Tonight's episode of WWE SmackDown kept the tradition from the past few years of the go-home show of the blue brand featuring the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal match.
Out of 26 WWE Superstars who were in the match, the winner was eventually SmackDown's first overall draft pick from last year, Carmelo Hayes, who was able to outlast the others by last eliminating Andrade.
The final four ended up being those two, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Rey Fenix. Andrade took out Nakamura, and Fenix was eliminated by an interfering El Grande Americano getting some revenge for Fenix taking out Chad Gable earlier in the match.
Since its inception, this match has always been a means to essentially throw every male Superstar on the roster that doesn't have something to do at WrestleMania onto the card itself originally, up until the point that it switched to a SmackDown gimmick as the next best thing.
While it's not the same as winning a proper championship and/or having an amazing WrestleMania moment on The Grandest Stage of Them All itself, it's still an honor nevertheless to be one of the few WWE Superstars to have won the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, even if the track record for getting a major push out of it isn't exactly stellar.
In over 10 years, not a single wrestler has kept up a sustainable push for more than a few weeks at most, sometimes being swept under the rug almost immediately. However, for every Mojo Rawley and Madcap Moss who has won it and done nothing, there are some like Jey Uso and last year's winner, Bronson Reed, who did manage to use it to build some more momentum for their careers.
Time will tell if Carmelo Hayes is able to spin this into something bigger, or if WWE will just give them a golf clap and forget about this entirely by the time the next premium live event, Backlash, comes around. Let's hope it's used as more than just signifying him as "the best of the leftovers" and nothing more.
The full list of competitors in this year's match, in order of elimination, was as follows: Carlito, R-Truth, Berto, Angel, Kit Wilson, Elton Prince, Tyler Bate, Santos Escobar, Akira Tozawa, Julius Creed, Brutus Creed, Otis, Grayson Waller, Austin Theory, Chad Gable, Joaquin Wilde, Cruz Del Toro, Karrion Kross, Dragon Lee, Ludwig Kaiser, The Miz, Pete Dunne, Shinsuke Nakamura, Rey Fenix, and Andrade with Hayes winning, obviously.
What do you think about this year's Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal? Would you have wanted someone else to win the match instead? How can WWE best push them going forward? Drop your thoughts in the comments below and keep the discussion going!