels like the prestige of the belt was being watered down to the point where it hardly meant anything at all.

Nitro debuted on September 4, 1995, and lasted a five and a half years or so, roughly. Prior to that point, the WCW title, starting in January 1991 when it was named as such, had 10 title reigns. So a little over 2 a year, say. Including Booker’s reign starting on the final Nitro, there were 45 title reigns in that 5 and a half years, a little under 10 a year. So yes, the Nitro era sped up the reigns (not even including all the vacated ones).

Now there’s no hard and fast rule on what number of title reigns is right or too many, like anything in wrestling there’s a guideline, and circumstances can alter it. If you have four high class talents, you can bounce a title between the four of them quickly and you can establish that they are all roughly equal and all big stars, and then you can build to a huge four way match to settle the score. Some promotions, like WCCW and Memphis, their belts seemed to be made of Superball given how their belts tended to bounce around.

That said, yes, part of WCW’s problem was that the Nitro era did make them burn through big name matches and title reigns quicker than they should have, and then you get to Russo’s run which really killed everything, in the case of the WCW World title they absolutely should have treated it with more respect and not made it such a cheap prop. When the title changes hands twice on a Nitro, for instance, that’s not a good sign without a MITB involved.

WCW had a lot of problems in their lifespan, and devaluing the WCW World Title wasn’t a major one, but it was indicative of their disregard for booking logic and long term planning and for making sure the company remained viable long term. Because while you can deviate from wrestling logic whenever you need to, you should always have a good reason to do so, be it outside factors or one killer idea. WCW never really had that…

Nightwolf has a couple questions.

3. I know WWE has writers that write out the storylines and matches, but what’s the point if Vince is going to end up changing everything anyways?

There’s a saying among writers: You gotta write it before you can cut it.

Vince isn’t going to sit there with a blank slate and plot out the show on his own. You have to present him with ideas, ones that you’ve workshopped and honed, and then he might change it, or move it around, or replace it, sure, but you’re being hired to write, and just going “Well Boss, what do you wanna do?” every week is how you get fired. Besides, occasionally you might well hit on an idea that he doesn’t hate.

RAW once had a 3-hour special when that wasn’t the norm and had Hogan do a promo where he said he wanted to face Austin. Why didn’t that storyline continue?

Because neither man trusted the other and neither of them was willing to job, pretty much. Austin was, by the stage that match became viable, a shell of himself, in terms of workrate and in terms of how his paranoia was rattling around a bit. Austin was hard to work with, and Hogan, while more willing to work with people than he used to be in terms of how he was willing to lose the occasional match for the sake of later paydays since the Hogan formula had changed from ‘Unstoppable Badass’ to ‘Mostly Unstoppable Nostalgia-fuelled Hardass’, still had the skills to not get himself in a position he didn’t want to be in.

Austin/Hogan was the match WWE wanted to do, but Austin didn’t want to do it out of a fear the match would suck and resentment of Hogan’s past and not wanting to lose, while Hogan wasn’t about to do Austin any favors in that regard. That’s why it never happened.

Michael is number one . . . with a bullet:

Prior to AJ Styles’ WWE debut, the company went out of their way to talk about the Bullet Club. Now that they have 3 full-fledged members on the roster (4 if you count Finn), they go out of their way NOT to even say the name. What gives?

They got what they wanted, the buzz of the three guys leaving New Japan where they were main stars having great matches all the time, now in WWE having matches most of the time and being Superstars (TM, R, C), now the buzz is gone and they’re just WWE guys now, albeit The Guy in AJ’s case. Given Bullet Club still exists, and is part of a company who has now stated openly and actively that they’re sick of being pushed around and they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more (and, if we’re being honest, has the same chance of surviving a war as Peter Finch the actor had of surviving to receive his Oscar), why would you continue to advertise them?

The Bullet Club was mentioned when WWE wanted to get everyone talking about their new toys. Now the new toys are just toys, they don’t need the buzz, and so they’ve gone back to radio silence on there being any wrestling currently happening in the world they see as a threat, or a potential threat, or a possible threat, or a threat they don’t’ control.

Connor?

Why did Jim Ross leave WCW?

Eric Bischoff.

…

To whit, Bischoff, who had been a third string announcer for WCW below Tony Schiavone directly and Jim Ross eventually, managed to swoop in when Bill Watts left/was fired/stopped working for WCW and, after impressing the Turner suits with being business like and professional, jumped over the two of them to become Executive Producer in charge of WCW, and thus was now boss to both men.

Tony would put up with it, but Jim Ross didn’t like it and also felt Eric would screw him over, and to be fair, Eric did move to take Ross off the air. So Jim quit, and bought out his contract so he could debut for WWF ASAP, since if he’d waited for his contract to run out, he felt he’d be forgotten and lose his chance.

Guy sees his former underling promoted above him, and he senses there’s retribution coming, and thus gets the heck out of town ASAP.

Speaking of that, I’m gonna run here too. See you all next week!