From the WWE Rumor Mill: Backstage news on the Women's Royal Rumble main eventing the PPV

What's the story?

Dave Meltzer from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has revealed some backstage information about the Women's Royal Rumble, including why there were so many WWE legends, why only two NXT Superstars and why the Women's Royal Rumble main evented the show.

In case you didn't know...

Asuka became the winner of the first ever Women's Royal Rumble after eliminating the returning Nikki Bella to outlast all 29 other competitors in the match.

Afterwards, she was joined in the ring by RAW Champion Alexa Bliss and SmackDown Champion Charlotte Flair but before she could make a choice for who would be her WrestleMania opponent they were all interrupted by a debuting Ronda Rousey.

The heart of the matter

Meltzer had initially reported that there would be nine Superstars from NXT in the match, but on the night only Ember Moon and Kairi Sane appeared (with Sane stepping in for injured Alicia Fox) meaning we instead got to see a massive amount of returning WWE female legends. Meltzer explained why that was.

The first-ever women’s Rumble was really built around a ton of women from the past. The decision was to use as many as possible, since they were filming interviews for a documentary about the prior era of women’s wrestling. It only wound up with two women from NXT, champion Ember Moon and Sane.

Even though it seems fairly obvious why the Women's Royal Rumble ended the show, given what happened, and who showed up. Dave explains why the decision for the women to the main event was made, and when they were told.

Because the show was designed to end with Rousey, the women were moved to the main event position. The word of them going on last came the morning of the show, and while nobody, including the participants, were told about Rousey, most everyone figured out that was the reason.

Finally, Meltzer indicated that the WWE were taking no chances with their female Superstars leading up to the Royal Rumble, calling them in for extra run-throughs and pulling them from both Raw and SmackDown tours.

The women were taken off the road on both the Raw and Smackdown tours over the weekend to work on the match and do run-throughs.

What's next?

The first ever Women's Elimination Chamber is what's next, where Paige Van Zant will appear afterwards and point at the WrestleMania sign. Okay, I'm joking about the Van Zant part, but we will definitely be seeing Alexa Bliss defending her title inside the steel structure.

Author's take

It's always nice to get a little bit of inside into how and why WWE make the decisions they do, and in the case of having the Women's Royal Rumble match main event the pay-per-view they absolutely made the right decision.

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