On last night's episode of Raw, they revealed 8 of the 30 participants in the match: Roman Reigns, Ricochet, Rey Mysterio, AJ Styles, Randy Orton, Erick Rowan, Drew McIntyre and the WWE Champion himself, Brock Lesnar. Now only is Lesnar entering the match, but he's entering the match at #1. This would mean there are only 3 spots left to fill for the Raw brand if the rumored plan for WWE to have 10 wrestlers from Raw, SmackDown and NXT compete.
Lesnar being in the match would suggest that the title will be on the line, though it wasn't made clear one way or another. The only other time the reigning champ has been in the Rumble match itself was back in 2016 with Roman Reigns as champion only for him to be eliminated by Triple H so Trips could win the title for the 9th time in his career. I suppose WWE could still have Lesnar in the match with the title not being on the line, though it makes no real sense and flies in the face of Lesnar bragging about being able to "conquer the universe" and all that as if he loses, he hasn't really lost anything.
I have a bad feeling about this in that I feel this match will be sort of another love letter to Lesnar from Vince. I don't believe Lesnar will win the match, I just don't see him staying out there the entire 1 hour+ this match usually takes, but I do have a feeling he'll wind up making most of the other men in the match look like chumps. They'll come off like scrubs who should be carrying Lesnar's bags to and from his rental car rather than someone worthy to challenge him for the title because Vince LOVES seeing displays of alpha male bullshit, even when it's at the expense of much of the rest of the roster. As a result, I won't be at all surprised if fully half of the 30 men in the match wind up being eliminated by Lesnar, many of them in short order, before he winds up being eliminated by one person in particular or a group of them manages to hang on in the match and get Lesnar out, thus guaranteeing a new champion. Given the brand split, you're all but certain that someone from Raw wins the match and that the challenger for the Universal Championship is determined at a later time. Thus far, of those on the Raw side of things, the only match that I think has any real interest to me would be if McIntyre wins the Rumble, becomes the new champ and Lesnar gets his rematch for the title against Drew and WrestleMania. We've seen Lesnar devastate Mysterio, Reigns is on SmackDown and even if he wasn't he vs. Lesnar has been done to death, Styles has shown he can get a great match out of Lesnar but everyone already knows the outcome the second it looks it'd happen, Erick Rowan's nowhere near ready, Orton vs. Lesnar will be a snoozefest and we've already see Lesnar devastate Orton a few years back, Ricochet could get a good match from Lesnar but I just don't see him winning the title at RR, let alone retain in a rematch against Lesnar. You figure that Seth Rollins will be one of the other guys from Raw in the match and the other being Samoa Joe or Kevin Owens or both if WWE really isn't planning on having 10 men from each brand in the match. If they are then, as of right now, McIntyre is probably the only viable guy.
I've really enjoyed the last couple of Royal Rumble matches as they've changed the formula in which you didn't have a single wrestler go out there and be ultra dominant and eliminate 8, 10 or 12 guys, which helped to give the matches more of a "anyone can win" feel. I think they'll be abandoning that formula this time around, however, for Lesnar since Vince can't resist an opportunity to make him look all but untouchable, even though he's done it so often that it's redundant by this point.
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Originally Posted by #RicSolarFlair
