WWE’s 10 Worst Moments of 2016

Source: WWE.com

7. Triple H Wins the 2016 Royal Rumble

This year’s Royal Rumble match was unique. For the first time, the current champion defended the title inside the Rumble match. With Roman Reigns entering as the passionately-hated champion, there was genuine intrigue as to who’d win the match.

There were a lot of credible potential winners, but out of all those possibilities, WWE chose Triple H to win. Triple H, the man who hadn’t wrestled on a full-time basis in years, eliminated not only the champion Reigns, but also the last guy in the match, Dean Ambrose.

Now, when Ambrose and HHH stood eye-to-eye, many people got excited. Many thought, finally, Ambrose would get a shocking win over the Game, and we’d get Reigns/Ambrose at WrestleMania. Instead, Hunter won, with WWE hoping HHH would be hated going into the bout and Reigns would be cheered. Oh, how wrong they were.

Triple H didn’t enter the match as the evil corporate boss. He entered as the DX-inspired badass (complete with crotch chop) to a roar of approval. When he won, people cheering raucously. Not because HHH specifically had won, but because Reigns had lost. WWE got their signals mixed up in every possible way.

This led to a dreadful main event months later (more on that soon), and made the entire roster look weak in comparison. It also didn’t help that the League of Nations demonstrated classic WWE stupidity by pulling Reigns under the ropes to hurt him, instead of eliminating him over the top rope, which is the first rule of the bloody Rumble match.