Why The 2015 Royal Rumble Is The Worst In The Gimmick Match’s History
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Producing a truly terrible Royal Rumble match is a difficult thing to do, as even a “bad” Royal Rumble can be enjoyable. The concept of a Rumble match, with the unpredictability of who is coming out next, and the staggered entries ensuring that someone new and fresh will be added to the occasion every so often, is a sure-fire recipe for success. At times, WWE has dropped the ball though and put forth a poor showing. For instance, 2022 offered up two candidates for the worst Rumble matches of all time, however, even they struggled to live up to the disaster that was the 2015 Royal Rumble match, which is one of, if not the single worst in the entire history of the match.
WWE Had To Figure Out Their Roman Reigns And Daniel Bryan Problem
Going into the 2015 Royal Rumble match, there were two clear favorites - Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan. Reigns’ babyface run hadn’t been going too strongly, and that went even more downhill when it became clear that Bryan was fit to return to in-ring action and set his sights on the Royal Rumble match. WWE booked themselves into a corner here, as both men were announced for the match, even though the audience universally wanted Bryan to win. Over the last two years, he had been the most over name in the entire company, so it was foolish of WWE to think that allegiances would change.
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In the case of Reigns, he hadn’t particularly done anything badly, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, much like Batista was the year prior. WWE should have learned from their mistakes when it came to the Royal Rumble in 2014, as fans had overwhelmingly wanted Bryan to win the match, yet they booked someone else to win the match over him. Bryan’s lack of involvement in the Rumble caused backlash, as fans hijacked the latter stages of the bout with chants for Bryan, drowning everyone else out in boos. Perhaps in an attempt to avoid this happening again, Bryan was involved in the match, but things didn’t go well.
Daniel Bryan’s Elimination Led The 2015 Royal Rumble To Descend Into Chaos
The 2015 Royal Rumble match actually kicked off fairly positively. A shocking return from Bubba Ray Dudley had the crowd going crazy, as did the early dominance of Bray Wyatt, who looked like a star in the first portion of the match. After dumping out Dudley, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, The Boogeyman, Zack Ryder, and Sin Cara, he was met with Daniel Bryan. Fans enjoyed seeing the two go at it, and were electric for everything Bryan did. However, after just 10 minutes, Bryan was eliminated from the match.
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The likely idea was that getting him out early would allow the crowd to get their frustrations out of the way for the latter half of the bout, but this didn’t end up being the case. According to Bryan, speaking on The Sessions at Starrcast V (h/t Fightful), he warned WWE that his elimination would result in a bad reaction, but this landed on deaf ears. Once again, the Rumble was hijacked by frustrated fans who were furious at WWE for not giving them what they wanted. It didn’t help that Bryan looked like an afterthought here, getting dumped out with the utmost ease in the early part of the match. The hatred towards Reigns became even more vicious due to this, and it essentially ruined the rest of the match. It was painful to watch, and the structure of the closing stages made things even worse.
Roman Reigns’ Royal Rumble Winning Moment Was A Disaster
There is no denying that Big Show and Kane are legends, but by the time 2015 rolled around, their star power had diminished as main eventers, and they had no business being presented as the most dominant threats in the match. Despite popular superstars like Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, and Bray Wyatt in the match, Show and Kane took them all out, unceremoniously eliminating all the top names in a truly underwhelming fashion. They would then team up on Reigns, though fans knew the conclusion already. Pointlessly, the pair turned on each other, leaving Reigns the chance to eliminate them both.
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The two heels entered the ring once again, and beat Reigns down. This brought out The Rock, whose involvement here was such an obvious ploy to try and get fans to cheer Reigns. In yet another pointless move, Rusev was revealed to have never been eliminated, but instead of putting up a fight, he was quickly dispatched by Reigns, who officially won the match for good. He had his hand raised by The Rock, getting booed as the show went off-air. Everything about this was hard to witness, and the baffling booking resulted in one of the very worst Rumble matches of all time.
