So 2016 starts for WWE with their first PPV of the year, the Royal Rumble and for the first time in a long time I loved it, both the match and the overall PPV as a whole. It had a lot of great spots and nice surprises, and lots of great set-ups for future feuds. A lot of the wrestlers had their moments to shine. Seeing Braun Strowman eliminate Kane and Big Show put gave me relief that they weren't gonna pull the same shit they did last year with those two. AJ Styles was great to see and looked awesome, and while I wish he would've stayed in the match longer, having him eliminated by Kevin Owens was a good idea as the thought of a match between Styles and Owens sounds incredible. Sami Zayn from NXT also made an appearance and looked great in it too, though I don't know if he'll be joining the main roster yet or not. Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose were great as usual and I was pleasantly surprised to see Ambrose in the final two(though I still wish he won the Rumble). And while I'm still mixed on HHH winning, in the end I think among all other choices I think him winning was the right call. Overall the match was great and no one was really booked poorly...save for a couple of VERY glaring exceptions.

You see, since the beginning of last year there was a guy that the WWE has been trying to build up to be their new top guy, Roman Reigns. Yet it seems that every time the WWE tries to build him up it usually manages to explode in their faces. For starters the guy still manages to get very mixed reactions. Now I like Roman, he works hard and has improved a lot since the beginning of the year, and when the WWE isn't screwing up he can really shine, but unfortunately nearly every attempt at making him strong has horribly backfired, and it was no different than in this years Rumble.

About a 1/3 of the way in Reigns is dragged out from the bottom and gets the crap beaten out of him by the League of Nations(with Vince no less) and is supposedly injured. So of course paramedics come in and try to take him to the back. But you see he refuses to be helped by the paramedics, and insists that he....walks backstage on his own....You see, it's crap like this why people still can't get behind Reigns. It's the complete opposite of what you should do when trying to build a guy to be strong, instead makes them look like a complete wimp. There was no way the crowd would've been happy had he won the thing after that stunt. Remember with Daniel Bryan in WM30, where he's been repeatedly ambushed by the Authority and gets double teamed by Batista and Randy Orton, instead of being pulled out by paramedics, he literally crawls back into the arena to continue his match, and throughout that duration I was expecting the same with Reighs. Instead he eventually showed up during the last ten minutes to a chorus of boos throughout the arena. Hell it was probably the right move that they didn't have him be part of the final two, let alone winning, as I'm sure the arena would've burned down if he won.

Also Brock's booking was dumb too, it was going well until he was eventually ambushed by the Wyatt family and eventually thrown out unfairly. So he then proceeds to....walk away sadly. I kept expecting him to beat the tar out of the Wyatt family outside the arena for revenge, or to run back in and proceed to rip Bray apart, but they never happened. Felt like a very unlikely thing for Lesnar to do, and a dumb move on the WWE's part.

And then there was Rusev, whom I'm pretty sure his main event days are over.

Other thoughts:
- The Last Man Standing match was fantastic. Easily the match of the night, and a good indicator of why Owens and Ambrose are my favs in the current roster
- New Day is still awesome
- It looks like they're trying to turn Kallisto into the next Rey Mysterio, not that I mind. The US Match was great(despite a couple of bad botches) and I'm glad he won the title
- The Diva's match was surprisingly solid, though Sasha Banks stole the show
- Also thank you Triple H for another good reaction gif