A (possible) Royal Rumble liveblog

Tuesday 1st February, 2011, 9.02pm: The 24th annual Royal Rumble finished nearly 48 hours ago from the sold out something arena, Boston. But this blog is LIVE. It's going to be a night of surprises (I haven't watched WWE in about 3 months)

9.05pm: Opening with the world heavyweight championship. Edge comes out. Is he champion? Yes. I literally have no idea. (Surprise #1 if we're counting). Dolph Ziggler is the challenger, which is welcome. Edge is a babyface champion? Oh nuts.

9.08pm: There is a sign saying 'We hate sign guy', displaying a level of knowing irony not usual associated with WWE fans (I usually associate irony with the fans of Mike Modest's old promotion, Pro Wrestling Irony)

9.14pm: There's something amusing to me about talking about Edge's marriage to Vicky Guererro. Sure, they were married, she just kept her old husband's surname. This isn't actually very amusing, is it?

9.28pm: Edge has terrible offence, yet Ziggler is bumping like a maniac to make it look acceptable. That powerbomb counter was a nice nearfall, Dolph really let it look nasty in the way he twists and lands half on his shoulders.

9.39pm: Ziggler's performance and substantial booking gimmickry can, apparently, make for a decent Edge match. How is it that after all these years, Edge has absolutely no presence as a champion? The spear spot was predictable enough, but it was done very artlessly and made Edge look a guy who only has one useful tool. Also, when someone stacks the deck against someones favour like that, you kind of want to see it backfire in their face, not just have to guy work around it via a technicality.

9.46pm: Miz vs. Randy Orton. Of all the upper-midcarders they elevated to champion in one fell swoop, the Miz is the first one that works for me.

10.11pm: I really liked that. I think the thing I got into as the match went along was how much it felt a lot like a fight in how stiff and intense a lot of the action was, and how no-one really kept control for a long time. Plus, it kept pretty localised to the ring, which seemed to magnify the intensity. WWE doesn't know how to do fights anymore. A lot of matches which are actually booked as grudge matches go over the top, around the arena, use gimmicks and other things to try to divert your attention away from the banned lack of blood. It does work for me at all, and actively dimishes the violence. This was not booked as a grudge match but as a title match, yet the effect was something that they should try to replicate in the future.

10.30pm: Quick break. Stryker is talking about Cody Rhodes and his broken face. I know I can be pedantic, but this is ridiculous: "not only does Cody Rhodes has a shattered face, he also has shattered dreams, no pun intended". Tell me, Matt, what would be the point of that sentence if a pun was not intended? Otherwise you would have just said, "not only does Cody Rhodes has a shattered face, he also has some feelings of great disappointment". And then you probably would still have pointed out there was no pun intended. Only then, you would have been right.

10.35pm: The only reason I care about these things is because Matt Stryker portrays himself as an intellectual, what with his Morrissey references and his long words.

10.43pm: Laycool vs. Natalya. I can't believe it took ten years for them to work out that no-one likes Michael Cole and that there might be some interest in playing up to that. OK, this is now a fourway. Eve is the forth participant.

10.52pm: That was the very definition of clunky booking at the end, should such a thing need visual representation.

10.55pm: So what I really want to happen is for the Danielson romance angle to carry on with all these girls, then one of them is his girlfriend for a bit, then someone tells him he needs to break it off AND THEN he turns around and says, "I've got until FIVE, referee".

10.57pm: Next year, the number of times this Royal Rumble by numbers promo has been used will be one of the numbers used in the Royal Rumble by numbers promo.

11.01pm: OK, Rumble match time.

Wednesday 2nd February, 201112.20am: Mixed thoughts on the match. I loved the first half - you had the undercard guys doing some cool stuff (Bryan vs. Punk opening as a wink to the "internet" fans, Regal vs. Bryan, Morrison's crazy ringbarrier spot), before it settled down into the first important narrative of the match, being Punk and his Nexus' complete control. They built up the eliminiations, brought in Khali to disrupt the rhythm for the first time as a fake turnaround point, leading up to Cena's entry and elimination of all the Nexus. I particularly liked how after Khali gave the Nexus a fright, they lost their form and tightly organised attacks, allowing Cena the opportunity to take out all four. The stuff with Hornswaggle in the middle worked as light relief, but the real problem with the second half is that we never got showed the jeopardy. I just didn't buy most of the entrants as likely people to defeat Cena, and the ones who I did were either used poorly (like the Big Show) or arrived far to late to create any real tension (Orton). Of course, Cena didn't win, but that isn't really the point. I'm delighted that the top of the card is so unrecognisable from two years ago (no Taker, HHH, HBK), but there is still some way to go to truly establish the next generation of main eventers. I worry they'll end up going for the wrong guys (Kingston, Sheamus) rather than guys like Swagger or Ziggler.

12.25am: Oh, but that ending was just fabulous. It's the kind of wouldn't-it-be-cool-if idea that you never actually expect to see, much less subverted.

12.29am Surprise #2 was Del Rio winning.