WWE Royal Rumble 2017 Review: Results, Analysis, and Grades

Follow along with our live coverage of the WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

On Sunday night, the Royal Rumble pay-per-view will take place. This is WWE’s first big event of 2017, and one that will have implications toward the biggest show of the year—WrestleMania.

Coming out of the Royal Rumble, we will find out a new No. 1 Contender to one of the World titles for WrestleMania 33. This will be via the Royal Rumble match, which will see 30 WWE Superstars compete for this opportunity. It could either be for SmackDown’s WWE Championship or Raw’s WWE Universal Championship. Heading into the show, AJ Styles holds the former and Kevin Owens has the latter. However, it’s not a guarantee that either will be defending at WrestleMania.

Styles will face John Cena with the WWE Championship on the line. This is their third head-to-head match since June 2016. Rounds 1 and 2 saw Styles win via pinfall. He even pinned Cena during their triple threat match at WWE No Mercy in October. These two have never gone one-on-one for a title, though, so can the Face That Runs the Place win and claim his 16th World title?

Owens is going to have his second Universal Championship match against Roman Reigns. There will be two stipulations for this match, as Chris Jericho will be suspended above the ring in a shark cage, and there will be no disqualifications. So despite Jericho being away from the action, anything still goes. Are the odds in favor of Owens or Reigns here?

Charlotte will put the Raw Women’s Championship on the line against Bayley, who is received her first one-on-one match for the belt. This feud developed after WWE Roadblock, which saw the Nature Girl win for yet another PPV. The Hugster will look for her first main roster title, but can she knock off the champion at one of WWE’s biggest events?

Must Read: WWE RR 2017 Predictions

With this in mind, here’s a look at the full match card for Royal Rumble:

Royal Rumble Match
30 Superstars will compete for a World title opportunity at WrestleMania 33

WWE Championship Match
AJ Styles (c) vs. John Cena

No Disqualification Match for the WWE Universal Championship
Kevin Owens (c) vs. Roman Reigns

Raw Women’s Championship Match
Charlotte (c) vs. Bayley

WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match
Rich Swann (c) vs. Neville

Raw Tag Team Championship Match
Cesaro and Sheamus (c) vs. Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows

Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax

Becky Lynch, Naomi, and Nikki Bella vs. Alexa Bliss, Mickie James, and Natalya

Related Story: 5 Last-Minute Potential Winners for the Rumble

Follow along with our coverage of the Royal Rumble at 5:00 p.m. ET to see what happens at the show. Will there be any title changes? Who will receive a World title opportunity at WrestleMania 33?

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Becky Lynch, Naomi, and Nikki Bella vs. Alexa Bliss, Mickie James, and Natalya

Result: Becky Lynch, Naomi, and Nikki Bella defeats Alexa Bliss, Mickie James, and Natalya via pinfall.

Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars

The three feuds in the SmackDown women’s division would collide in the opening match at the Royal Rumble—Bliss and Naomi, Bella and Natalya, and James and Lynch. All of them were highlighted too in what has been a deep pool on a shorter show.

The focus ended up going on Naomi with the hot tag she received. It’s no coincidence that she’s also the likely No. 1 Contender to the SmackDown Women’s Championship, so she got a spotlight here to show off against Bliss.

Naomi would get the win for her team with a backflip off the second turnbuckle for the win. She’s definitely getting a title shot, likely at the Elimination Chamber in just two weeks. There’s the opportunity for her to claim her first-ever title, so this match pushed her in the right direction.

Other than that, the in-ring action wasn’t anything much to note. It got the crowd to react rather than an awkward finish with a heel winning. This is only Match No. 1 of the pre-show, however, as we still have plenty to go.

Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho Interview

Jericho would be interviewed about being in a shark cage later on and how Owens will succeed during his title match.

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Raw Tag Team Championship Match
Cesaro and Sheamus vs. Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows

Result: Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows defeat Cesaro and Sheamus to win the Raw Tag Team Championship.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

As is the case with the majority of his tag team matches, Cesaro is the star of the show. He’s a terrific singles wrestler, and typically shines in this scenario.

The story of this match would be having two referees since, you know, the one that’s usually supposed to be capable enough isn’t. It played a role, though, as the ringside referee caught a leveraged pin attempt and the one inside the ring took a Brogue Kick from Sheamus.

With one referee in the ring who seemingly can’t do this alone, he counted to three when Anderson got the successful pin with the hold of the tights. This gave he and Gallows their illustrious first-ever title reign in WWE after at least a half-dozen attempts since April 2016.

It took the former IWGP Tag Team Champions a while to reach the top of the tag team division, but they finally achieved it. This win, however, comes months after they probably needed to win and when they had heat. So is January 2017 too late for Anderson and Gallows?

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Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax

Result: Nia Jax defeats Sasha Banks via pinfall.

Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

Sasha Banks mostly got worked over by Nia Jax, who dominated throughout. If anything, this was never close despite Banks having a comeback on two occasions.

Jax immediately gets vaulted into the Raw Tag Team Championship conversation with this win. She destroyed a three-time women’s champion who just main evented a PPV three months ago. It’s a sign of Jax moving into a top spot in the Raw women’s division, which could result in a title shot at WrestleMania or even before that at Fastlane in March.

As for Banks, does this hurt her? Well, we’ll likely have to find out heading into WrestleMania 33 season where she stands because this moved her to fourth on Raw behind Charlotte, Bayley, and Nia. It’s a bit of a fall from the top where she had been throughout 2016, so we’ll see how things develop over the coming months.

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Shawn Michaels Opens the Royal Rumble

Minutes before the main Royal Rumble show started, Shawn Michaels made a surprise appearance to open the festivities. He talked about wrestling in the Alamodome 20 years prior to retain the WWE Championship in front of the hometown crowd.

HBK went into who could win the Royal Rumble and listed off a bunch of top names. He tells the fans to have fun and make some noise throughout the show.

Nothing too much to note here, as this was just a way of getting the fans fired up before the start of the Royal Rumble. He fired everyone up and got things going for the show.

Also, don’t expect Michaels to be part of the Royal Rumble match. He may be around, but his retirement stance has held true for the past seven years.

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Raw Women’s Championship Match
Charlotte (c) vs. Bayley

Result: Charlotte defeats Bayley via pinfall to retain the Raw Women’s Championship.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bayley got an early head of steam on Charlotte, tossing her out of the ring twice and had the upper hand for a time. The tide quickly turned, though, with Charlotte grounding the challenger for quite a while. All those taunts that came out during their Poetry Slam 101 session were on display here.

How about that big elbow drop from Bayley? Shades of “Macho Man” Randy Savage all the way there.

The match started to get pretty rough around the edges around 10 minutes through. Bayley ended up causing Charlotte to bleed from the mouth with her elbow drop. A blocked moonsault even looked to cause some pain to Bayley. However, that Natural Selection on the ring apron may have been the most brutal looking of them all.

Somewhat surprisingly, this match lasted only a hair over 10 minutes with Charlotte hitting her nonsubmission finisher for the win. This gave her yet another PPV win, which will be played up heading into WrestleMania 33, a time that may be best for putting breaking this streak.

Bayley is the more intriguing of the two here in regard to fallout. She took the pinfall after a somewhat short Raw Women’s Championship match, so is this the end of her time in the title picture? With the biggest part of WWE’s calendar approaching, I can’t see that happening just yet. There should be a spot for her at both Fastlane and WrestleMania 33.

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No Disqualification Match for the WWE Universal Championship
Kevin Owens (c) vs. Roman Reigns

Result: Kevin Owens defeats Roman Reigns via pinfall to retain the WWE Universal Championship.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

The early highlight of this came from Jericho being petrified of being in the shark cage as it rose above the ring. He played it off great and showed how fearful he was of what was about to happen to him.

At one point, it looked like Owens built a fort of chairs like a little kid would with pillows and blankets. It didn’t prove to be much earlier on.

This did, though, which pushed this match to another level of excitement:

This had been one of many times that weapons came into play, including when Jericho dropped down the brass knuckles and Reigns hitting the Samoan Drop on the chair (it looked like the edge of it caught KO). All of these items being used freshened up this matchup to where this could be called the best Owens vs. Reigns match by far. If anything, this was both man’s best bout in quite some time.

Perhaps the most surprising moment of the match came when Owens hit a Stunner out of nowhere. Reigns kicked out of it, though, so could we get an angry Texas Rattlesnake on his podcast soon?

Oh, and about those chairs:

Braun Strowman made a surprising appearance in the match and absolutely destroyed Reigns. Commentary played it up as revenge for everything Reigns did to him in recent weeks. So we’re seemingly in for something big to come between these two heading into WrestleMania season.

As for Owens, he’s now the favorite to walk into WrestleMania 33 with the Universal Championship. Nothing with Jericho got teased here, but that doesn’t mean things won’t combust between the two soon.

An overall great match, however. Owens and Reigns had plenty of lackluster bouts before, so this one at Royal Rumble outclassed anything else they had done. They should both have momentum into Raw.

Royal Rumble Number Selection

Backstage we see Sami Zayn receive the No. 8 spot in the Royal Rumble match. Dean Ambrose also showed up and provided some comedy here.

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WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match
Rich Swann (c) vs. Neville

Result: Neville defeats Rich Swann via submission to win the WWE Cruiserweight Championship.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The cruiserweight division hasn’t met expectations. The in-ring work hasn’t been close to what it was in the Cruiserweight Classic, putting a damper on what these athletes are supposed to be in WWE for. Getting them over with the main roster fans on a show that airs after SmackDown doesn’t do them any favors either. So Swann and Neville came in with quite the task at the Royal Rumble.

The feud between Swann and Neville got billed as personal and definitely seemed like it when this match began. Both men, especially the Cruiserweight Champion showed some anger with his stiff kicks and aggressive lariats.

This would be all about Neville, however. He had been the star of the cruiserweight division in previous weeks and showed off here. His superplex and submission hold ended up doing Swann in and crowned him the fourth WWE Cruiserweight Champion.

A very good match from both here, but the crowd didn’t care much. It may have to do with the presentation of the cruiserweight division and awkward placement of 205 Live, so most of the fans inside the Alamodome may have never watched this feud transpire over the past six weeks.

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WWE Championship Match
AJ Styles (c) vs. John Cena

Result: John Cena defeats AJ Styles to win the WWE Championship.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Whenever Styles and Cena have met in a WWE ring, it turned into an instant classic. Money in the Bank and SummerSlam were highlighted by these two, and when we look back at Royal Rumble 2017, this will be the case again.

Early on, the brutality of this match stood tall. These two kicked and clotheslined each other to pieces, including Cena almost hulking up with rage as he decked the WWE Champion with a vicious forearm. It almost looked heel-like (he’s not turning anytime soon), but is more likely just a more aggressive Cena.

The most important thing here is that John Cena is now a 16-time World champion. He ties Ric Flair for the most recognized WWE World title reign of all-time. It’s a monumental feat for him to accomplish, and it came in grand fashion with this fantastic match.

Cena now walks into WrestleMania 33 season as the WWE Champion. However, he has to defend the belt at the Elimination Chamber against five other Superstars. The Royal Rumble winner is also lurking in the background, who turned out to be from SmackDown.

Styles’ WrestleMania future is unclear. He could be out of the title picture and move on to someone else. There may also be a singles one-on-one rematch for him at some point with Cena.

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Royal Rumble Match

Result: Randy Orton last eliminates Roman Reigns to win the 2017 Royal Rumble match.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

The overall Royal Rumble match was fine. It didn’t provide any surprises outside of Tye Dillinger. No legends. No Samoa Joe. No Finn Balor. No Kurt Angle. So there would be little to no drama. However, there would be plenty of takeaways to dive into.

Goldberg and Brock Lesnar facing each other at WrestleMania 33 makes no sense now. This is two straight appearances that have seen the former WCW star destroy the Beast Incarnate. Why bother going to another match if the clear person ahead has been made clear?

The Undertaker and Roman Reigns are on a path to a WrestleMania match. Reigns eliminated the Dead Man, who eyed him down and mumbled something. This should be one of the top matches at the Show of Shows and make for a potentially fun ride. The only thing is did we really need to have the former Shield man enter at No. 30? His spot felt like a bit of a waste and could have been used on a legend to make this a little more fun and less serious and eye-rolling like we’ve seen with Reigns’ booking before.

Then there’s Randy Orton winning the Royal Rumble. It’s a bit of a controversial call since he’s 36, has won before, and is three years removed from the WWE main event scene. Given that John Cena won the WWE Championship, are we actually on a path to these two facing off in some capacity at WrestleMania 33? If so, it’s a storyline that we’ve seen time and time again. Hopefully, this won’t be the case and Bray Wyatt gets integrated into the mix with the Elimination Chamber approaching.

There’s still plenty of fallout to come, but that does it for this Royal Rumble PPV.