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WWE Royal Rumble (2024) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Royal Rumble 2024 was a professional wrestling event produced by WWE. It was the 37th annual Royal Rumble event and took place on January 27, 2024, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The event was broadcast via pay-per-view and livestreaming, and featured wrestlers from all three of WWE's brand divisions. It was the third Royal Rumble held in the Tampa Bay area (following the 1995 and 2021 events), and the second at Tropicana Field after 2021, but as that event was held without an audience via the ThunderDome due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the first Royal Rumble at the stadium to have a crowd.

The event is based around the Royal Rumble match, and the winner traditionally receives a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2024 event, the men's and women's winners received a choice of which championship to challenge for at WrestleMania XL. The men's winner could choose to challenge for either Raw's World Heavyweight Championship or SmackDown's Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, while the women's winner had the choice between Raw's Women's World Championship and SmackDown's WWE Women's Championship. The women's Rumble, which opened the show, was won by Bayley from SmackDown, who also broke the record for longest time spent in the women's match, lasting 1:03:03. The men's Rumble, which was the main event of the card, was won by Raw's Cody Rhodes for a second consecutive year. This made Rhodes the first wrestler since "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (1997 and 1998) to win back-to-back Royal Rumble matches, and fourth overall, after Austin, Shawn Michaels (1995 and 1996), and Hulk Hogan (1990 and 1991), and subsequently the 10th wrestler to win multiple Rumbles.

In addition to the two Royal Rumble matches, two other matches were contested on the card, which were for SmackDown championships. In the first, Roman Reigns retained the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship in a fatal four-way match against Randy Orton, LA Knight, and AJ Styles, while Logan Paul defeated Kevin Owens by disqualification to retain the WWE United States Championship.

The women's Royal Rumble match notably marked the WWE in-ring debut of Jade Cargill, who signed with the company in September 2023. TNA Knockouts World Championship holder Jordynne Grace from Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) also made a surprise appearance in the women's Rumble. The event also saw the returns of Naomi, Liv Morgan, Andrade and Omos in the men's and women's Rumble matches, while the men's match was also notable for CM Punk's first WWE televised match since the 2014 Royal Rumble.

Match Results:

30-woman Royal Rumble match for a Women's Championship match at WrestleMania XL

Bayley won by last eliminating Liv Morgan

When this Rumble started, I was all for it, especially after we got one hell of a surprise with current TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace showing up as a guest entrant in this match.

I'd love to see Jordynne Grace as part of this current crop of women in WWE once she's ready to move on from TNA. She fit right in with these women and didn't look like an outsider at all. A lot of that has to do with her stellar rivalry with the returning Naomi/Trinity over the past few months, but this match teased some match-ups I would love to see with her. One was teased between her and Ivy Nile after the two performed stalling brainbusters in tandem and another with Bianca Belair after she was dumped off the ring apron with the KOD to eliminate her. I can't even be mad when Grace had a very strong outing in this match and she lasted a long time. I think we can thank Mickie James for opening this bridge between TNA-IMPACT and WWE when she was able to represent the company as their reigning Knockouts Champion at the time.

It was roughly around the #12 mark where this match started to drag and didn't pick up any steam until Jade Cargill showed up at #28. It was painfully obvious that the returning Naomi and Natalya were hanging around in this match just long enough to pull off spots with people later in this match. I tweeted it out live during the show that my problem with a lot of these Rumble matches are long stretches of people just standing around doing nothing or selling like death while they are waiting around for spots. This was painfully apparent in this match with that dull stretch in the middle of this match that was capitalized with some of these women not getting a reaction at all when they came out.

I saw a lot of people pointing this to being a music problem after the Men's Rumble later this evening, but let's stop sugarcoating this shit and admit what it really is: a vast majority of these people aren't over in the least and they are too green to even be on a big stage like this. You can definitely lump Maxxine Dupri into that group of not over and too green to be out here.

We did get a hilarious spot of R-Truth trying to enter the Women's Rumble match at #24 only for Adam Pearce to kick him out with R-Truth questioning if those are really all women in there.

Major props to Chelsea Green wearing a pride flag in Florida no less on this PPV. That took balls to pull that off. Michael Cole stumbled over his words and didn't even know what to call it live on the air.

Pretty cool to see Tiffany Stratton (someone who I think is more than ready for the main roster right now) got to participate in her first Women's Rumble after the year she's had in NXT. Nothing against Roxanne Perez, but they could have given her spot to someone else. It feels like she's been in at least three of these at this point when in reality this is her only second appearance in a Women's Rumble match. WWE might want to be careful about overexposing her as people might be sick of her by the time she gets called up and that's not a good thing, especially when they want to push her as their next big female underdog babyface.

For someone who still pretty new to the game/sport, Jade Cargill looked like she belonged in this match. That final three collision between her, Bayley, and Liv Morgan was the best thing in both of these Rumble matches and had me on the edge of my seat like so many other people watching this in the arena live or via Peacock.

I couldn't be mad at the end result as Bayley was always the bridesmaid but never the bride when it came to the Horsewomen so now she finally got her flowers as the winner of this match.

Fatal Four-way Match for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship

Roman Reigns (c) (with Paul Heyman) defeated AJ Styles, LA Knight, and Randy Orton by pinfall

Early on in this match, it seemed like all three challengers were going to gang up on Reigns, but it quickly shifted to not be the case as greed settled in. This wasn't a bad match, but this was a match that I felt that didn't get the time enough time that it deserved. Not to mention, it felt like the finish came up prematurely and abrupt. I didn't get what happened/transpired until I saw the replays and rewatched it again a few days later since I was momentarily distracted while it was live and in progress.

I thought everyone was able to get some shine here. Randy Orton got to hit a RKO on all of the opposition, including an RKO counter on Reigns during his Spear that looked a little too obvious that Reigns ran right into. LA Knight definitely was the babyface to watch here as the crowd was firmly behind him with the "YEAH" chants at the appropriate moments. AJ Styles seems to be firmly committed to this lone wolf character that many should remember from his final run in TNA/IMPACT Wrestling prior to his departure to New Japan and Ring of Honor before signing to WWE a few years later. Reigns was left to pick his spots as he saw them to pick off the opposition, including his usual near-falls and saves by his cohorts in the Bloodline, namely Solo Sikoa. I thought Solo was going to take out Samantha Irvin.

Singles Match for the WWE United States Championship

Logan Paul (c) defeated Kevin Owens by disqualification

I didn't think this was a bad match, but I was mentally checked out for this match for the most part. After the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship Match and Women's Rumble, this felt like the piss break match before the Men's Rumble match. In terms of the narrative in this match, that's exactly what this match was. There were run-ins from Logan Paul's entourage and cornies, which allowed Austin Theory and Grayson Waller to toss in a pair of brass knuckles to Paul. The finish saw Logan Paul try to use those on Kevin Owens, only for the Prizefighter to turn the tables against him and use the foreign object on him instead but wasn't smart enough to toss the brass knuckles out of the ring before the referee would notice them on his hands while he's covering Paul for the win. Of course, KO would get disqualified for Paul to retain much to the chagrin of the crowd. Decent match, but shit finish.

30-man Royal Rumble match for a world championship match at WrestleMania XL

Cody Rhodes won by last eliminating CM Punk

I'm not even going to sugarcoat this in the least. The Men's Rumble this year was a massive dud. I had to apologize for my earlier statements about the Women's Rumble when this one was over. The women EASILY outshined the men in that regard this year. I don't know what the hell the problem was with the men as 95% of this match was goddamn boring, which was amplified by the live crowd not giving a flying fuck about anything or anyone in this match outside of Cody Rhodes and CM Punk.

It was pretty cool to see Jey and Jimmy Uso start things off, which reminded me of the split-up Hardy Boyz being forced to go head-to-head in Rumble matches of old. I was happy to see Andrade back where he belonged here; now if only they would put him and Zelina Vega back together like they were on NXT. I mean c'mon. What the fuck else is Zelina going to do now that they have called up Elektra Lopez on the main roster to join up with Santos Escobar and the rest of her Legado Del Fantasma stablemates? It's not like she's having a dazzling singles career on her own. Let's be realistic here and admit that she's got more stock value and they both have much more longevity as a package deal.

While I did like seeing Andrade and Santos Escobar in the same ring together and interacting with each other as well as seeing Carmelo Hayes work with a lot of the main roster guys, this Men's Rumble was a lot of nothing going on. It was more boring than the Women's Rumble that started this night off with.

Cody Rhodes entering this match at #15 brought a little life into this match, along with WALTER at #18, but man, this match went right back to Whack Boulevard. Bron Breakker entering at #20 shot a little bit of adrenaline into this match as he took the intended spot for Brock Lesnar (more on that later) and we got a two more comedy spots. The first being with Pat McAfee being called to enter this match from the commentary table that seemed to be a complete shoot as he had no idea that he was supposed to enter this match. He reluctantly entered and promptly exited to allow Omos and Breakker to resume their stare down. The second was with R-Truth returning for this match properly, who tossed in JD McDonagh who got tossed out instantly upon arrival by Jey Uso. Truth didn't last much longer either as he was tossed out by Damian Priest upon arrival. Business picked up when CM Punk entered at #27 but the remaining entries in this match weren't much to write home about, with Ricochet, Drew McIntyre, and Sami Zayn rounding out this Men's Rumble. At this point, I didn't give a flying fuck about who was going to win this match, especially when it came down to Punk and Cody.

Watching this show live, I didn't notice it at the time, but apparently Punk got hurt upon eating a Future Shock DDT from Drew where he landed into a heap on the mat and immediately called over one of the referees to the corner where he was resting against. It was ironic that he was able to wrestle with Cody as long as he did following that spot, but to his credit, he did the same thing when suffering a similar injury in the match with Jon Moxley in AEW. In either case, Cody Rhodes won the Rumble for the second year in the row and he's on his way to finish his story. He didn't make no qualms about pointing directly at the WrestleMania sign AND at Roman Reigns sitting up at the sky box so we got a clear picture of what our WrestleMania XL main event is going to be.

Closing Thoughts

Despite how lackluster both Rumble matches have been, the right people won with Bayley and Cody Rhodes set to main event WrestleMania XL. And before people start bitching at me, I will confess that the Women's Rumble was by far the better of the two Rumble matches this year.

Unfortunately, the biggest talking points surrounding WWE this weekend wasn't the success of this PLE, their new deal to stream Monday Night RAW on Netflix in 2025, or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson joining TKO's board of directors, but instead, it was the negativity of more sexual accusations being filed on Vince McMahon, forcing him to resign from WWE for the second time within two years and distance himself from the company that he created. I'm not going to go in-depth about this here, but boy, it's a doozy. It sucks when WWE has so many hard working men and women who have absolutely nothing to do with his disgusting activities that they have to be lumped in with him by association to the point where WWE ALMOST lost Slim Jim as a sponsor for this event. They joined back on in zero hour following McMahon's resignation.

The other string of bad news came from the announcement that CM Punk was injured and definitely out from the current WrestleMania plans as his recovery time would take anywhere from 6-9 months to heal properly. I was appalled at the people who were celebrating his injury on social media and Drew McIntyre used it to propel himself into the stratosphere with those in a similar mindset while gaining a notorious amount of heel heat in the process.

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