Royal Riot 2015

Let’s all be thankful we are not Vince McMahon the day after the 2015 Royal Rumble pay-per-view. He and the entire creative staff of WWE must be pulling their hair out after the enormous amount of fan backlash that resulted from the Royal Rumble match ending with Roman Reigns outlasting 29 other men to earn a main event WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at Wrestlemania 31.

Another Royal Rumble has come and gone, and once again, many wrestling fans feel that the WWE “royally” messed up in a huge way. Sound familiar? 2014 saw Batista win the event to a chorus of boos as many people did not think Batista deserved to win after being absent from WWE for nearly four years. 2013 saw John Cena win the Royal Rumble much to the chagrin of wrestling fans as his victory combined with the Rock’s WWE Championship win later that night turned their “Once in a Lifetime” match that headlined Wrestlemania 28 into round one of “Twice in a Lifetime” as they faced off again at Wrestlemania 29. In 2012, Sheamus won the Royal Rumble by eliminating Chris Jericho, which essentially wiped out what little momentum Y2J had left from his strange return. This pattern of controversial Royal Rumble winners continued into 2015 and made the road to Wrestlemania very bumpy.

Crowning Roman Reigns as the Royal Rumble winner sparked a huge outrage as people took to social media to voice their displeasure with the WWE’s decision. On Twitter, for example, a Cancel WWE Network hashtag was trending worldwide as people claimed to cancel their subscription to the WWE Network due to their unhappiness with the way the Royal Rumble ended and encouraged other WWE Network subscribers to do the same. Even mainstream media picked up on the alarming trending topic on Twitter as Time posted an article about the Royal Rumble outrage on their website.

The live crowd inside the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA, erupted in anger as chants of “bull shit” and deafening boos echoed throughout the arena during what was supposed to be the first step in making Reigns the next official top wrestler in the WWE. Not even the Rock, who made a surprise appearance to save Reigns from a beat down at the hands of Kane and the Big Show as well as symbolically acknowledge that Reigns is the next “man” of WWE, could change the mood of the audience.

So why are a majority of wrestling fans up in arms about Reigns winning the Royal Rumble match? They wanted Daniel Bryan to win, and I believe Reigns has not yet grabbed the “brass ring” that Vince McMahon talked about during his interview with Stone Cold Steve Austin. In my opinion, Bray Wyatt, Dolph Ziggler, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose have come the closest to attaining it, but Reigns really has not done anything to come closer than wrestlers I just named. Daniel Bryan on the other hand grabbed the ring long ago and has managed to hold onto it despite missing most of 2014 because of his injuries. Simply put, Roman Reigns is still reaching for the brass ring, and Daniel Bryan is still holding the brass ring.

WWE now finds itself in a difficult situation. How are they going to present the main event at their biggest show of the year? Adding another wrestler like Bryan to the Reigns vs. Lesnar match will draw criticisms because they implemented that solution last year. Should they choose to go forward with main event as is, then there is a huge possibility that the crowd will be cheering for Lesnar, the monster heel champion, and boo Reigns, the new up and coming face of the company. That would be catastrophic and embarrassing for the WWE if their new “top guy” gets booed out of the building at their trademark event.

One thing is for sure though: WWE will be must see television as Wrestlemania approaches, but not for the reason that Vince McMahon intended.