7 Lessons Learned From WWE Royal Rumble 2025

Saturday night was the biggest night of the year: WWE Royal Rumble 2025 in Indianapolis—where at one point, there was just like, a 15-minute segment dedicated to showing Pat McAfee’s old Indianapolis Colts punting footage.

The Road To Wrestlemania has begun and we have two new no. 1 contenders for the men’s and women’s world titles.

Here are 7 lessons learned from WWE Royal Rumble 2025:

1. WWE’s women’s division is mighty healthy

Let me quickly list off all the women who appeared in this rumble that I could genuinely see being the final woman standing at the end of a Royal Rumble one day:

Chelsea Green
Piper Niven
Jordynne Grace
Giulia
Stephanie Vaquer
Lash Legend
Roxanne Perez
Iyo Sky
Maxxine Dupri (Jey Uso won, so)

And that’s without mentioning vets like Charlotte Flair, Bayley, Asuka, Becky Lynch, Alexa Bliss, Rhea Ripley, Liv Morgan and Bianca Belair.

Remember when they first started doing these women’s royal rumbles? Vickie fucking Guerrero came out.

This women’s division is loaded.

JORDYNNE GRACE IS OFFICIALLY A WWE SUPERSTAR!!!

SHE STILL HAS HER TNA THEME!! #ROYALRUMBLE pic.twitter.com/g0eQRPPkay

— 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐕𝐞𝐧 (@WrestlingCovers) February 1, 2025

If Jordynne Grace has any stick work, she should be WWE champion by the end of the year.

Don’t need her in NXT or bullshiting with B-Fab or whatever.

WWE needs to create a bar—you need to be this good *points of Jordynne* if you want to be at the top.

Jordynne Grace can sit on the Good Day America set with the WWE Women’s title over her shoulder and sell a PPV.

Stephanie Vaquer’s self-confidence in every movement is a breath of fresh air for a company that seems hyper-focused on staredowns and “moments” instead of great in-ring work.

Stephanie Vaquer is captivating in a way that doesn’t require a lingering camera close-up and Michael Cole loudly telling you “UH OH I THINK STEPHANIE’S MAD RIGHT NOW”.

Stephanie Vauer is bringing subtlety back into the game.

After watching the women’s rumble, if someone texted me “Hey, do you want to see the most beautiful woman on Earth”, I’d honestly expect them to send a photo of Giulia.

Giuliapic.twitter.com/TX3WWNPujg

— Ladies of Wrestling (@LOWreddit_) February 2, 2025

Are you kidding??

WWE should strap the rocket to these 3 women.

So naturally, Charlotte Flair won.

2. Bianca Belair is too nice

Bianca Belair is one of the biggest stars in the country. The crowd genuinely pops when she arrives, not just that fake applause button they use, like, fans actually care about this woman’s well-being.

And after coming into the Royal Rumble hot—easily the biggest star in the ring until Alexa Bliss arrived 11 spots later—Bianca Belair had the crowd in the palm of her hands.

there’s not too many girls on the roster who can play the crowd like bianca belair can #RoyalRumble
pic.twitter.com/yUS4PlnxHZ

— ᴍʏᴀ ꨄ (@belairestt) February 1, 2025

Oh, and then she got awkwardly eliminated along with 5 other women by Nia Jax—unceremoniously walking to the back with the mid-carders—without even flirting with the possibility of winning this match.

NIA JAX picked her moment!#RoyalRumble pic.twitter.com/bVQ9Z9d8Wx

— WWE (@WWE) February 2, 2025

I understand not everyone can sit at the top of the card.

This year was about Rhea and Liv and Nia and Tiffany Stratton.

Cool.

But we’re on the road to Wrestlemania. You have two nights to book high event quality matches and storylines and Bianca Belair is being treated like a recent NXT call-up instead of being used as the living legend she is.

She seems like a real professional willing to do what’s asked of her.

It sucks that Bianca isn’t an egotistical carny like every top star before her.

SASHA BANKS LEFT.

And Bianca—one of the most talented performers in the entire company—is okay doing pre-show women’s tag team matches with Naomi while Charlotte takes over a year off and walks into the Wrestlemania main event.

Fight back, baby.

Storm into an office, yo.

No-show a live event.

You do not have to let WWE use you to test every black woman coming into the company to take your spot.

3. Best 2 out of 3 falls tag team matches belong on Smackdown

I have not been shy about my disinterest in tag team matches.

We get it. One team cheats and gets heat on the good guy. The good guy eventually fights back, tags his parter, his partner does all his special moves and then either the face wins or the cheaters cheat to win—literally every tag team match.

Absolutely absurd to think I want to watch that happen 3 times between Royal Rumble matches.

It’s dope to see Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin in a WWE ring (and we’ll get into that later) but I don’t know maybe the World Heavyweight Champion, Gunther—a man who didn’t get mentioned all night—could go out there and show an audience of 70,000 people—a number the broadcast could not stop telling me like I was being subliminally tricked by Nathan Fielder—that whoever wins the Royal Rumble is in for an uphill battle against the Ring General.

Instead, a 2 out of 3 falls tag team match ending with outside interference. Don’t waste Smackdown programming on the big shows. Guess that means we can expect an hour of Jacob Fatu and Roman Reigns looking out into the crowd to a standing ovation.

4. Cody Rhodes is a Sicko

I know this article is about lessons learned and I’ve already written about Rhodes being a sicko but I forget how great his championship matches are.

He is so willing to get thrown through a table or off a ladder—he is doing whatever it takes. A true carny, through and through.

But what I really can’t wait for is the eventual heel turn. Cody Rhodes has spent almost 3 years as WWE’s no. 1 guy, despite strange, poorly explained interruptions from The Rock.

If the brutality of this match is any indication of what Cody will be turning into, I’m all in on Homelander revealing his true identity and Cody going full mask-off, being the true asshole I know he has within himself.

5. I did not waste my time watching all that TNA growing up

HUGE night for TNA fans.

Shout out to all of us nerds who watched Jeff Jarrett win every title match on TNA in the mid-2000s. Jeff Jarrett vs. Raven was real to me and the 2025 Royal Rumble was for us who watch Clockwork Orange House of Fun matches.

Now, I don’t watch TNA currently—because you will not make me care about anything Dolph Ziggler-related—but I never imagined a reality where the TNA World Champion would not only enter the Royal Rumble but get big moments against some top WWE talent.

At one point I believed Chris Sabin was a Top 10 wrestler in the world and now, almost 20 years later, he’s fighting for the WWE Tag Team belts at the Royal Rumble while AJ Styles is featured as one of the biggest stars in the company—although I’m like, 90% sure AJ is about to start a program with Logan Paul. Yet somehow, AJ against the Youtuber is still better than the weird shit TNA had him doing with Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.

We just need Gail Kim back out here…

6. Roman Reigns is here to work

I respect the hell out of Roman Reign’s use of his PTO.

This man loves not showing up to work if he doesn’t have to—and when he does have to show up—Roman is the GOAT at just walking slowly to the ring, letting Paul Heyman talk for him and then slowly walking back to collect the biggest paycheck of the night.

But when I realized Roman Reigns came out at no. 16, I sat up in my chair.

I reckon I assumed Roman would work with his family—maybe CM Punk and Seth Rollins again if the checks had enough commas—but Roman Reigns had the SECOND-LONGEST time in the Rumble behind Penta.

ROMAN REIGNS vs. JOE HENDRY
ROMAN REIGNS vs. BRON BREAKKER

Just a couple of DREAM MATCHES here!#RoyalRumble pic.twitter.com/iXH0OCLoLA

— WWE (@WWE) February 2, 2025

This motherfucker worked JOE HENDRY.

There was a common belief that once Roman was finally defeated by Cody Rhodes, he’d become a movie star—dropping in occasionally to pop a rating or whatever—but we may have been overzealous on Roman’s ability to act, or even find roles.

Somehow, Roman is not only back in WWE but taking this Bianca Belair role of putting over Bron Breakker and letting Shinsuke Nakamura put his hands on him which I wouldn’t have imagined a year ago today.

I think this new Netflix deal and all the international tour money and this final year of John Cena has every WWE performer running at the top of their game—which kinda leads to my final lesson learned…

7. It didn’t matter who won

WWE headquarters is flooding with money. It’s a real problem. Entire office floors evacuated due to uncontrollable storms of cash raining down on their heads.

So whether it was Roman Reigns or CM Punk or Seth Rollins or Drew McIntyre or John Cena or Jey Uso—it never mattered.

I see complaints about Jey Uso’s in-ring work not being worthy of a Wrestlemania main event—which is fair considering his last Mania match against his brother was a bathroom break and Jey hasn’t significantly improved in any recognizable way to believe he is capable of a potentially half hour long match that loses all momentum once Jey takes his little “Yeet” sunglasses off and gets to work.

All of these stadiums are packed out right now.

Every month, WWE is in a new country with the entire crowd singing Seth Rollins’s song or shouting “YEAH” with LA Knight or booing Dom Mysterio.

WWE has decided that the wrestling is irrelevant, which is fine, but as viewers, we should probably adjust to this and stop pretending like it would have made anyyyyy difference if Cena won or if Sami Zayn won or blah blah.

This is a product built for internet virality and scale and t-shirt sales.

They’ve even gone as far as convincing their audience to care more about ticket revenue and Peacock licensing agreements than the wrestling.

Fans show up in mobs because they want to be a part of these events. They want to contribute to WWE’s bottom line.

The bubble will burst at some point.

Whether WWE gets too cozy with the Saudis or more comes out about Vince McMahon or what’ll most likely happen: the party just ends.

Royal Rumble maybe two nights next year.

You have to decide if you want to pay your rent or pay for a WWE seat.

At some point, enough fans will have experienced this grand circus WWE has created and the novelty of coming to a live show will end.

The crowds will get smaller. CM Punk, John Cena, The Rock, Roman Reigns, eventually the stars will leave.

And we’ll all look back at the time WWE put everything behind Jey fucking Uso.

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