Sheamus emerged with an unexpected victory in the 25th Annual Royal Rumble match last night, earning a championship match at WrestleMania XXVIII.

The WWE Royal Rumble is the one event other than WrestleMania that is always on our watch list. Last night’s 25th anniversary Royal Rumble show from St. Louis, Missouri, certainly had its ups and downs, and overall it was about average among the installments in the event’s history. A lot of effort went into what were meant to be funny entries in the Rumble match and a layer of intrigue was added to this year’s feature battle royal when it was announced that “for the first time, every WWE Superstar is eligible to compete” during the promo package. Neither of us were sure exactly what that meant, but some of our speculation as well as all of last night’s results can be found inside as we get ready for Raw tonight from Kansas City, Missouri.

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It’s sad to see what was once my favorite show go away as tonight brings the final episodes of NBC’s Chuck. I’m a fan of the series, but it has run its course. I think I haven’t talked much about the show here on MLD because on some level I just haven’t found it as thrilling as I did in the first few years. Some of the excitement is gone along with some of the fun, but really I think the show suffered from losing its focus in trying to generate too many episodes over the last two years. There were also episodes that suffered from less production and smaller budgets and they really stood out from most of the series. In its final year, the show was trimmed to just 13 and it has radically renewed my interest. I’m really looking forward to tonight’s finale in a pair of episodes ominously titled, Chuck versus Sarah and Chuck versus the Goodbye.

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Throughout January, Marvel Comics released a series of Venom variants on 19 issues of their ongoing titles. I’m not really sure about the motivation here. Normally these themed variant months are timed as promotional pieces for something in the publisher’s schedule. Last year, there were sets of variant covers released as cross promotion with Marvel’s X-Men: First Class, Thor, and Captain America movies, as well as a set to commemorate Marvel Comics’ 50th Anniversary. There’s nothing on that scale coming for Venom barring a “24 Years of Venom” logo on last week’s Venom #12 and a comic event called Circle of Four starting in issue #13 next week.

I think this has everything to do with another “Venom-like” character that Marvel publishes trying to steal the spotlight by celebrating his 50th anniversary this year and a new movie set to debut in July.

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When I saw Tim Kring’s name attached to the new Fox series Touch, bad memories of NBC’s Heroes came to mind. While that series fizzled after a strong start, Touch started with a far stronger premiere in a special preview airing of the pilot last night. The 13-episode season won’t begin until March 19th (and I imagine they’ll replay the pilot on March 18th) so I made sure to tune in as I’ve really missed seeing Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer each week. 

Spoilers for Fox’s new series Touch will follow.

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WWE Legend, Mick Foley, returned to Raw last week mixing it up with WWE Champion C.M. Punk against Interim Raw General Manager John Laurinaitis and even teased an appearance in this Sunday's Royal Rumble.

As we head into this year’s Royal Rumble, a night when more of the WWE roster is in the spotlight than any other, it was nice to see that last week’s Raw from Anaheim, California, had just about the right amount of everything. Instead of multiple segments dedicated to John Cena, Kane, or what’s happening on Smackdown, there was a great balance across the roster throughout the night. Let’s hope that tonight’s show from Phoenix, Arizona, can find the right recipe for the last Monday Night Raw before a big pay-per-view event.

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