6 Biggest Takeaways From WWE Royal Rumble 2021

4. Bianca Belair Wins Women’s Royal Rumble Match

Now, this was something exciting. I love a Royal Rumble match but I don’t know if it was just because I was mega-hyped beforehand or because WWE gave us a winner we actually wanted, but this Royal Rumble hit all the feels in a positive way.

The match started with Bayley and a returning Naomi. So pleased to see her shine in this match as she is basically the equivalent of Kofi Kingston or John Morrison for the wRumble – avoiding any chance of being eliminated by doing the impossible. Then, eventual winner, Bianca Belair joined the fray at number three.

I’m not going to go through every entrant as we’d be here all day, but click here to find out all the surprise entrants.

Billie Kay begged for a friend to enter the ring with. This featured encounters with Toni Storm and Shayna Baszler but missed out on the opportunity for a sweet IIconics reunion, which was delayed for later in the match.

 

Also, this Rumble was unique and dare I say, the best Women’s Rumble of them all, down to the effective booking of the match. Shotzi Blackheart was the only one eliminated for roughly 20 minutes before Rhea Ripley ran down at number 14 and tore the Thunderdome down!

Ripley is incredible and deserved to be at the calibre of Charlotte, as a major competitor during this bout. Additionally, it was awesome seeing them rekindle their feud from last year, with Ripley on her way to the main roster, this could be pursued further.

Other moments that happened saw Alexa Bliss come out at ‘lucky’ number 27 but was eliminated fairly early on after trying to ignite Super-Bliss. Also, Natalya was the announced number 30 and did just come out to the ring.

Skipping to the end, we saw Belair, Ripley and Flair face off as the final three. This was a very intense moment – it could’ve literally been any of them! Immediately, Belair and Ripley worked together to take out Charlotte.

Belair and Ripley both have history with Charlotte. Remember the “You don’t even go here” promo by Belair on NXT last year? They knew Charlotte winning the Rumble again would be a scary timeline and they prevented it from going ahead. Then we saw the future brawl in the final two.

At this point, we knew a star was in the making and this Rumble kept to its purpose. If the Money In The Bank match kept to this purpose, we’d still be obsessed with that too but this is why we love the Rumble more. The future of Bianca Belair was revealed to be a helluva good one.

Belair won the 2021 Royal Rumble to a wholesome ovation by fans from their homes. She was in tears, tired – she did last 58 minutes – and proud, you could tell how much this victory meant for her.

I loved it and excited to see Belair on SmackDown this week. Plus, we are probably heading towards Belair vs Banks, which sounds amazing!


3. Roman Reigns Retains Universal Championship

This match was not as good as their TLC clash, but it was still another classic.

Physically, the Last Man Standing match came in hitting and didn’t shy away from the huge, dramatic spots. C’mon, it is Kevin Owens on a big four pay-per-view, it is his thing now.

Reigns repeated the spot from SmackDown a few weeks ago when he chucked Owens off the Thunderdome monitors onto a set of tables. WWE virtually does this to the rebellious Thunderdome users. Then the fight ran into the backstage area.

Instantly, Reigns ran over Owens in a crazy golf buggy spot. This came out of nowhere but was quickly glossed over when Owens got onto the offence and performed a senton from the top of a forklift onto the Tribal Chief.

Then the final moments saw Reigns try to handcuff Owens; which was deja vu to their steel cage match last month. However, this time Owens used reverse UNO card and locked Reigns up instead.

 

Then we witnessed the Head of the Table target the referee, who was rapidly counting to 10, and Reigns send the ref’s head crashing into a nearby piece of staging. After this, Heyman tried to unlock the cuffs. Unfortunately, this was going seriously wrong and the referee had to stop counting for the result to go as intended.

Reigns then eventually got back to his feet, locked Owens in the guillotine and forced him to pass out. I believe that their story has reached its conclusion now. I have no idea what Owens will be doing at ‘Mania but Reigns certainly has something big on the table…

3 years ago by Lewis Burzynski

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