Yeah, I thought they advertised the shit out of that deal so it was public knowledge by now.
May just be that I’m the target audience though and they don’t push it as much on others.
Am I the only one that finds it odd that AJ might be calling it a day this weekend and not pushing through till Mania?
I do wonder if it’s a contractual thing, and if so, wondering if he plans to have a run elsewhere before really hanging up the boots.
Would be poetic if he wraps it up in TNA but I wonder if he wants a short stint in AEW too.
I just can’t bring myself to care about AJ Styles in 2026. Amazing considering he was, in my book, the best in the world by some distance shortly after he came to WWE.
Whatever gets another old guy off the books.
Tsktsktsk, ageism…
Describing WWE’s approach to who’s allowed in the main event? 
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Fair.
4 match card for the Rumble:
Styles Vs Gunther (skip)
McIntyre Vs Zayn (skip - what is Sami Zayn doing in a PPV title match?)
Women’s Rumble
Men’s Rumble (fuck off, Cody).
Jesus wept.
FOUR MATCHES
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If you truly believe it’s gonna be Cody, there are great odds online for it.
It’s 11/1 on Sky Bet.
I’d be surprised if it’s not Roman myself(who’s become the bookie’s favourite since the SS build).
I wouldn’t be surprised if TK made a play for him, unless WWE tie him down to some legends deal preventing him from doing so. Lot of his old buddies are over there so it the interest is there I could see it happening.
Whether he wins or not though, he’s the one the match is being built around and he’s the story. As he has been for 3-4 years at this point. Change the record, I say.
What makes the product so crap over the last 10 or so years is that the royal rumble winners are just so uninspiring.
Aside from Jey USO being one of the worst winners ever..
They’ve given it to part timers. Batista in 2014? Brick Lesnar a few years later? Roman in 2026 would be such a senseless decision.
Didn’t watch it the year Edge won it either but why is the product so stripped of upcoming stars that they give it to rubbish like they have?
I look at the winners in the 90s and pretty much every year the right man won.
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Need to start pushing the youngsters, which looking at some clips from recent events (to prepare myself for the rumble) seems to be happening with the likes of Trick Williams and Bronsteiner?
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100%
And in 2026, there isn’t even a right man to win because they do such a bad job of building new stars. Who would they even go with? Bron Breakker has been the next big thing for so long now it’s practically a parody.
The last time the right man won was Drew in 2020. Genuinely a guy from the upper midcard at the time with main event potential. There is nobody fitting that description today
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I mean they had this vision storyline with Bron where he broke out from the group and you’d think in some ways they could have had a story that built towards Breakker winning the Royal Runble and catapulting himself into the main event.
Instead the whole vision storyline is just its own little soap opera with no real proper pay off making sense.
The product is just dumb. It has been for ages and HHH has kinda exposed himself as a clueless booker.
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To say nothing of them jobbing Breakker out to Punk on a random Raw for no reason.
And they keep doing that with matches that could conceivably be kept for PPV. Last year Jey Uso had a match with Gunther only a couple of months before they did it at Mania on free TV.
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Everyone coming around my way about HHH’s booking.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my work is complete.
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Meant to add this to my RR post above but got side tracked:
It always felt like it meant something when someone won the Rumble. It made sense and the WM payoff was all written well. They didn’t always nail the main event at Mania but the RR winner - whilst largely predictable - always made sense.
It’s just not that way anymore. It’s dumb booking
And guys who don’t need a rumble win being gvken the win. Reigns, Cody.. whoever they choose it’s just going to be another one of the same crop of guys competing in the main event.
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Mania and the Rumble are the two events I watch without fail every year. I can definitely see myself skipping one or both at some point in the foreseeable future if things don’t improve.
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