6 mistakes WWE made at Royal Rumble 2020: Missed opportunity in title match; big problem with elimination match revealed

The road to WrestleMania 36 begins. Royal Rumble 2020 is officially over and we're less than 70 days away from the Grandest Stage of Them All. We thought the show as a whole wasn't the best, primarily due to questionable match order placing.

However, the Men's Royal Rumble was one of the most unique in years and it appears that we're moving in a new direction and the most exciting time of the year begins.

As with all big shows, it wasn't without its flaws. We found quite a few which we feel were avoidable with better planning. While the PPV had one of the best Rumble endings in years, here were a few mistakes WWE made.

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#6 Putting the United States title match on the Kickoff show

Andrade with another solid match

Andrade, alongside Rey Mysterio, has been the most consistent in the entire company in terms of putting on great matches. He has great chemistry with Mysterio and the legend put him over in a big way.

His next rivalry appears to be against Humberto Carrillo and the two had a United States Championship match at Royal Rumble 2020. Unfortunately for both men, the match was put on the Kickoff show.

It was a shame because the two had a solid bout that could wake the crowd up after the Women's Royal Rumble match. They're going to get a better showing on RAW, but this wasn't the match that should have been on the Kickoff show.

The logic behind it was probably that they needed to justify a 2-hour Kickoff show with a title match. It's no secret that Andrade and Humberto Carrillo are in Paul Heyman's list of superstars that he wants to push and if they want to make the two Mexicans stars of the future, they need to feature them in a better spot.

#5 Wrong WrestleMania match for Becky Lynch?

The Man standing tall after a hard-fought battle to retain her title

It appears that the direction we're going to go with the RAW Women's Championship is Becky Lynch vs Charlotte Flair. The Queen won the Royal Rumble after last eliminating Shayna Baszler - the final entrant who was previously tipped to win the Rumble.

While it appears that the reports of Shayna Baszler winning were wrong, Charlotte Flair winning didn't come as much of a surprise. It always seemed inevitable that Flair would get a Rumble win under her belt.

Since the direction has been rumored as Bayley vs Sasha Banks at WrestleMania 36 on the SmackDown side, it's unlikely that Flair will challenge Bayley after feuding with her last year. She had a brief feud with Becky Lynch as well, which is why we think it's the wrong direction to go in.

Baszler would have been a more interesting opponent for Lynch, but WWE probably felt as though they didn't have enough time to build her up enough for that spot.

#4 So many people being announced for the Royal Rumble

Brock Lesnar

Similar to how 2016's Royal Rumble was centered around Roman Reigns, 2020's edition was centered around Brock Lesnar. He set a new record, eliminating 13 superstars in a row. It's the "tied" record of eliminations since WWE counts Braun Strowman's 13 eliminations at the Greatest Royal Rumble in 2018.

We'd choose to ignore that and count this as a stand-alone record. The big criticism of the Royal Rumble matches this year was that too many names were announced for the Men's match (27), while hardly any names were announced for the Women's Match (8).

It brought down the element of surprise, even though some would say that the one surprise return of Edge made up for all of that. Some of the superstars who announced their entry were pulled from their spot and we got names like Keith Lee, Matt Riddle, and MVP make an appearance.

Either way, having as many names announced was detrimental to what was a great Royal Rumble match.

#3 Putting the SmackDown Women's Championship match right after the Royal Rumble

Bayley with a salute to mock Lacey Evans in their SmackDown Women's title match

Bayley had a lackluster match against Lacey Evans to end their feud. We were surprised at the absence of Sasha Banks in the Royal Rumble match or even ringside for the SmackDown Women's Championship match.

As it turns out, she's rumored to have suffered an injury early in the month that has kept her out of the ring - which is perhaps why her matches against Lacey Evans never happened.

The placement of the match right after the Women's Royal Rumble match was questionable, but WWE possibly chose it to be the "cool down" match after the crowd spent a lot of their energy on the Rumble match.

We feel that this should have been on the Kickoff show, but it was a match that had a purpose. Bayley beat Evans and will likely move on to a filler feud before her rumored feud against Sasha Banks at WrestleMania 36.

#2 The imbalance in the Women's Royal Rumble entries

The Queen walked out victorious

There was a lot of good talent in the Women's Royal Rumble this year. Shayna Baszler's entry at #30 was undoubtedly a gamechanger, with The Queen of Spades racking up 8 quick eliminations, the joint highest number of eliminations in a single Women's Royal Rumble match since 2018.

The ending was great as well, with Baszler nearly eliminating Charlotte Flair before being tossed over by The Queen. However, it only covered up for what was an otherwise underwhelming match.

Bianca Belair was the overall highlight of the match, but the big problem was the imbalance in the entries. The quality talent wasn't scattered across as evenly as they should have. It affected the match because the eliminations felt very rushed at one point, with the face-off between Bianca Belair and Alexa Bliss being slightly underwhelming in the process.

Unfortunately, this was perhaps the weakest of the three Royal Rumble matches, but Baszler and Bianca Belair getting good spots is a positive highlight.

#1 The format of the Men's Royal Rumble

Keith Lee confronting Brock Lesnar

This is a two-sided coin. While one could argue that the unique format of this year's Royal Rumble was a good move by WWE to make it different from other years, the other side is that Brock Lesnar's one-sided dominance went on too long.

Brock Lesnar entered at #1 and eliminated 13 straight superstars - a joint-record in the Royal Rumble. He had confrontations with Kofi Kingston, Rey Mysterio, Keith Lee, Braun Strowman, Ricochet, and most importantly - Drew McIntyre.

He also eliminated John Morrison, Cesaro, Shinsuke Nakamura and many more within seconds. Until McIntyre eliminated him, nearly 2/3rds of the Royal Rumble was a one-sided affair from Lesnar. While enjoyable at first, it quickly wore out. However, we will admit that it led to a great moment when Drew McIntyre eliminated Lesnar - receiving among the two biggest pops of the night.

We were slightly disappointed that we didn't get to see too much of the ring being crowded. It took away from the traditional feel.