There’s usually a buzz that surrounds any of WWE’s Big Four pay-per-view events. I did not feel any buzz this past weekend when WWE had their second-biggest event of the year, the 2022 Royal Rumble.

You could make excuses as to why this event didn’t feel very big, but the biggest one is that WWE no longer has larger-than-life stars.

WWE is getting paid big money for their weekly television, pay-per-views premium live events, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pays them handsomely for two big shows every year for the foreseeable future. They just had an investor call on Thursday and announced their first-ever year $1 billion+ in revenue ($1.095 billion in 2021). They aren’t motivated to make big stars right now. If they made another guy as big as The Rock or Steve Austin, they would have to pay them more and wreck their pay structure. They had their biggest profit ever and they still cited ‘budget reasons’ when they fired dozens and dozens of on-screen talent, and even more off-air employees.

Is star power the only issue WWE has right now? No, they lack depth at every level as well. They desperately need more guys like Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, but they also need more guys at the mid-card level, because they do a poor job at everything but the tippy-top guys. There is a steep drop-off after Reigns and Lesnar. They struggle to find new feuds for Reigns and just go back to Lesnar every major show. They’ve even managed to screw up Becky Lynch, who was the most over talent on the entire roster before she went on maternity leave. She came back as a heel (which was a horrible idea), and now she’s getting a confused, lukewarm reception on television.

I could go on and on about some of the major mistakes WWE has made over the last decade, but let’s talk about the below average 2022 Royal Rumble.

The show started with what was probably the best match on the show, Roman Reigns versus Seth Rollins for the Universal Championship. They work well with each other, but the finish was just dumb. They disqualified Reigns for kicking too much ass and not breaking the five-count on a rope break. Reigns then went to beat his ass more and recreated The Shield breakup with a steel chair shot across Rollins’ back.

The Women’s Rumble match was next and this is where all the ‘budget cut’ releases was felt the most. WWE appears to only have about a dozen full-time women on the roster and they decided against using any NXT talent in either rumble. This match felt like current roster vs. the Divas Era mid-card. We saw the return of Summer Rae, Cameron, Melina and many others from that era. The biggest news was the return of Ronda Rousey, who went on to win the match. She got a big pop when she entered the match, but didn’t get the same reaction when she tossed Charlotte to win the match.

Becky Lynch vs Doudrop for the RAW women’s championship followed the women’s rumble. The audience was distracted for a large portion of the match since the big Wrestlemania sign caught fire during the large pyro explosion when Rousey won. I don’t think the crowd would have been in this match either way. Doudrop isn’t over and no one expected her to win this match. Lynch won the match with the manhandle slam.

The crowd started to get back into the show when Brock Lesnar vs Bobby Lashley got in the ring for the WWE Championship. These guys kept dropping each other on their heads. The big moment happened when Reigns interfered with a spear and Heyman turned on Lesnar by siding back with Reigns again. Lashley pinned Lesnar to win the WWE Championship.

We had a bathroom match up next, Edge & Beth Phoenix vs. The Miz and Maryse. WWE has really shit the bed with Edge’s return. He has been in some bad feuds and this is a poor use of him. You could argue that AEW has treated Christian better than WWE has Edge. This match was exactly what you expected it would be, Edge & Beth win.

The Men’s Rumble match is next to end the show. We didn’t have many surprises in the men’s match as Bad Bunny and Shane McMahon were the two lone surprises. You could argue that Brock Lesnar was a surprise at number 30, but I think everyone expected he would be in this match after getting screwed by Reigns. We also got screwed as viewers as we didn’t get our yearly “Kofi Kingston Rumble Stunt”. He attempted to catch himself on the guardrail, but his feet touched. The referee was right there and you could tell that wasn’t supposed to happen. The other weird thing in this match was Shane McMahon winning striking battles with guys like former UFC fighter Matt Riddle. He was also in the final three in the match. I guess Shane-O got a lot of heat backstage as he helped book the Rumble and he shined himself up too much.

As I mentioned before, Lesnar was the ‘surprise’ at #30 and he cleaned house in a hurry to win the match. They were in rush at the end and Drew McIntyre didn’t get much offense in on Lesnar before getting tossed.

It’s clear that WWE phones in most of their weekly television shows. They are just in the content-making business. This show was just content to me. It was largely a skippable show, which is sad to say about a Royal Rumble show. A lot of the storylines were just stretched out a little more so they could have more matches at the Saudi Arabia show this month. We didn’t get many new storylines started or ended on this show. I expect we will see more finality in Saudi Arabia, but I skip those shows out of protest.

Let’s hope Wrestlemania isn’t just two days of content.

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About the Author…

Bobby Roberts (otherwise known as Sweetbob) is the creator of ‘America’s White Boy’ and contributor at Project Shanks. His writing has been featured on ESPN’s ‘SportsNation’, Sports Illustrated’s Hot Clicks, Guyspeed, and various other sites. You can follow him on Twitter at @Sweetbob.