The Royal Rumble could be the best WWE card of the year

We’re just under two weeks away from this year’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view (PPV), emanating from The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sat., Jan. 29, 2022. With the show being so close, WWE has already filled out the card. And despite the fact that it’s just the second show of the year, I’m confident in saying this could be the best we get from the promotion over the next 12 months.

Consider:

• Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley for the WWE championship, a match many years in the making. You can’t go wrong with a good old fashioned hoss fight, and these two are made for this. It’s aided by Lesnar suddenly becoming an entertaining promo, giving even more life to it in the weeks leading up to it.
• Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins for the Universal championship in a match that was put together randomly on TV but has all the history you could ever ask for and two wrestlers at the top of their game right now. They’re both incredible characters who basically only have good to great matches. It sucks that they’re both heels at the time of this, but the one thing we can be certain will deliver will be the match itself.
• Becky Lynch vs. Doudrop for the Raw women’s championship, in Doudrop’s first shot at a title in WWE. I’m not the craziest about what they’ve done with Doudrop but she can go in the ring and Lynch seems motivated to go right along with her.
• Edge & Beth Phoenix vs. The Miz & Maryse, a mixed tag match that marks the first time the former two have had the chance to work together in a WWE ring. Should be fun!
• Finally, we have both the men’s and women’s Royal Rumble matches. The Royal Rumble is incredibly difficult to screw up, the kind of match that is good even when it’s bad (except for 1999, that Rumble was absolute garbage, through and through). The men’s match will feature Johnny Knoxville probably doing something nuts while the women’s match has a deep list of returning Legends and the opening of the Forbidden Door for Impact Knockouts Champion Mickie James.

That’s six matches, all of them must see for some reason or another. If the matches live up to their potential, this could be an all timer of a card.

Here’s to hoping.