WWE Royal Rumble 2019 Review (Part 2)

WWE Royal Rumble 2019
January 27, 2019
Phoenix, Arizona

The official road to WrestleMania begins in the desert where two Royal Rumbles dictate the landscape of WrestleMania. Meanwhile, four big world championship matches fill in the rest of the show including Finn Balor having the challenge of the lifetime... a Universal Championship match against Brock Lesnar.

Match 5: WWE Championship - Daniel Bryan (c) vs. AJ Styles
The buildup leading into this match on episodes of SmackDown were absolutely terrific so the excitement for this one was certainly high. Unfortunately, those expectations were absolutely shot down here for this match. Whoever had the spot of following the first Rumble of the night would be stuck in a bad predicament considering how deflated the crowd would be from it. Having a fairly short match filled with lots of big spots would be the best case scenario for the two here, especially considering how heated their feud has been. Instead, we got an extremely long match that didn't match the intensity they brought in the television programming leading into this. This isn't to say the action in the ring wasn't enjoyable, it just dragged on for way too long than it needed to and about half way in, the crowd could not care less about who the winner was going to be. Eventually, Erick Rowan came out and helped Bryan win the match by delivering a Chokeslam to Styles. Seriously, what was that? Having Rowan come out to interfere in the match just seemed to anticlimactic in a match that just seemingly wasn't going to end. Love these two to death but this one gets a thumbs down.
Winner: Daniel Bryan
Rating: **3/4

Match 6: WWE Universal Championship - Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Finn Balor
This is another championship match for the night with a great backstory to it. Finn Balor beat out three other guys to earn his spot here against Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship. The build to this match was great and they did a fantastic job of making the fans believe in Balor being able to tackle the giant. If the crowd was dead for the last match, they definitely woke up for this one and having high hopes in Balor being able to score the win of a lifetime. Balor is able to catch Lesnar early on while Lesnar had his head turned away for a split second to start the match. Balor relied on his speed to try and take down Lesnar but was quickly caught and tossed around. However, the match would spill outside where Balor was able to drive Lesnar's gut into the corner of an announcers table twice before hitting a Coup de Gras on Lesnar in the middle of the ring. However, Lesnar is able to lock in a Kimura submission on Balor quickly to submit Balor for the win. Afterwards, Lesnar delivered an F5 to Balor for his troubles. Great match and exactly what it needed to be. Lesnar really works great with smaller opponents and this is a great example. For a split second, Balor looked to have the match in the bag until Lesnar turned the tides at the very end. Good stuff.
Winner: Brock Lesnar
Rating: ***1/4

Match 7: 2019 Men's Royal Rumble Match
With your Royal Rumble match, you always want to have a bit of everything. You want action and you want drama... but you also want some comedy and good fluidity to the match. I believe that's certainly what we got here for the most part in this year's Rumble match. Enjoyed the start with Elias knocking out Jeff Jarrett with a guitar shot before eliminating him and then getting the match going from there. Good flow to the match here and it was also cool to see a couple NXT guys come in and get some time in the match. Also loved the couple funny spots with Titus O'Neil making sure he didn't trip under the ring or No Way Jose getting eliminated. But tt became pretty clear that the winner was going to be Seth Rollins after Bobby Lashley drove him through an announcers table. The final four came down to Rollins, Andrade, Dolph Ziggler and Braun Strowman. A solid four guys to close out the night. Finally, it was down to Rollins and Strowman. Rollins and Strowman had a great exchange before hitting a Stomp to Strowman on the ring apron to score one of the biggest victories of his career. Loved the finish here with the right man going over despite it being fairly obvious once things were narrowing down. Would have been interesting to see a swerve with Strowman or perhaps even Andrade getting the win. But sometimes, it's the most obvious pick that makes the most sense and that was definitely the case here.
Winner: Seth Rollins
Rating: ****1/4

Overall Show Thoughts and Rating:
The main event was great and there were a few solid matches on here including a great bout between Asuka and Becky Lynch. However, this show was long... much longer than it needed to be. The length of the show really allowed some of the matches to suffer with the crowd being so fatigued from it all. Say what you want but you know it's true. But if anything, the show at least ended on a great note.

Rating: 6.5/10