WWE Royal Rumble 2018: Results, Highlights, Analysis, and Grades

Photo Source: WWE.com

United States Championship Open Challenge

Bobby Roode (c) vs. Mojo Rawley

Result: Bobby Roode defeats Mojo Rawley via pinfall

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Talk about a letdown. It’s the same old story – pay per view, open challenge, rumors of new signees, someone interesting is going to answer the challenge, haha nope it’s someone lame. Not Lashley, not Ziggler, not EC3 – Mojo Rawley. It could have been worse, though – at least it wasn’t Jinder Mahal.

Mojo is a pretty uninspired choice, but it is what it is. I wonder if the hope was that he’d get some of that Super Bowl heat, being friends with Rob Gronkowski and all. But the deafening silence Mojo came down to suggests otherwise.

Like with The Revival vs. The Balor Club, this wasn’t a bad match, just too predictable. It was better than their match in the second round of the US Title Tournament – the same one I had predicted would be a good match (whoops!). There’s no way Booby Roode is losing the title so soon. There’s no chance of Mojo winning the title so quickly. So once Mojo hit the ring, everyone is basically just waiting for the finish.

With Dolph Ziggler not showing up to answer this challenge, it just makes us wait a bit for the real, final, official, ultimate blow-off for the Ziggler/Roode rivalry. Plus, it frees Dolph up to enter the Rumble later in the night, maybe even win the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Roode has a successful first title defense, and Mojo gets to show confidence in accepting the challenge. Predictability aside, it’s a win for everyone involved. Well, except for maybe the WWE Universe.