Royal Rumble 2010 Dumbest Ass Award: John Cena

The Royal Rumble match is a 30 man over the top rope battle royal, and it's every man for himself. That invites strategy. It's a tactical war as much as a test of physical strength and endurance. Too often, wrestlers either forget this fact or ignore it completely. They do so by engaging in such ridiculously dumb behavior like outright stopping eliminations from occurring. There are exceptions, of course, like tag teams or factions attempting to work together to give themselves the best chance to win but generally, it's a really stupid idea to stop an elimination.

In each Royal Rumble, there are always wrestlers who stop multiple eliminations. In some cases, a wrestler will stop an elimination that has a monumental effect on the match and is detrimental to his chances of winning in a way he ultimately cannot overcome. I like to refer to such a wrestler as the "Dumbest Ass." Special considerations made for other stupidity.

Here, we'll hand out the award for "Dumbest Ass" in each of the Royal Rumble matches that have taken place so far.

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2010

Half the field was some kind of dumb.

Dumbasses

JTG

1. He's got the edge on CM Punk but goes up to the second rope while Punk is in the corner. Then he plays to the crowd. Punk rightfully just pushes him over the top rope.

Zack Ryder

1. This dummy gets in the ring with only CM Punk in there. Punk has a mic and starts talking about recruiting Ryder to the Straight Edge Society and Zack just stands in front of him and listens. Punk, of course, blasts him with the mic and then throws him out.

CM Punk

1. He counters a Pedigree into the GTS. With Triple H up on his shoulders, he decided to go through with trying to hit his finish. Triple H blocked it and immediately threw him out.

Cody Rhodes

1. He stopped Kane from eliminating Ted DiBiase. In fairness, the two were tag team partners at the time. Still, he stopped an elimination.
2. Later, he ran at Shawn Michaels after he had just gotten into the match and wasn't trying to attempt a move or anything, just ran at him and got eliminated for it.

Triple H

1. This is baffling. Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase are teaming together to eliminate Kane and Triple H comes over to punch both of them off. Matt Striker, who was absolutely awful in this match, explained it away by saying it was all about Triple H's aggression towards Legacy. No, Matt, it was just plain stupid.
2. He saved Shawn Michaels while John Cena was trying to eliminate him. They were tag team champions at the time but that's no reason to trust Shawn Michaels. This is a Royal Rumble, after all. Sure enough, Michaels hit Triple H with Sweet Chin Music to eliminate him immediately after the save.

Kane

1. I guess repaying the earlier favor from The Game, he stopped Legacy from eliminating Triple H.
2. This is just excessive now, Kaner. Again Legacy was working on Triple H and again Kane made the save. Proximity appeared to be the main reason, as he was right next to where this was going down with no one engaging him and he wanted in on some action. I guess it never occurred to him that he could help eliminate the only other guy in the ring with a legitimate shot at winning at the time. The best part? It wasn't long after this that Triple H eliminated him.

MVP

1. So The Miz jumps him from behind during his entrance, leading to his getting helped off by a referee. Later, Miz enters the match and MVP comes up from behind and, in his zest to get Miz out, eliminates himself in the process. You gotta be better than that, MVP.

Matt Hardy

1. This idiot. He gets thrown into the corner by Ted DiBiase and puts up a big boot when Ted rushes in. Then, for some dumb reason, he climbs up on the top rope. Kane, seeing this, walks over and pushes him out.

Carlito

1. I don't know what he was doing here. Shawn Michaels gets in the ring and Carlito was waiting on it after hearing his entrance music play. As soon as Michaels is in, Carlito rushes across the ring to ... uh ... well, do nothing. He wasn't trying to hit a lariat or any other move. He just ran over and allowed Michaels to toss him out. Amazing.

Ted DiBiase

1. Did the same thing Cody Rhodes and Carlito did to Shawn Michaels and got eliminated just like they did.

John Cena

1. Big Show is fresh into the match and working on tossing out Shawn Michaels. He's struggling, though. Cena comes over and literally takes Michaels away from Show to run across the ring to try to eliminate him. What the hell?!?
2. He did the exact same thing Ted DiBiase, Cody Rhodes, and Carlito did to get eliminated. He ran at a guy with no discernible plan for what he would do once he got to the guy. Ultimately, all he did was make it easy on the guy he was running at to simply use his momentum against him and launch him over the top rope. In this case, it was the biggest crime of the match because it came against Edge when they were the final two.

Big Show

1. He gets to Shawn Michaels as he is skinning the cat to get back into the ring. So what does Show do? Picks him up and THROWS HIM BACK INTO THE RING. He wasn't in this match all that long, so he didn't threaten Undertaker's record.

Chris Masters

1. This moron comes into the match fresh as can be, presses Shawn Michaels up over his head, and slams him to the mat. The very next guy he went over to, Big Show, eliminated him.

Shawn Michaels

1. He sees Mark Henry trying to eliminate Big Show on the other side of the ring so he walks over to help. It looks like he struggles to find the best way to assist Henry so he gets pissed and punches Mark in the back. In retaliation, Henry headbutts him across the ring. The funniest part of all this is R-Truth came in next and eliminated both Show and Henry while they were in the exact same position Michaels came up on them in.

Jack Swagger

1. Picks R-Truth up over his shoulder and runs him into the turnbuckle, then slams him down to the mat. He was just into the ring. Michael Cole actually wondered aloud if Swagger was going for an elimination as he was running with Truth into the corner. Nope, just going for the Dumbest Ass award.

The Dumbest Ass

John Cena

There were 15 dumbasses in this match and we'll give an honorable mention to Kane for saving the guy who eliminated him on two separate occasions but the theme of this match was participants running at other participants at full speed with no plan for what they would do once they got there. This was the cause of four separate eliminations -- Carlito, Ted DiBiase, Cody Rhodes, and John Cena. Only one of those four made it to the final two and made this mistake, costing him the match when he was so close to victory. Cena, then, is The Dumbest Ass.

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Previous "Dumbest Ass" award winners:

1989: Bad News Brown
1990: Ultimate Warrior
1991: British Bulldog
1992: Hulk Hogan
1993: Randy Savage
1994: Lex Luger
1995: Lex Luger
1996: Diesel
1997: Mil Mascaras
1998: Disciples of Apocalypse
1999: Stone Cold Steve Austin
2000: Big Show
2001: The Rock
2002: Undertaker
2003: Undertaker
2004: Big Show
2005: Rey Mysterio
2006: Big Show
2007: Shawn Michaels
2008: Undertaker
2009: Undertaker