Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: Brock Lesnar, Low Morale, peacock, ronda rousey, Royal Rumble, Vince McMahon, Wrestlemania, wrestling, wwe, WWE Backstage, wwe network

Royal Rumble: WWE Bummed Out Their Wrestlers As Much As Their Fans

This past Saturday night's 2022 edition of the Royal Rumble wasn't exactly met with glowing reviews.  In fact, it was quite the opposite, with fans and critics being vocal that aside from the opening Roman Reigns versus Seth Rollins match, the show was something of a dud with sloppy matches and very predictable outcomes.  Maybe worst of all is that the two titular matches were the two worst matches on the card.  The Women's Royal Rumble was a total mess with botches galore and moments that made zero sense and provided even less entertainment, while the Men's match was a boring and shockingly not star-studded marathon to a very predictable and unsatisfying ending.  If that's how it came across to viewers, could it only have been better to those involved?  Not quite.

As predictable as the endings to this year's two Royal Rumble matches were once all of the pieces were on the table (hell, I predicted them earlier that day), it turns out that it was a long and frustrating day of overbearing creative interference by Vince McMahon for those who were working backstage.  It was reported that McMahon changed the Men's Royal Rumble match "literally 20 times", swapping around everything from entrance order to who would be in the match to who would win it all.

Mike Johnson of PWInsider spoke to an anonymous WWE wrestler in the Men's Royal Rumble match and his description of what was going on backstage Saturday and the disheartening impact it had on the locker room paints a pretty bleak picture for what should have been one of WWE's biggest and most fun nights of the year. "We were all in a whirlwind.  Just as you had your role and spots down, everything started over and over and now most of us were back to square one.  It changed again and again and again.  It wasn't an easy night even before we hit the ring."

You have to empathize with the WWE talent here.  We've all heard horror stories about Vince McMahon's creative interference just on a weekly basis with his rewriting Raw numerous times right up to showtime. But to do it with the Royal Rumble where there's so many moving parts and everything needs to be pretty precise and set to work, well that's just ridiculous.

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