Royal Rumble Recap
The winner of the 2009 Royal Rumble is…“The Legend Killer” Randy Orton who was number eight and lasted an impressive 48 minutes and 27 seconds. I was also five for five on all my predictions, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.
The first match was between ECW Champion Jack Swagger against former champion Matt Hardy. This match was back and forth but Swagger proved that he had heart toughness and ended up beating Matt Hardy to retain the ECW Title.
Next up was Woman’s Champion Beth Phoenix defending against Melina. Melina has had a long road to recovery and she completed that road last night by defeating the Glamazon for the Woman’s title. Its different seeing Melina as a face. She still has the same aggression she has always has had. Melina is one of the most gifted performers that the Woman’s division has seen in the history of the business.
You then had the World Heavyweight Champion John Cena defending his title against JBL. The wildcard in this match was Shawn Michaels. Earlier in the night Undertaker confronted Shawn and said “Sometimes even getting to heaven requires going through hell.” That was after JBL said if he didn’t win the title Shawn would never work for him again. JBL and Cena had another great match just like they did nearly four years ago. The ref got knocked out and Shawn super kicked JBL. But before left he gave Sweet Chin Music to John Cena and left, however John Cena defeated Bradshaw and retained the World Title.
The highly anticipated WWE Title match was next. Jeff Hardy was defending against Edge. A lot has happened in the storyline with Jeff Hardy since his title win. He was in a hit and run, and suffered burns in a pyrotechnic accident. My prediction about Christian was unfortunately wrong. Vicky Guerrero made the match NO DQ and in typical Jeff Hardy fashion he went all out. Before Jeff could get the win Matt came out to offer his brother some help and the Hardy’s were about deliver a double chair shot and then…..BAM!!! Matt Hardy hit Jeff with the chair and cost him the WWE Title. It actually threw me off of what I thought was going to happen. I think its genius by WWE to feud the two brothers. They only really ever fought once and that was at Armageddon 2001 with Lita as the special guest referee. The match didn’t have a big build up but this is the start of a good buildup for their match.
And now on to the Royal Rumble. Rey Mysterio came in at number one and John Morrison at number two. There were three things that made this match great.
Number one would be the return of Rob Van Dam for one night only. It was great to see him.
Number two is the fastest elimination ever in the Royal Rumble and that was Kane eliminating Santino Marella. You should have seen the look on his face when he got eliminated. Great stuff from Santino which I guess why he is a great character in wrestling
Number three was how many guys were there at the end. They really made it look like anyone could win it. I think when Big Show came out at 30 there were probably fifteen guys left. However only man could win and I predicted him to win it…Randy Orton. He is now going to Wrestlemania. It was freaking awesome. I am looking forward to the Road to Wrestlemania.
With that being said here are my match predictions for Wrestlemania 25:
World Heavyweight Championship
Edge vs. Triple H
WWE Championship
John Cena vs. Randy Orton
The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels
Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Hardy
Those to me are the four big matches that will happen at Wrestlemania 25 unless WWE throws another curve ball at us and changes things. I’ll keep adding and probably changing my predictions as we going along. These are my initial predictions after what I saw last night.
See you at Buffalo Wild Wings on February 15th for No Way Out.
