Royal Rumble

Royal Rumble 2009

Royal Rumble (2009) the  World Wrestling Entertainment event took place on January 25, 2009, at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan. The main event was the annual 30-man Royal Rumble match, which featured wrestlers from all the three brands. Randy Orton, the eighth entrant, won the match by last eliminating Triple H, the seventh entrant. As a tradition, Orton received a World Championship match at WrestleMania XXV for his choice of the WWE, World Heavyweight, or ECW Championship.

Main event matches
The third match on the card was John Cena versus JBL for the World Heavyweight Championship. JBL was accompanied to the ring by his employee Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels first got involved in the match when the referee was incapacitated, where came into the ring and performed his Sweet Chin Music finisher both on JBL and Cena. He then left ringside, leaving JBL’s arm on top of Cena. Cena however managed to get a shoulder up and peformed an FU to retain his World Championship.

Matt Hardys return to Smackdown!

The fourth match on the card was for the WWE Championship, as Jeff Hardy his title against Edge. Before the match began Vickie Guerrero came out and announced that the match would be a No Disqualification match. Edge then revealed that Chavo Guerrero would be in his corner. The first big action came in the match when Jeff Hardy brought a ladder out and set it up near the Spanish announce table. When Chavo tried to interfere, Jeff put him on the table and jumped off the ladder connecting Chavo and breaking the table. Jeff then had the match won when he hit the Swanton after kicking Vickie off the apron when she tried to interfere. When Jeff went for the pin, Vickie stopped referee Scott Armstrong from making a three count. Jeff’s brother Matt then made his way to the ring, placing a chair under Edge’s face. Grabbing another chair, Matt at first appeared to be setting Edge up for his own version of Edge’s con-chair-to manuever. However, he instead smashed Jeff in the head with a chair. Edge then pinned Jeff to become the new WWE Champion

The main event was the Royal Rumble match. Rey Mysterio (Oscar Gutierrez) and John Morrison (John Hennigan) started the Rumble. The final six participants left in the match were Big Show (Paul Wight), The Undertaker, Triple H and The Legacy (Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase and Randy Orton). While the Undertaker and Big Show were both brawling on the outside apron (both went over the top rope, but had not hit the floor), Orton eliminated Big Show with an RKO, causing him to fall off the apron. The Undertaker was shortly eliminated afterwords when Big Show pulled him out of the ring by his leg. Despite being at a disadvantage against the Legacy, Triple H managed to eliminate both DiBiase and Rhodes. With Triple H by the ropes, Orton quickly clotheslined him from behind to send him over and become the winner of the Royal Rumble match.

Aftermath
On January 26 edition of Raw, The Legacy came out with two lawyers and a therapist. Randy Orton then revealed that he suffers from IED, which causes him to experience violent outbursts when provoked, losing all control of his emotions and actions. According to Orton and his lawyers, Orton told Stephanie McMahon, if she is to fire him, he will not only take DiBiase and Rhodes with him but the whole locker room as he will bring in a lawsuit against the company.

The Raw brand started the qualifying matches for the brand’s upcoming Elimination Chamber match at WWE’s next pay-per-view event, No Way Out. Three of the qualifying matches saw Kofi Kingston (Kofi Sarkodie-Mensah) defeat Kane, Rey Mysterio defeat William Regal (Darren Matthews) and Chris Jericho defeat CM Punk to qualify. In a fourth qualification match, Shawn Michaels failed to win a match against John Cena that would have made JBL eligible to participate in the Elimination Chamber.

The ECW Championship feud between Jack Swagger and Matt Hardy was officially over when ECW’s on-air authority figure Theodore Long announced on January 27 edition of ECW that Hardy requested to be moved to the SmackDown brand. Swagger had other problems as his ECW Champion was stolen by Hornswoggle (Dylan Postl). When Hornswoggle’s father, Finlay (Dave Finlay), urged Hornswoggle to give the title back to Swagger, Swagger shoved Hornswoggle to the ground, which caused Finlay to knock down Swagger with his own title.

On January 30 edition of Smackdown, Matt hardy came out to ring and told the WWE Universe that he had no remorse about smashing his brother Jeff in the head at the Royal Rumble and costing him the WWE Championship. He then told the universe that he no longer considers Jeff a partner or a sibling. There was three Elimination Chamber qualifiers for No Way Out. The first match being The Undertaker vs Mark Henry, which Taker won via submission with the Hell’s Gate. The second qualifier match was The Big Show defeating Festus with a K.O. Punch. And the last qualifier was a triple threat match featuring Triple H, The Great Khali and Vladimir Kozlov. The match ended as Triple H pulled the top rope down to send Kozlov to the outside and a pedigree to Khali to pick up the victory.