You know that thing where a wrestler you love is on a roll, having the push of a lifetime, and then suddenly they disappear from television and you realise they’ve been injured and you won’t be seeing them for six to eight months? I feel I may have made some of my readers feel a bit like that recently. I have been super lax with this column the last few months, and for that I apologise. Life got in the way. Not of watching wrestling, but in writing about watching wrestling.

So I thought this month’s column could be a random grab-bag of thoughts from the last few months of pro wrestling to catch us all up.

I’ll start with the elephant in the room: the Royal Rumble. Probably the worst one I have watched in a long time (and not just because of the ethically dubious Saudi Arabian blood money involved, the arena which couldn’t possibly be built without exploitation of workers, and those ridiculous LED lights which disappeared people more quickly than Pinochet did in Chile). Ultimately the WWE seem to have forgotten that the promise of the Royal Rumble: 30 people, every wrestler for themselves, and therefore an opportunity for someone who wouldn’t normally get a title shot (or someone currently being actively denied one) to find themselves in the main event title match at WrestleMania. If the people who win a Rumble are people who could’ve easily gotten a title shot another way, then it just feels like a wasted hour of your life (barring any exciting surprises along the way). If the winner is someone who didn’t need it, and the surprises are lacking, the waste of the hour feels even more so. Sadly, this year, that’s what happened in both men and women’s Royal Rumble matches. Roman Reigns could have simply turned up on Raw the day after and demanded a title shot and he would have got one, so his dull and predictable Rumble victory felt pointless to me. Meanwhile Liv Morgan has never had any trouble getting herself into the title picture either. It was nice to see Brie Bella and Powerhouse Hobbs turn up (though why they’ve gone with that shitty new name for him I don’t know), but neither were really “surprises” given the amount of speculation online beforehand and reports of them flying to Riyadh. When the biggest surprise that you have is that Chris Jericho isn’t in the Rumble, it’s time to go back to the drawing board to stop this stalwart event from getting stale.

As the Rumble matches take up the bulk of the pay-per-view (no: I won’t call Twitter X and I won’t call a PPV a Premium Live Event!), we were left with only two other matches to make the show worth watching. Sadly the outcome of AJ Styles and Gunther was predictable from the outset. Though a good enough match, I feel that the Gunther “career killer” gimmick is now feeling like WWE’s main project here rather than giving bona fide legends of the business such as Goldberg, Cena and Styles, the send-off they deserve. Styles (or Cena, or Goldberg) had no history with the guy, and the loss that retired them all felt flat rather than celebratory. I agree that if you’re leaving a company or leaving the business, losing and getting someone left behind over is a good thing to do. But I feel there are better ways of doing it. Like the Rumble itself, Gunther is already a massive star and former world champion. Does he actually benefit from the “career killer” spot? 

Hopefully Styles will show up elsewhere eventually and get a proper send-off. When you compare Sting’s retirement in AEW and any of Gunther’s victims the difference is stark. Tony Khan and AEW know how to say thank you to an athlete who has put their body on the line year after year for a company. WWE’s approach mimics their general business model: how can we use you to show you were always just another cog in the machine and we shall now just move on without you?

That said — when I last wrote a column I was thanking Cena myself and looking forward to his match with Gunther. The ending of that match (Cena’s smile into oblivion and giving up despite his promise not to) got a lot of negative reviews online. Personally, I loved it. It really felt like a guy saying “ah – you got me.  I thought I could maybe still do this but I can’t get out of this sleeper hold and — shit — I’m going to have to tap out. Hilarious.” To be the “never give up” guy forced to finally give up made sense to me rather than feeling like a betrayal of some sacred slogan. Poetic rather than cheap.

But back to the Rumble… If Sami Zayn had won the title from Drew McIntyre, especially in Saudi Arabia, the night would have had its special moment (and even possibly made the Saudi location feel like less of a cynical cash-grab and act of sportswashing propaganda). Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Sami Zayn once again doesn’t become champion. The interesting route not taken. Another wasted cog in the machine.

So yeah – I didn’t love the Royal Rumble.

AEW, meanwhile, continues to put on banger after banger after banger on free TV each week and the best (though frequently too long) pay-per-views in the business. After an historic Winter Is Coming Dynamite crowned the company’s first women’s tag team champions in the infectious Babes of Wrath (a tournament which also gave us the fantastic Timeless Love Bombs), World’s End in December was stellar. Somehow — through the grit and brilliance of the Continental Classic — the event revivified Jon Moxley and made the guy who once tried to murder Bryan Danielson in the ring a fan favourite once again. How could we not respect Mox after the show he put on that night and in every preceding round of the tournament? A tournament which also elevated “Speedball” Mike Bailey and reminded us just how good Kyle Fletcher is while also cementing Okada and Takeshita’s status as main eventers in any company they wrestle for. 

World’s End ended with MJF back as champion. A cash-in of a contract they’d left it just enough time for us to completely forget about. Not only is MJF always a great champion, but I’m really enjoying the way AEW aren’t going the traditional route with a number one contender for the champ. Currently, writing in February, Swerve Strickland, Adam Page, Samoa Joe, Kenny Omega, and Andrade El Idolo are all vying for a title shot. Meanwhile Brody King has risen up the ranks and actually earned one after squashing the champ in a shocking match on Dynamite. Literally any of these people would make a great champ, and the slow-burn build to Revolution in March feels patient, measured and exciting, rather than the WWE’s annual box-ticking exercise in eking out the road to obligatory Wrestlemania matches.

And let’s talk about how awesome those “fuck ICE” chants were on Dynamite before Brody King’s victory. How great it is to have a guy like Brody — who looks exactly like a stereotypical MAGA American — representing liberal values and unity instead. The “fuck ICE” chants are a wonderful and direct result of Brody’s original “Abolish ICE” t-shirt and a reminder that sports entertainment does not have the right-wing bias WWE likes to think it does. Personally, I’d much rather watch the “fuck ICE” company than the company whose Chief Content Officer and his mother-in-law both work directly for the Trump Whitehouse and are too cowardly to express outrage as Trump’s gestapo run riot across America.

So yeah. A lot has happened in wrestling since my last column (I haven’t even mentioned how good it is to see “Psycho Killer” Tommaso Ciampa turn up in AEW this month) but hopefully life stuff has calmed down enough for these things to become monthly again in 2026 and we can speak about more again in March, once AEW has had its upcoming trip to Australia and WWE has held Elimination Chamber.

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

My book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, is available from Earth Island Books and wherever you get your reading material. You can also buy a copy of Hardcore Horror there and read my short story “a dull boy”.

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