Cageside Community Star Ratings for Royal Rumble 2022

After every WWE PPV, we ask you all to rank each match on the show using the star rating system made famous by Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.

The results are in from Royal Rumble 2022, the annual start of the Road to WrestleMania. Here’s how our little corner of the wrestle web graded what happened in the ring in St. Louis on Jan. 29 - and how our subjective grades compare to Meltzer’s.

Many have asked “why Dave?”, which to me is fairly obvious. Love, hate, or don’t care about him, the Observer Star Rating is the proverbial industry standard. No one else’s are tracked by Wikipedia and other web outlets. You can’t place online bets on what grades other pundits will give big matches.

But in order to not make this all about Meltz, we added another fan-voted rating to the mix - this one from Cagematch. That site uses a ten point scale, so we’ve halved their ratings for ease of comparison

Here’s what that all looks like:

Cagesiders liked the show more than Dave did, and considerably more than Cagematch voters. The biggest deltas in both cases came in how much more favorably we viewed the opening Universal title match, and the mixed tag that came before the main event. Roman Reigns win over a Shield-garbed Seth Rollins received our highest score, which makes sense since it also won our “Match of the Night” poll from immediately after Royal Rumble ended.

In the other direction, Meltzer was much more forgiving than we were of the men’s Rumble that cost Shane McMahon his job. Overall though, both Rumbles were our least favorite matches — which also explains why what’s usually a fan-favorite show was so reviled (last year’s Royal Rumble received an average score of 3.39 from cSs, and 3.29 from the Observer).

This also points to a trend with WWE’s “Big 4 shows”, the last three of which have been our lowest rated over the past year. The danger of high expectations perhaps? Those shows just not being booked for internet fans?

Ponder that while perusing the scores for all WWE shows since WrestleMania 37:

Do Cageside’s Community Ratings match up with your personal ones? Any final thoughts on Royal Rumble?