Royal Rumble 2017

In lieu of habitat work, please accept this post on the 2017 Royal Rumble set to take over the Alamo Dome tonight.  I've got my fingers crossed that WWE will deliver on this, the first of the big four pay per view events of the year.

If you've followed WWE in the past, you know that the winner of the Royal Rumble is awarded a shot at the big title at Wrestlemania.  This will no doubt be a very big rumble given the enormous amount of talent in the ring.  This includes the Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, and Goldberg fresh out of retirement.  In true fashion WWE has only announced about 21 of the entrants, leaving plenty of room for suprise jobbers, celebs, hall of famers, new talents, and NXT call-ups.  

There is another big match on the card tonight.  Bayley gets her first main roster pay per view shot at the WWE Women's Championship belt.  It's going to be a tough road though.  Charlotte is currently 16-0 defending her title on ppv shows.  

There's a chance that gimmick is running it's course though, and there's always a chance that Vince could give us the shocker and bump Charlotte off, leaving a wide open field for Wrestlemania.  

Like any WWE event, there are colossal failures in booking.  First, the women's division in Smackdown has all sorts of great fueds going, and instead of putting one of them on the main stage, they took the boring route of a 6 woman tag team match.  Natty and Nikki have been on a roll creating heat and driving their story.  Alexa Bliss has done a fantastic job drawing heat and besting Becky Lynch every chance she gets.  That feud has also brought out the best in Becky.

Then there's the 37 year old former porn star, mother of one, and wife to former Spirit Squad member Kenny, Mickie James.  She's emerged and plopped herself firmly in the mid card with no apparent direction.  She was revealed to be La Luchadora and caused Becky Lynch to drop her rematch for her title to Alexa Bliss.  She'll be in the hotdish match as well.  Not meriting her own paragraph, Naomi rounds out the face team.  

WrestleMania 32 w/Snoop

Quite possibly WWE's biggest failure is their booking of Sasha Banks.  She has consistently delivered the best women's matches since her time in NXT, she was a star at Wrestlemania last year, and delivered epic matches with Charlotte throughout 2016.  Let us also not forget the Sasha single handedly built Bayley up as she left NXT.  Then the calendar turns to 2017...

WWE is trying to use Sasha to push the gimmick that is Nia Jax.  There is no way this ends well for either superstar.  If Jax goes over clean on Sasha, she might has well exit TV until the build for Summerslam begins.  If Sasha goes over clean, then all Nia Jax will be is a side show like the Big Show.  It's likely this match will end no-contest or in some kind of disqualification.  This whole situation is troubling given the fact that the Raw roster only has Charlotte as a credible heel.   

The biggest slap in the face from this booking is that it has been relegated to the pre-show.  I would have rather seen The Boss take another TV timeout instead of having this kind of booking.

One big spoiler to watch for is an emergence of Emmalina.  She has been teasing for months that her return and rebranding was set to debut at any time.  The rumble would be a good place to do it.  However, it'd also be a good piece to save for one of the filler ppv shows between now and mania.  

I guess only time will tell how all this comes together.