Sheamus Wins 2012 Royal Rumble

Wade Barrett? Wrong! Randy Orton? I must have been drunk. Chris Jericho? Close, but not quite. No one that seemed to have any strong focus on them won the Royal Rumble match. Sheamus won. Sheamus had been on a roll for a while, but he really did not have the hype on him heading into the match as some people. The WWE definitely surprised me, and a lot of other fans, by having Sheamus get the win. Was it a pleasant surprise? No offense to Sheamus and his fans, but it wasn't.

For weeks, the WWE has these weird promos. Jericho finally returns. For weeks, he acts weird. With the Royal Rumble so close, everyone is thinking it has something to do with the Rumble match. After weeks of not making a coherent verbal point, Chris Jericho claims the end of the world will be coming at the Royal Rumble. What happens? Sheamus wins. I know, his theme song has those lyrics about the land breaking, seas rising, and winds raging. Sounds like the end of the world, doesn't it? Still, Sheamus winning did not bring anything great. I was following the match, waiting for something epic. When Jericho was one of the last two, I thought something big would happen. Even if he lost, something exciting would happen. I'm not saying the action was bad. There were a lot of close calls. In that respect, good. But after all that hype, nothing really big happened. Sounds just like when that guy predicted the real end of the world last year, but flopped. Did the WWE actually think pulling that same thing was a good idea?

You hype something, but don't deliver. After a while, what do you think will happen? People will not waste time with it. Look back to 2011. The WWE hyped that there would be a special host for Wrestlemania. On the Raw where they revealed who that would be, ratings were pretty low. That segment with The Rock at the end, however, drew a lot of fans. The next week, Raw got a 3.9. Everyone wanted to see The Rock. Of course, he wasn't there. Nevertheless, why were ratings initially poor, even though the WWE hyped that they would be announcing the host for Wrestlemania on that night. People were not expecting anything great. It turns out it was something great. But what do stunts like this Jericho thing do? You do all this hype, but produce nothing epic when you say there will be something epic. Sooner or later, the fans will go back to not wasting there time. Not all of them, but certainly the number that separates a 3.9 from a 2.9.

What happens now? Obviously, I am not feeling that Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan is an epic Wrestlemania match for the World Championship. However, it would be stupid to screw Sheamus out of the shot completely. You had him win, so follow through. As for Jericho, he's got some explaining to do. The storyline is not necessarily over yet. There is still some room for something good. But after the recent happenings, some fans may not even care too much. The ball has been dropped.