In what was undeniably the most stacked Royal Rumble in history, it was quite a call to make the winner of the match someone who has never held a world championship before. Every top male star in WWE who isn’t world champion, injured or had just had their head driven into a ladder, tried to book their ticket to Wrestlemania. In the end, Jey Uso proved to be that man, last eliminating John Cena, in the latter’s final ever entrant in the Rumble match.
However, despite being one of the company’s most over performers in the last few years, Jey’s victory has received significant backlash from fans online. At face-value, their anger could be considered justified, with WWE choosing to seemingly build stars, when so much main event talent could have had their storylines jump started for the road to Wrestlemania. Admittedly, he would not have been my pick to win the Rumble, but I don’t think that this is an atrocious booking decision, as some seem to be making out.
On paper, Jey Uso winning should be a slam dunk for good booking, a highly charismatic babyface who organically gets over with the audience after residing as a tag team wrestler for much of his career. But Jey’s singles career so far has left quite a bit to be desired. Despite being in numerous title matches, the 39-year-old’s only success was a single Intercontinental title reign that lasted just under a month. Despite his “Main Event” moniker and big push he has received, he has not quite broken into the main event scene inhabited by other top WWE stars.
Many have also accused Jey of not having sufficient in-ring skills to warrant his significant push, but Jey’s in-ring work has significantly improved over the last few years. He may use a few too many superkicks (looking at you Wrestlemania XL), but Jey can have highly engaging matches, particularly as he’s excellent at getting the crowd involved. Nothing exemplifies this more than his recent match with Gunther at January 25th Saturday Night’s Main Event for the World Heavyweight Championship. However, this match provides another gripe many have with Jey winning February 1st’s Royal Rumble.
With rumours that John Cena Vs Cody Rhodes is the plan for Wrestlemania, many have assumed that Gunther will be Jey’s target for his world title match. However, given the recent match between the two, this seems confusing. Did WWE book Saturday Night’s Main Event knowing Jey would go on to win the Rumble? Because now fans are foreseeing a match that they saw only a week ago being on the Wrestlemania card, which understandably is not an entirely appealing prospect. However, I have no doubt that with a proper road to Wrestelmania build-up, the match is definitely worthy of taking place at the showcase of the immortals.
It isn’t a complete guarantee that Jey will face “Der Ring General” anyway. WWE could always shift the World Heavyweight Championship before Wrestlemania, and a WWE title match against Cody Rhodes could have great storytelling potential too. Cody was the one who helped Jey escape from the Bloodline back in 2023, so for Jey’s first world title win to be against The American Nightmare (potentially a heel-turned one too) would be a great full circle moment.
Heading into the event, my pick to win the Men’s Royal Rumble was CM Punk, with the thought that him winning the opportunity to main event Wrestlemania was too good to ignore. But Punk now appears to be going for a feud with Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins, with all of their eliminations from the rumble coming from being distracted by their hatred of one another. As Punk proved last year with his matches against Drew McIntyre, he absolutely does not need a world title to be one of the most compelling wrestlers on the roster. So I’m happy to have world title opportunity go to Jey, even though Punk is definitely deserving of a title shot in the future.
As for the other consensus favourite heading into the match, I was not overly keen on the idea of John Cena winning the Rumble to kick off his farewell tour. It is pretty much a guarantee that Cena will win his 17th world title at some point during this year, he practically confirmed it in the post-show conference in a rather bullish manner. So Cena simply winning the Rumble to secure a world title match seemed too predictable, it verged on being boring. Having the swerve of Jey eliminating Cena to win provides a more compelling story coming out of the Rumble. We should treasure the little time we have of John Cena in the WWE, but I think it’s okay to let this one slide, there’ll be plenty of time for Cena to win title number 17 later in the year.
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