By Shawn Valentino, Torch specialist

WWE Royal Rumble PPV "HOLT" (Happenings off Live TV) Report
January 25, 2009
Detroit, Mich.
Report by Shawn Valentino, PWTorch specialist

I just got home from attending the Royal Rumble at Joe Louis Arena. Here are some in-person notes for those of you who did not get a chance to watch the show or only saw it on television.

Dark match: Jimmy Wang Yang beat Paul Burchill. Nothing special.

Notes and observations

-- I think it may have been a legitimate sell-out. Didn't see too many open seats.

-- One of the surprising things was the tepid crowd reaction to Jeff Hardy. He was not very popular with the Detroit crowd.

-- A huge "We want Christian" chant broke out during the Edge-Hardy match.

-- The reaction to Matt hitting Jeff was one of surprise, but I did not get the idea that fans were excited about the thought of those two facing off.

-- You could hear pins drop during the women's match.

-- John Cena got an enormous reaction, more cheers than boos.

-- RVD received the loudest ovation of the night.

-- The Royal Rumble match came off awful in person! There were way too many people in the ring the whole match. I hate battle royales and it resembled one of those. Most of the time you could not tell what was going on in the ring. The crowd was dead almost the entire match.

The Rumbles used to be excellent at weaving little storyline moments that build up to bigger things in the context of the match. There were very few of those in this one as it was mostly a large bundle of people randomly battling it out. There were about three attempts at making Big Show and Undertaker go face to face and there was no reaction or enthusiasm for any of them. This was a result of way too many men in the ring and lots of meaningless action.

The ending had absolutely no drama. The final eliminations were almost all weak, and the winner was completely predictable by anybody with half a brain. Most of the crowd went home completely unsatisfied. Unless this came across as completely different on television than in the arena, I have some major issues with the Torch ratings on this one. I have watched every Royal Rumble and feel this is the worst one I have ever seen.

We suggest these recent related articles...

WWE NEWS: Superstars SPOILERS - Results from Chicago Raw

WWE NETWORK: Monday, Oct. 12 Schedule - Raw pre-show, Sting DVD preview

WWE NEWS: Lana & Rusev reportedly engaged - follow the interesting 2015 timeline