WWE needs to find better go-home angles for the Royal Rumble

Boy, did the Jan. 29 episode of WWE SmackDown — the go-home show for this Sunday’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view — fall off a cliff or what? Actually, “falling off a cliff” would imply that the final hour of this past Friday night’s show was a blameless accident; driven off a cliff like in the final scene of Thelma & Louise is more accurate (with Vince McMahon at the wheel instead of Susan Sarandon).

The show started out well enough. Daniel Bryan opened things up with a solid, if not repetitive, promo before AJ Styles came out to set up a match between the two for later. Bayley and Bianca Belair told a great story in their very good television match. Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens delivered a money sit-down confrontation as a final pitch for their Universal Championship Last Man Standing match — though it wasn’t without its campy moments.

Most impressively, Dominik Mysterio attacked Baron Corbin from behind before their match only to lose clean! Okay, that wasn’t good (WWE knows the younger Mysterio is supposed to be a babyface, right?), but the first hour did give fans more things to like than not like.

When the Bryan vs. Styles match started with more than a half-hour left in the show, it seemed like the good times would keep going……until WWE decided to unleash all of their terrible tropes on the viewing audience.

WWE went back to the same waterless well with their show-closing segment.

WWE gave us about 12-and-a-half minutes of high-quality action between Bryan and Styles, but they couldn’t help but use the old “babyface gets distracted by music” gimmick twice in about a five-minute span, first to bring out Sami Zayn and later to alert the fans of Intercontinental Champion Big E’s entrance.

After that, it was only a matter of time before the non-finish came. Then, we got a brawl with the aforementioned names along with Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro, who was sitting at ringside as a guest commentator. This led to a six-man tag and a rinse and repeat of the brawl with The Miz, John Morrison, and Otis added to the fray, which ballooned things to a 10-man tag.

Guess how that match ended? That’s right, with another brawl before Braun Strowman came out and cleaned house.

So, to recap: we got multiple non-finishes and match restarts, multiple instances where music diverted a wrestler’s attention — particularly babyfaces — and multiple contrived brawls. This is what WWE thought would get fans excited for one of their biggest shows on the calendar.

Vince McMahon and his creative team have leaned on this plot device for years as the last bit of hype for the Rumble, but as this terrible chain of events have shown that it’s time for McMahon and his crew to figure out new ways to get fans excited for the Rumble.

What should WWE do instead?

WWE has to realize that the vast majority of fans know how the Royal Rumble works. They already know that there is a possibility that multiple big names could interact with one another during the course of the match, so booking a segment like that before the PPV feels unneeded. It’s almost as silly as when they try to correlate winning traditional wrestling matches as momentum for winning an over-the-top-rope battle royal.

Instead of scripting segments that visually emphasizes the rules or the aesthetic of the match, WWE should focus on the prize a wrestler receives for winning: a world championship match at WrestleMania.

Instead of auto-filling a big schmoz at the end of every one of these go-home shows, why not do something like have several wrestlers talk about what it would mean to them to win such a monumental match and headline the biggest show of the year? That way, you aren’t insulting your fans’ intelligence by assuming they get neuralyzed after every Rumble match and are putting the spotlight on the stars who will populate the ring when the contest starts.

If WWE wants to add an in-ring aspect to the build, those brawls can work sparingly, but not as the conclusion to a “why is WWE booking so infuriating” showcase. Something as simple as having two feuding wrestlers brawl before various wrestlers come down for the brouhaha. That way, you’re still getting the fans excited about the favorites in the match instead of giving some thinly-veiled crash course for the bout.

There are probably more ways than that to effectively build to the Rumble, but the consistent theme with those ideas is simplicity. With numerous possibilities for surprises and future matchups, it doesn’t take much to get fans excited about the match, so WWE should take the proper steps going forward to ensure that a go-home segment never becomes this convoluted again.

Who am I kidding? They’ll probably just do this crap again next year.