It’s been a couple days since my eagle-eyed boss, Geno Mrosko, noticed WWE had quietly slipped a big-ass trophy into the graphic for the 50 man Royal Rumble match set to take place at Greatest Royal Rumble on Friday, April 27 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. That image appeared on This Week in WWE, and in the days leading up to the pay-per-view (PPV). has been shown on Raw, SmackDown and 205 Live.
The hope I and many fans had when that image first hit our screens was that the big-ass trophy would be just one of the prizes the last man in the ring at King Abdullah Sports City Stadium would receive. It’s a cool design (much better than the one Naomi got for winning the first-ever WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal). It would pair nicely with, say, a SummerSlam title shot.
But with WWE’s chances to sell the show with the televised announcement of some stakes, or participants cutting promos on Raw or SmackDown about what a win would lead to for them, come and gone, it’s looking more and more like the nice-looking, big-ass trophy is it.
Even the usually well done infographic post on WWE.com entitled, “10 things you need to know about the 50-Man Greatest Royal Rumble Match” doesn’t reveal anything. But then, it’s largely a recycled regular Royal Rumble Match page - and doesn’t mention the big-ass trophy, either. It also doesn’t answer another frequently asked question regarding the interval between entrants.
Maybe the company will announce the real stakes in a midnight tweet, the way they confirmed Rey Mysterio, Shane McMahon, Mark Henry and The Great Khali’s participation?
We shall see. In the meantime, if the only prize for winning is a big-ass trophy, does that diminish your interest in watching the match?