TIME Magazine Reports:

The response to Sunday’s Royal Rumble was anything but scripted.

Wrestling fans were seething after the World Wrestling Entertainment’s annual Royal Rumble event came to what appears to be an unsatisfactory end in Philadelphia on Sunday night.

After Roman Reigns emerged victorious for the evening’s highly anticipated battle royal finale, fans sounded off in mass on social media outlets with the hashtag: “#CancelWWENetwork” that was trending worldwide by the night’s end.

According to wrestling blogs, spectators at the event were chanting for refunds as rumors swirled that the WWE Network cancellation page had crashed as fans bombarded the site.

@WWE has finally lost it. Vince better start firing some writers and really listen to what the fans are saying. Currently all they're doing is wasting a locker room full of great young talent. Fix it or it will only get worse #CancelWWENetwork

Lol #CancelWWENetwork was a top trender earlier. When fans even boo The Rock, you know you put on a terrible show. Well done, @WWE.

(In response to Vince McMahon's Tweet about 2015 being the best year ever for the WWE): .@VinceMcMahon's future as a fortune teller is definitely in jeopardy. #CancelWWENetwork

Sunday night’s fiasco was the latest in a long line of setbacks for the WWE since the company launched a subscription-based digital network last year that has largely failed to win over its own base.

The network first hit the airwaves in early 2014, but appears to have all but backfired as disappointing subscription numbers sent stock prices tumbling and lead to large-scale layoffs at the Connecticut-based company.

All you who decided to Cance their WWE Network, don't they watch and love NXT? Deciding to yank support for them too?

I guess they're going to use the money for AXS TV for the better TV show

You can watch NXT for cheaper on Hulu.

true. but they are not going to cancel shit. All talk. That same philly arena the next time wwe is there. Show wwe how piss you are at them by giving them your money!

Dude, there's thousands of pictures on twitter of people cancelling their network. People actually did do it.

they will sub right back before WM 31.

Their money would be better spent buying Invasion Attack

The same guy whos been ripping the company to shreds over booking decisions is now mocking people who got upset over a booking decision? #Whatafuckingtwist

Its a more of a I told you so mocking. Like I said in my prediction thread reigns was going to win and people are going to lose their shit over it. And I was right. This is what happens when you have high hopes for WWE.

Well sorry for thinking WWE might have known better

That will teach'em

I get people complaining over the fact that the match just wasn't done well, but the one's whining because DB didn't win just need to go get fucked. It's wrestling, not your personal bedtime story. Lashing out and crying because one particular star you wanted to didn't win is just fucking stupid.

so just stop watching and cancel your network subscription.

I love Roman Reigns, so I am not upset because I don't like him. I'm upset because:

1) They KNEW the fans wanted Bryan to win and they threw him out really early on. Not only would Bryan have been a perfect choice, but he was the popular one, and they pretty much buried him early on very quickly.

2) Roman is NOT READY to main event Wrestlemania, or to be the face. As someone who loves Roman, I'm not biased. Roman is not ready. Not only that, but he should never be the face. He should be the Undertaker/HHH type of guy where he's just a big guy that's important, not the face. He can't be the face, that's not his role.

3) WWE is NOT listening to their fans. They are laughing at them at this point.

As someone who always defends WWE on everything, I still think that it was a shitty thing to do.

I was just kidding when I was agreeing with Vlad.

If you pay to watch The Royal Rumble and saw how horrible it was of course you get to bitch about it.

VladimirTStrife wrote:

I get people complaining over the fact that the match just wasn't done well, but the one's whining because DB didn't win just need to go get fucked. It's wrestling, not your personal bedtime story. Lashing out and crying because one particular star you wanted to didn't win is just fucking stupid.

Did you watch the match or nah?

The crowd was pissed DB got eliminated, especially early, yes.

But the crowd also didn't want Roman to win.

When Ryback came in and started dominating, he was being booed. Then he hits Roman and all of a sudden "YAY!" - It was a matter of people not wanting a superstar who isn't established to win. The crowd even chanted for Rusev when he wasn't eliminated because it was a glimmer of hope.

Batman wrote:

I love Roman Reigns, so I am not upset because I don't like him. I'm upset because:

1) They KNEW the fans wanted Bryan to win and they threw him out really early on. Not only would Bryan have been a perfect choice, but he was the popular one, and they pretty much buried him early on very quickly.

2) Roman is NOT READY to main event Wrestlemania, or to be the face. As someone who loves Roman, I'm not biased. Roman is not ready. Not only that, but he should never be the face. He should be the Undertaker/HHH type of guy where he's just a big guy that's important, not the face. He can't be the face, that's not his role.

3) WWE is NOT listening to their fans. They are laughing at them at this point.

As someone who always defends WWE on everything, I still think that it was a shitty thing to do.

Absolutely agreed on all of those points, but on the other side, I don't see how it'd be better to have had Daniel win it. If anything, it would have been worse. The Royal Rumble has always been a launching point for careers. It's the chance for someone typically bordering on the Main Event scene to rise into it. DB is a great wrestler, but he already IS Main Event material. He doesn't need a RR win to transition into that and when you have 30 guys in a match with that kayfabe concept that anyone can win and it can make their career, using it as a vessel to yet again promote someone who is already at the top is just blindly shitting on the fans, the match's concept and 29 stars.

Granted, you do the same thing when you just hand it off to someone and everyone knows that they're going to win, which is exactly what happened, but would it really have been any less expected if DB won?

Honestly, in my opinion, WWE snubbed the perfect candidate to win the match and that was Bray Wyatt. He's popular with the fans, incredibly talented, ready for the main event scene and winning the RR would have been the perfect way to launch him into it, especially considering that he hasn't held the title or been in the picture for it before. Also, it would have been a bit unexpected. Not entirely, but not something that people were anticipating like they were for DB or RR.

Myke wrote:

VladimirTStrife wrote:

I get people complaining over the fact that the match just wasn't done well, but the one's whining because DB didn't win just need to go get fucked. It's wrestling, not your personal bedtime story. Lashing out and crying because one particular star you wanted to didn't win is just fucking stupid.

Did you watch the match or nah?

The crowd was pissed DB got eliminated, especially early, yes.

But the crowd also didn't want Roman to win.

When Ryback came in and started dominating, he was being booed. Then he hits Roman and all of a sudden "YAY!" - It was a matter of people not wanting a superstar who isn't established to win. The crowd even chanted for Rusev when he wasn't eliminated because it was a glimmer of hope.

I saw it. And I agree that throwing DB out early was stupid, as was having RR win. I have no issue with that, just the people who feel entitled to seeing DB win just because he's their favorite.

I dont think DB winning the Rumble was so much about making him big, more than it was the fact that having him topple Lesnar at WM would have been the end point to making him the face of WWE, which is something he should be.

Why exactly does WWE need this mystical "face of the WWE"? What happened to the days when there were multiple main eventers that held their own against one another like Undertaker, HHH, Rock, Stone Cold, Jericho? This whole coalescing the franchise around one superstar shit just boggles my mind. It's part of the reason people got sick of Cena. I don't think that fans, on whole, want one guy just rammed and shoved down their throat repeatedly, even if that is something that you personally have great interest in (Sorry, I couldn't live with myself if I passed that opportunity up)

They don't. But that's not the argument.

Whether they do or not is irrelevant. Fact is, they're GOING to have one. And if they're going to have one, they should make it Bryan. Reigns would be awful as the next face. Them not having one at all would actually be pretty ideal, but that's not going to happen. Someone is going to be the next face, so the argument here should be "who", not whether or not they should.

Well, I can agree with you that if anyone should be, it should be DB, at the least. That said, even in that scenario, it might be better that he not be the winner. WWE has been very particular about making sure that Brock Lesnar looks like Godzilla and is utterly indestructible. I can't help but feel like if they booked Daniel Bryan vs. Brock Lesnar at WM, that they would have Lesnar destroy him and then the complaints you have now would be about 10 times worse. It'd help a lot if they sent him to WM and had him beat Lesnar, yes, but Vince has always leaned more toward the roided up look, so I can't imagine that happening.