Bayley wins WWE Women’s Royal Rumble 2024 – Naomi returns, Jade Cargill debut

Bayley has won the 2024 WWE Women’s Royal Rumble and has booked her place to challenge for a Women’s Championship at Wrestlemania XL.

The ‘Role Model’ overcame 29 other women in a competitive match in which she lasted a record 63:03 to win the Rumble for the first time in her career.

Now she will have to choose whether she wants to face Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley or WWE Women’s Champion and fellow Damage CTRL stablemate Iyo Sky in Philadelphia this April.

Surprise entrants

With only a third of participants confirmed for the match beforehand there was plenty of room for surprise entrants yet there weren’t many in the match.

The headline was the return of Naomi, who started the match as the second entrant. The former WWE Women’s Tag-team Champion left WWE in March 2023, nearly a year after walking out of an episode of Raw with her tag-team partner Sasha Banks over a creative dispute and subsequently receiving an indefinite suspension.

Under the ring name Trinity, Naomi returned to action with Impact/TNA Wrestling in April 2023 and earned raves for her performances, eventually becoming Knockouts Champion. She dropped her belt to Jordynne Grace – who was one of the few other surprise entrants – earlier this month ahead of her return to WWE.

NXT’s Roxanne Perez and Tiffany Stratton were both given cameos and Liv Morgan returned from a lengthy injury spell at No.30.

The only other ‘surprise’ was the long-awaited debut of Jade Cargill at No.28. The former AEW star made the jump to WWE last year but after an initial strong presence across Raw, Smackdown and NXT, she had not been on television since September as she trained for WWE bow.

Cargill faced off with the dominant Jax as she entered the ring and picked her up with astounding ease before dumping her out of the ring. She made it to the final three in a strong first appearance.

What went down

Natalya and Naomi started off the match and were joined by five more entrants before Indi Hartwell was the first elimination. Grace was the star of the early proceedings with some wicked elbow strikes and suplexes.

Tag-team champions Kairi Sane and Asuka were the first high profile eliminations despite the former’s great efforts to grip onto the side of the ring. Grace’s elimination then came with a brutal KOD from Bianca Belair on the apron.

The middle of the match sagged until Nia Jax entered the fray and thinned the herd with some powerful eliminations and Becky Lynch slightly livened up proceedings at entrant No.21.

There was an abysmal spot when R-Truth tried to enter the match, was eliminated by Jax, and cost Valhalla a quick elimination as a result.

Cargill entered to a massive pop and eliminated Jax with remarkable strength. Cargill then had an electric stand-off with Belair, which promised big things to come, and then scored massive eliminations of Lynch and Naomi.

Bayley eliminated both Belair and Stratton as the latter pulled on the former’s braid on the apron to secure a final three spot with Cargill and Morgan.

The trio found themselves fighting on the apron on which Morgan sent Cargill sprawling to the floor with an Oblivion before Bayley kicked out her feet to secure the win.