The Royal Rumble is generally the second biggest show of the year and, supported by the best gimmick match in the business, usually the second best too. If that rule holds true then 2006 is going to be a sucky year. As per tradition, here are ten observations about the show and you may sense the despair.

1. The Boogeyman is a strange dude. That goes without saying. But he’s a strange dude who has become a weird cult deal but who absolutely cannot wrestle. This is a company which regularly lets Heidenreich, Snitsky, Henry and other goobers work for five or ten minutes on TV. Remember that when you think about the Boogeyman vs JBL – last year he was world champion – going under two minutes. They have a guy being pushed who cannot even do passably bad wrestling. He can’t fill five minutes. JBL deserves better than this.

2. The worst part about this debacle was when Boogeyman spat worms into Jillian Hall’s mouth. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see the symbolism of all this. Jillian Hall was forced to hold her mouth open and let Boogeyman spit in her mouth. That’s a fairly intimate violation and is worryingly close to symbolic rape. And this is the babyface who is doing it. The best way to get a man over in 2006? Have him abuse a woman. WWE is actively courting the sort of male audience who likes to see women being physically abused. In Jillian’s case, she’s never even done anything (in the storylines) to deserve this "retribution". All she does is walk next to JBL. She isn’t even a storyline baddie like Lita. Plus, we know Vince gets off on humiliating people and poor Jillian has been humiliated every time she’s appeared on TV. Vince is an asshole.

3. Another of the things that Vince likes to exploit is homophobia. His target audience hates queers, hence a parade of gay or effeminate characters over the past two decades. Goldust, Adrian Adonis, Rico, the Hearthrobs and so on. This doesn’t just extend to men either. Take the current Mickie James – Trish Stratus storyline. People are now (at Vince’s instruction) referring to Mickie as a "psycho". Their evidence for this? She is in love with Trish. She’s not insane, she’s not violent, she doesn’t even act crazy. But once you go from the fantasy of two straight women kissing to a woman who actually has feelings for another woman, then she must be a psycho.

4. More Vince inspired humiliation came with the Spirit Squad. I could write thousands of words about how much I hate the Spirit Squad but for now let’s just say that it is a horrible gimmick which doesn’t just kill one or two careers, it kills five. Five guys who worked their asses off and spent probably every cent they had to follow their dream of becoming wrestlers and they end up as male cheerleaders. To make matters even worse, WWE wants all its young guys to look the same – same hair, same body, same everything. So they do "whatever is necessary" to get chiselled physiques only for WWE to give them outfits which don’t show any muscle at all. The only hope for these guys is that the gimmick is dropped before anyone can work out who is who and they can be repackaged, hopefully as wrestlers. But, in case you hadn’t noticed, the eighties is back and everyone who isn’t a friend of the right people is going to be utterly degraded.

5. The Royal Rumble match itself is always good. But the gimmick of the guy who goes the distance seems to be done pretty much every year now. It’s been over done to the point where it doesn’t mean much anymore. It is just one of the things that has made the event less important. The winner getting a Wrestlemania title shot means that a Shelton Benjamin or Matt Hardy (or, historically, Jim Duggan or Big John Studd) are never going to win. So immediately you can discount 90% of the entrants. Putting Rey and HHH in as numbers 1 and 2 meant that it became simply a matter of twenty eight people coming in and going out before we found which of the two would win. Oh, and I hope no one missed the significance of HHH being number 1 and Rey being number 2. In reality they mean the same thing but it just makes HHH look better.

6. There are always a few novelty entrants. This year we had Tatanka. What an utter flop. Novelty acts should be people who are either legends (which he isn’t) or comedy spots (which he isn’t either). Jim Duggan could’ve come in and done a few "HOOOOOs" and hit someone with the 2x4 before starting a USA chant. It would’ve been fun if kept in a small dose. But there is no nostalgic pop for Tatanka. He was a boring guy in a dismal roster at a bland time for the company. He isn’t good in the ring, no one remembers him with any fondness and his Native American gimmick isn’t one that anyone will make fun of. In short, he was just there – a pudgy guy with an 80s gimmick (albeit from the 90s) who was in the ring too long but still no one noticed him.

7. The fact that Rey won was good, the way they keep mentioning Eddie Guerrero isn’t. It is one thing to honour the memory of one of the greatest people the business has ever seen, it is quite another to use a dead man in your storylines. As someone at F4W said, Eddie Guerrero’s ghost has become a character on Smackdown. Why not stop trying to turn Rey into Eddie and let Rey be Rey. People were happy that Rey won, not because he was the substitute Eddie but because Rey is a tremendous babyface character in his own right. It comes off as sleazy to use Eddie’s name and Eddie’s memory so much because everything WWE does feels sleazy. They can do good and it still feels dirty so when they do bad it feels filthy.

8. John Cena had a spectacular ring entrance for his title match with Edge. Yes – he was on a platform that was lowered from the ceiling. He then shot confetti over the crowd. I’m not making this up. They think they can win over the male audience who liked the edgy heel Cena but hate the sugary babyface Cena by having him fire confetti over them from a huge metal platform. Could they be any more wrong? Obviously they can as Cena won. The whole idea of taking the belt off Cena is that he was booed as champion. The audience didn’t want to see him with the belt. So they gave the title to a strong heel (someone who is booed for the right reasons) in the hope that feuding with a strong heel would make more people cheer for Cena. Except that was never going to happen over the course of three weeks. Three months would’ve been ambitious – three weeks was insane. It wasted Edge’s first title run, it ruined his momentum, it ignored the increase in ratings that Edge’s reign had caused and all because HHH wants to beat Cena at Wrestlemania for "his" title.

9. Back in November at the Survivor Series the show closed with the return of The Undertaker. Now, in January, the Royal Rumble closed with the return of The Undertaker. Yes – he’s been, gone and come back again all in the space of two months. This time he used his magical powers to make the ring collapse. No, wait, he used his powers to make lightning strike the ring and cause it to collapse. The special effects used reminded me so much of the video effects used in the McCoy era of Doctor Who. It was an embarrassing display of McMahon insanity. Who the hell things WWE fans want poor quality special effects and a tough guy who fires confetti? The same people who think we want male cheerleaders, Triple H as champion and lots of McMahons on TV.

10. So the Rumble does its job of setting up Wrestlemania. Rey will lose his title shot, Randy Orton and HHH will win their respective titles at Mania and the whole show will be lacking that "feel good" moment to send everyone home happy. But it will pander to Vince McMahon’s ego, it will gratify the old boys who surround him and it will make a tonne of money. We’re the stupid ones for expecting anything different.