There's gonna be a rumble today !! (WWE - Royal Rumble 2005 (DVD))

Member Name: martyfarty69

Product:	WWE - Royal Rumble 2005 (DVD)
Date:	16/02/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great main Rumble event and a good solid first match

Disadvantages: Disappointing World Championship matches

Being a big wrestling fan and owing many Wrestling DVD's I occasionally put one on to pass the time and also to relive some great events and matches ( Particularly if the current WWE Scene is boring me, which is the case at the moment )

The 2005 Royal Rumble was the 18th annual such Event and was held on January 30th 2005 in Fresno California, besides the actual Royal Rumble event the two main matches on the card were a World Heavyweight Championship match between the Champion Triple H and the Challenger Randy Orton, the other being a Triple Threat match for the WWE Championship between the Champion JBL and the two Challenger's The Big Show and Kurt Angle.

Lets break the event down piece by piece.
"Warning SPOILER ALERTS "
Edge vs Shawn Michaels:
This match was a great way to kick off the card featuring two excellent workers and was sure to be one of the highlights of the event, we really saw Edge coming into his own as a heel in this match and would lay the groundwork for his later career which as we all know has been elevated even higher and he is arguable one of the best heels in the business, during the match Edge would build heat by performing some of Shawn Michaels signature taunts, and after a back and forth match Edge gained the pin by rolling through a Shawn Michaels attempted pin and holding the ropes for the 3 count, a good solid rin performance by both individuals gave us a good solidly worked match.

The Undertaker vs Heidenreich
"Casket Match"
I'm a big fan of The Undertaker, he's been a solid worker for over 15 years and given the right opponent can have a classic, unfortunately Heidenreich is not that opponent, so i expected an average match here and thats what I got, it was a nice surprise late into the match to see Kane emerge from the Casket to save him from a beatdown by Heidenreich and Snitsky ( who had a weird homoerotic moment backstage before the match ) and the match ended with the very predictable Tombstone Pilerdriver and the win the Taker.

Triple Threat Match for the WWE Championship
Kurt Angle vs The Big Show vs JBL.
I am a HUGE Fan of Kurt Angle's work and he's probably one of the top 3 in ring workers of all time, however put him in the ring with a monster like the Big Show and a limited worker like JBL and there's only so much Kurt can do to make the match interesting, one of the highlights was the Big Show rugby tackling JBL through one of the Ring barriers which looked impressive and garnered a nice pop from the crowd, we suffered some interference late in the match to ruin things completely and complete a poor match and give JBL the win.

World Heavyweight Championship
Triple H vs Randy Orton.

This had the potential to be a great match with Triple H ( no matter how you feel about him ) being a good worker and Randy Orton despite his youth and inexperience being a natural talented wrestler, this came on the heel of Triple H taking the title from Orton after Orton won the World Heavyweight Championship the previous year and ended up being kicked out of Evolution, this match pretty much was a chance for Triple H to bury Orton's career as much as he could and signalled the beginning of the end of Orton's brief babyface run as WWE officials quickly realised that the Fan's don't like Orton enough to be a face and quickly turned him heel not long after this, the match started solidly enough but deteriorated quickly when Orton suffered a "Kayfabe" concussion and became almost useless for the last part of the match, it made him look weak and Triple H look strong, which I think was the point. Either way this could have been much better than it was.

And finally the Royal Rumble match
This was one of the better rumbles of recent years, the crowd were pretty into it and there were some nice moments during the match that really elevated it and told some mini stories, firstly longtime friends Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit started 1st and 2nd respectively ( Quite weird when you watch it now as less than 2 years later both men would be dead from very different reasons ), early on we see Daniel Puder the tough enough winner be systematically destroyed by first Guerrero and Benoit and then notorious bully Hardcore Holly ( getting probably the only pop of his entire life )
We also saw during the match the entire roster gang up on the Anti American muslim character of Mohammed Hassan .
The true story of this show was the forming of Batista as a big star, we saw the seeds of Batista breaking away from Evolution and becoming a face in the preceeding weeks leading up to the show and during the show the feeling was Batista breaking away and disobeying Evolutions leader Triple H, the moment we knew Batista would be turned face and become a star was the HUGE Ovation he recieved when he entered the ring at 28, it literally blew the roof off the arena and gave the Rumble a nice ending, as he was left in the ring with another up and coming babyface star John Cena as they fought it out to determine the winner. after the match is over watch out for a funny moment when Vince comes down to the ring and manages to blow both his knees out entering the ring.

So overall this was one of the better rumbles of recent years, we would see the rising stars of both John Cena and Batista who would both go on to lead the company for brief periods of time and be world champions. A good solid event that is worth being in any wrestling DVD Collection

Summary: Worth watching for the formation of two huge stars