WWE is running their first women’s Royal Rumble (and they better not screw it up)

Women have entered WWE’s Royal Rumble match in the past. It’s a rarity, and the appearances themselves usually aren’t much to write home about: the whole idea is that someone like Chyna pops into the Rumble to the surprise of everyone, eliminates another wrestler, and then is eliminated themselves right after the pivotal moment that will later appear on DVDs and documentaries and be pointed to as proof of progress being recorded.

That might sound cynical, but that’s about the only way to approach WWE’s history with its women. They’ve often settled for moments of shock value over substance, and while they’ve spent the last few years trying to correct that course — eliminating the Divas Belt and replacing it with Women’s Championships, getting rid of the concept of “Divas” altogether by naming their women performers “Superstars” like the men, and introducing more screen time and more talented performers from around the globe — there remains work to be done.

A bit of that work comes this Sunday, when WWE hosts the first-ever women’s Royal Rumble match at the 2018 Royal Rumble. It will be just like the men’s Rumble: 30 performers, the winner getting a chance to choose between either a RAW or SmackDown Women’s Championship match at WrestleMania 34, and, presumably, actual time to put on a quality match given how the Rumble is setup with wrestlers making their way to the ring on a timer.

The women’s Rumble will be the same in those ways, but there is something that needs to be kept in mind that the men’s match, which has been an annual event since 1987, does not need to consider. This is the first women’s Royal Rumble match, and unlike, say, the first women’s Money in the Bank ladder match from this summer, WWE needs to keep that context in mind while plotting out both the match and its result.

In Money in the Bank matches, a briefcase holding a contract for a championship match is suspended above the ring. In the first women’s Money in the Bank ladder match, WWE decided to have James Ellsworth, a man, pull the briefcase down and give it to Carmella, the wrestler he was buddy buddy with.

In any other year, this would have been a brilliant plan: Ellsworth and Carmella were heels, and having Carmella not care that she had the help of a man to win the briefcase is the kind of thing that would turn both fans and her fellow performers (in storyline) against her even more. And WWE tried to play it off this way, and in some respects successfully told that story to completion. In other ways ... well, not so much.

But the key point here is that WWE dangled this carrot above the heads of their fans, going on and on about how important the first-ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match was — a match that was already overdue, a match that was supposed to be the true start of what should have basically been WWE’s Apology Tour For All Those Things They’ve Said And Done To Women over the years — and then didn’t let a woman actually win the match. It was a great year-two plan enacted in year one, and it left many fans more upset with WWE’s writers than with Carmella and Ellsworth, who were the intended targets for fans’ collective rage.

There are multiple ways WWE could make a mistake of similar size with the first women’s Rumble. There are rumors that Ronda Rousey of UFC fame is going to participate in the Royal Rumble — rumors she herself has debunked right before boarding a plane to Colombia to film a movie. Of course, WWE works closely with TMZ — who reported the original story — to help enhance storylines and their performers, and it’s not like Rousey can’t quietly fly back to the United States in time for an appearance on Sunday night. Debunking a rumor isn’t something that actually happens in the wrestling world until we see for ourselves it isn’t going to happen.

Rousey is a talent that WWE has had their eyes on for some time — she made an appearance at WrestleMania 31 alongside The Rock, teasing a fight with those two against real-life/on-screen power couple Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.

She was also featured at this summer’s Mae Young Classic at ringside in support of one of the Four Horsewomen of MMA and current WWE superstar, Shayna Baszler. While Rousey working for WWE would make money and likely be entertaining, having her enter the Rumble and win it in her first competitive appearance would be a slap in the face to all of the women who have been with WWE for years, working a full-time schedule.

Of course, that sort of thing hasn’t stopped WWE before, because part-timers tend to be big money, and that’s often the tiebreaker for decision making.

This isn’t to say there is no space for Rousey at the Rumble — she could certainly enter and be eliminated by someone in an underhanded way that sets up a match for WrestleMania. She could make a surprise appearance without actually being in the match, then eliminate one of WWE’s top faces like Becky Lynch to immediately turn the crowd against Rousey while setting up a killer bout for Mania 34. Participating in and winning the Rumble, however, is just an entirely different plan, and it’s the wrong one.

While we’re talking Stephanie McMahon, she’s going to sit at ringside for the women’s Royal Rumble match as part of the announcing team. Is this a setup for her to enter the match at some point as a surprise entrant, which is something of a tradition on the men’s side? Or is she just here to lend her voice to the announce table in order to help promote the match and the performers within it?

Like Rousey, McMahon cannot come away as the victor here, which is, of the are they seriously doing this come on WWE options available for the women’s Rumble, the most likely. It’s not the most-likely outcome of all the outcomes — it’s just the one that will infuriate you with the best chance of happening.

It seems more likely, though, that Stephanie McMahon will be ringside to help show how significant this match is. That, or Rousey really is in the Rumble, and Steph is going to be the one who throws her over the top rope to eliminate her as payback for what went down at WrestleMania 31.

Other than those two alarm bells going off, the women’s Royal Rumble match doesn’t have much in the way of fear to instill in WWE’s audience. Asuka, who hasn’t yet lost a match in WWE and surpassed Goldberg’s record win streak late last year, is the presumed favorite to win. Becky Lynch, as previously mentioned, is popular and talented enough to be the perfect candidate for the first-ever women’s Rumble winner. Hell, having Carmella win the Rumble after winning Money in the Bank would even work, because WWE could put together a story line where she ends up holding the Women’s title from both RAW and SmackDown.

There are a number of directions for WWE to go with the first women’s Rumble, and almost all of them are good ones. They need to respect their audience more here than they did with the first women’s Money in the Bank match, though. Save the ridiculous Rumble idea that makes everyone mad for next year, alright?