Jim Ross isn’t the biggest fan of battle royals.
Ahead of this year’s WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view featuring the annual men’s and women’s Royal Rumble matches, “Good Ole’ J.R.” spent some time on his “Grilling J.R.” podcast explaining why he isn’t overly fond of battle royals.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on this topic with his thoughts.
On how he’s never been a fan of battle royal matchups: “My issue has always been, in this respect, I’ve never been a fan of battle royals. I’ve [seen] so many of them, and it’s almost sometimes to be embarrassed to be in the ring with guys that were just half-assing it. Sometimes a battle royal is a lazy night, for some talents. They only get good at the very end. I’m just not a big fan… it’s like the Royal Rumble. It’s gotta be good all the way through, and you gotta have peaks and valleys, and you gotta load it up and unload it. That’s how you get guys quote-on-quote over, as they come in and they’re devastating and they do great things. But you just can’t maintain that for an hour. You gotta have peaks and valleys. There’s gonna be slow spots. There’s dead spots in these matches because it’s inevitable. So we’ll see. The booking of a Royal Rumble is really challenging, and it was Pat Patterson’s idea to have the Royal Rumble, he created the concept, which is a tribute to Pat. He’ll always be remembered for it, as he should.”
On how he believes battle royals are incredibly difficult to book: “It’ll be interesting to see how that works out. But there’s a lot of interesting things to evaluate and to watch, if you’re gonna watch the Royal Rumble. How it’s laid out, you should have two good runs before you get to the final four or five guys. Patterson was brilliant at that. Michael Hayes started helping, and Michael is brilliant in that regard. He’s a real creative mind. It’s hard to lay out, it’s hard to book. Like any great booking, you start at the end. Who do you want to win? Then work backwards.”
Check out the complete “Grilling J.R.” podcast with Jim Ross by visiting Apple.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
