Royal Rumble 2012 Results: How Kharma Made a Huge Impact

WWE's Royal Rumble 2012 pay-per-view was noteworthy for numerous reasons. 

For one thing, World heavyweight champion Daniel Bryan managed to overcome the odds and retain his title in the three-way steel cage match against Mark Henry and The Big Show.

Internet sensation Zack Ryder also got savagely beaten by rampaging monster Kane yet again, as he was visiting the event backstage. Eh, trouble-magnet Zack, who was still sporting a brace from his beatdown last Monday, should have just stayed at home for this one.  

And in a mild shocker, neither Randy Orton nor Chris Jericho, both heavy favourites going into the match, ended up winning the Royal Rumble. Instead, underdog Sheamus managed to emerge victorious from the event and will now go on to the WrestleMania main event.

But despite all this, one return stood out: the reemergence of female star Kharma (formerly Awesome Kong in TNA) who came back to WWE to compete in the Royal Rumble match.

As most know, Kharma debuted in America's No. 1 promotion in the spring of last year, and immediately starting tearing through WWE's women's division, targeting model Kelly Kelly in particular, as a terrifying monster heel. For the first time in a long time, the divas seemed relevant and Kharma got most of the credit. 

However, due to her real-life pregnancy, the former TNA star had to be written out in May just as her angle with Kelly was heating up.

Notably, in her last promo before being taken off television, the baby-face-sounding Kharma vowed to come back to the company bigger and badder than ever when she had had her child.

At the Royal Rumble, she certainly lived up to that promise, as she shockingly entered the match at No. 17, becoming only the third woman in WWE history to enter the Royal Rumble match (Chyna and Beth Phoenix were the first two, for those who don't know).

Kharma made a strong impression right away, eliminating obnoxious commentator Michael Cole and SmackDown cruiserweight Hunico with relative ease. A flustered Cole would later claim, hilariously, that he had eliminated himself in order to avoid hitting a woman.

On a rampage, she then hit Dolph Ziggler with the Implant Buster (which Ziggler sold admirably), before a distraction from Vickie Guerrero led to a recovered Ziggler tossing her over the top rope, eliminating her from the contest.   

While many would question having many of the men on the roster sell for her (part of the problem people had with Chyna's strong runs in 1999 and 2000 was due to their belief that she was simply not believable as someone who could be competitive in the ring with men), at Kharma's size, she looks like she could easily pose a threat to most of the male roster. In that respect, realism is not an issue.

Although Kharma ultimately came up short in her quest for WrestleMania glory, she nevertheless managed to make a lasting impression with her dominating performance here. Indeed in the hours since, her shock entrance has gotten wrestling fans everywhere talking. She's almost been as big a topic as Sheamus, who did win the event.  

So, where does Kharma go from here? Is she headed back to WWE's women's division to take on Phoenix, Kelly, Natalya and others? Or maybe she'll go to the midcard and start taking on some of the men, like she did here?

Who knows? But one thing is for sure: With her return at the Royal Rumble, Kharma has made quite the impact on WWE audiences.