Review for WWE Royal Rumble 2013

I'm sure everyone knows this by now, but my favourite time of the year, more than Christmas, more than Easter, more even than my birthday is Royal Rumble time. I would quite happily live just watching this one event a year. To me this is my Wrestlemania. And this year there was an extra kick to the event... if you smell what I'm cookin!

The Rock against Cena was one of the biggest matches of 2012 and so CM Punk had a lot to live up to and he more than exceeds that. As far as I'm concerned the rest of card doesn't matter, only the Rumble matters and though I do wish it had been the main event I can understand why they didn't do that. So here are my thoughts on my favourite night of the year.

World Heavyweight Championship
Alberto Del Rio vs. The Big Show
On first? There goes my bathroom break.
Wait? Bret Hart. I... I just don't know whether it was funny, a passing of the torch?
Ok this was a pretty good match especially for the PG era. Show throwing Del Rio off part of the set into a table and Show going through the barrier were insane moments. My highlight of this match was Del Rio almost win with a shot to the balls!

Following this was a lot of filler because they don't want to put a Diva or another match on the card? However, it had an old skool feel to the promos which is good I guess.

WWE Tag Team Championship
Team Hell No vs. Team Rhodes Scholars
Wow!? A tag match that was good. I mean really? It was almost like all four actually wanted to wrestle a tag match rather than just wrestle. Both teams worked well together as teams and if WWE cared to... doubtful... could make the tag team division what it was.

The Rumble Match
Rather than go through the whole events I'll just mention my key highlights an lowlights.

Highlights
Chris Jericho surprise appearance and looking as great as ever.
Everyone ganging up on Cena. I don't know why, but it just reminded me of when Austin entered in 1998 and everyone stopped for him.
Sheamus's Brogue kick to Dolph Ziggler. OW!

Lowlights
This is going to sound nitpicky, but there were far too may people lasting ages (Ziggler, Jericho etc)
Not enough shocks or eliminations that could lead into a storyline.
No real exciting eliminations... I don't even recall if Kofi did anything crazy to stay in.
Finally, it was the wrong two people to end with and I will not spoil the winner, but I think it was just too obvious.

WWE Championship
CM Punk vs. The Rock
This was an odd match. It felt very much like a match from the late 90s/early 00s and the ending had a very Swerve Russo feel to it. However, it was almost a nothing match until the end.

Overall, I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with the ending or not. It was fine... in general... it just felt so obvious. Not having the Rumble last is just wrong unless it technically has to (ie that year when Undertaker destroyed the ring... can't be doing that before, right?) The Last Man Standing was fine, a lot better than I expected and the tag match was very good.

The Rumble match is always good, but this year it felt a bit by the books and not the spectacular I expect. As for Rock/Punk? It could have been better and I expected an end of show confrontation between the two winners. It would not be difficult to spoil who won the Punk/Rock seeing as he's on the front of the box wearing... Anyway, this was still a great event and certainly a PPV that I would watch again.