For this excercise, let's cut the Royal Rumble into 4 categories.

1 - Potential winners/rising stars
2 - Disqualified from winning (past winners)
3 - Filler
4 - The clear winner and most popular superstar right now who wasn't even in the rumble

1 - First up we get to our Potential winners or otherwise rising talent. young stars with plenty of skill and talent. Either are on the cusp of superstardom or have all the skills but just aren't getting the push. Not all of these are sure things, but all have the talent, charisma, or physique to really make an impact.

CM Punk
Damian Sandow
Dolph Ziggler
Roman Reigns
Seth Rollins
Dean Ambrose
Big E Langston
Cody Rhodes
Antonio Cesaro
Ryback

2 - Next up is the group that is disqualified from winning. 4 rumble winners, 2 guys past their prime, and 4 joke entries. The 2005, 2006, 2011, and 2012 winners are all disqualified for having won already, since the roster is robust enough to make new stars and one can't rely on old guys too much. The others (the jokes and the guys past their prime) are disqualified for being oooold or not serious entries.

Batista
Alberto Del Rio
Rey Mysterio
Sheamus
Kane
Goldust
Kevin Nash
The Great Khali
El Torito
JBL

3 – Then there's the filler. Guys who are still WAY too early in their career to really show main event status, tag teams, or guys that have had their shot at the gold and show lights but were proven to not quite be long term guys. These will likely remain in the midcard for a while in the foreseeable future. Great entries into the rumble, but not winning material (Trust me, it kills me inside to put Kofi Kingston and Jack Swagger into this category since they are both great.)

Jack Swagger
Kofi Kingston
Alexander Rusev
Jimmy Uso
Jey Uso
Luke HArper
Eric Rowan
R Truth
The Miz
Fandago

4 – Then there's the one guy who is currently the most popular man on the roster; immensely talented, gets the biggest pops of any night, yet somehow lost a match to a bearded “Husky Harris” with a Deliverance accent and wasn't even in the goddamn Royal Rumble.

Daniel Bryan

And so what does WWE Do? Give it to Batista. The 45 year old star of yesteryear after he quit on bad terms with the company and proceeded to trash talk the company and many of its stars in the 4 years between his departure and return. Yeah, he was a big deal ten years ago, he's old, he's past his prime, and he has no place headlining a Wrestlemania at his age.

This is no different than when they brought in the Rock to take Punk's title and fight Cena in a boring-assed match. The Rock is no longer a wrestler. An entertainer, sure, but the man is an actor now, don't give the main event to that man.

Think about it, who are the top stars right now? Batista, Cena, and Orton. Three men who were big deals between 2002 and 2008. There are literally dozens of talent on the roster WWE could be building up to something special with, and instead we're getting more Batista, more Orton, and more Cena. Oh, and to add insult to injury, who were headlining Summerslam and Wrestlemania the last few years? HHH, Undertaker, and Brock Lesnar. Seeing a pattern here?

Oh, and as an aside, guess who has the tag championships now? The New Age Outlaws, despite Road Dogg being in his late 40's and Billy Gunn being 50.

The only GOOD things they did at this rumble were giving CM Punk the Iron Man Slot (started at #1, was in the final four), and giving Reigns a dominant push with 12 eliminations. Everything else was a goddamn joke.

It's time to put over new stars like CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and yes, even Dolph Ziggler. With The WWE's retarded booking and writing as of late, I wouldn't be surprised if genuinely great top-tier talent like Damien Sandow and Antonio Cesaro never make it to the top despite having the look, physique, and charisma needed for a champion. Seriously, ANYONE from that top 10 entries could be one of the megastars of tomorrow, and it'd be typical for WWE to fuck it up.

Sometimes I hate enjoying this 'sport'. Shit like this makes it SO easy to get worked up over bad booking and terrible writing.

This whole thing reminds me of a convo I had with a girl a year or two ago. It was Wrestlemania and all of the top spots were taken up by Taker (who was gone all year), Triple H, The Rock, Jericho, and maybe somebody else. All of the wrestlers that were being showcased were wrestlers that weren't there for most of the year. We didn't think it was fair.

That little anecdote makes me realize why I shouldn't be surprised. When Wrestlemania rolls around, the workhorses that kept us around all year take a backseat to those "main eventers" that have box office draw. It should have been obvious that Batista was gonna be in the main event. Donald Trump, The Rock, Floyd Mayweather, etc.--Wrestlemania is just about the draw.

Yeah I probably will, lol! I've told myself I'd quit back in 09, once in 2012 and a lot of times in 2013, never really happened for longer than 2 weeks.

I'm just done buying their product and will skim RAW in 30 minutes over DVR.

To be fair to Bryan, no one who wrestled before the rumble was in it. Hell I was expecting Bray to come in and help his minions when the shield were staring them down. Didn't happen.

I found Mick Foley's take really interesting, especially considering he's defended the WWE more often than not.

“As I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve never felt so disgusted at the conclusion of a WWE (or any) PPV. Like many of you out there, I just don’t get it. This Daniel Bryan thing is a phenomenon. You get it. I get it. The fans in Pittsburgh (yes, I was thinking of writing “RIGHT TH…but I’m just not in a cheap pop mood) got it. But tonight, for the first time, I had to admit to myself that the powers that be are just not going to get it. And that makes me sad. I’m just honestly sad, just flat out fucking sad (yes, I dropped an F-bomb there to emphasize how F’ing sad I am for the guys who bust their butts night in and night out – Ziggler, Punk, Bryan, etc – with no hope of getting their shot at this year’s Mania.

You know who else I’m sad for? Me. In my two years as an official WWE Ambassador, I never once had to lie about my enthusiasm for the company or the product. Now, although I am no longer officially an Ambassador for WWE (believe it or not, my only official role in WWE is as GM for Saturday Morning Slam, a contract that ends in one month) I was till looking forward to being part of the biggest event of the year. I’ll probably end up going anyway. But I’m about 1/6th as excited about it as I was just a few hours ago. I wanted so badly to hear 75,000 WWE fans chanting “YES” – and seeing fans walk away absolutely ecstatic about the outcome of a PPV for the first time in a while…a long while. But when given the chance to make it happen (unless they’ve got something MAJOR up their sleeve) WWE’s answer tonight was a resounding “NO, NO, NO”.”

It could still happen.  I have no doubt that last night's response to the PPV had to have gotten someone's attention.  I don't care what anyone says, you don't want your returning babyface to get booed out of the ring.  It's very possible that creative is rewriting their scripts as I type this.  We shall see.

Raw tonight:

He is so right

I wonder low long they can keep it up to end ppv's in a retarded manner, I used to buy a ppv to see an awesome match but being let down time after time why would i.... i'm watching it for free untill i see a glimmer of creative masterminding.

^ IT WAS ME DANIEL, IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, I NEVER WANTED YOU IN THE MAIN EVENT

JR tweets * AAAAW SON OF A BITCH*

Yuuup, that about sums it up.  Even when I Wasn't actively watching between 2004 and 2011, I vaguely kept up.  I knew about Edge and Lita and Kane and the return of the HArdys and the rise and fall of WWE's version of ECW, Batista, Evolution, the reunion of DX, Chris Benoit, etc.  I vaguely kept up even if I didn't watch.  

Now, I'm genuinely thinking it's not going to get better.  I always though, "Maybe they're just trying something out", or "They have something planned", but now I'm getting a distinct "They actively don't care about the fans and have NO idea what's best for business."