The Royal Rumble has always been one of my most highly-anticipated pay-per-views of the year. It’s the start of the Road to Wrestlemania where all of WWE’s Wrestlemania plans start to become clear. However, the last three Royal Rumble events have been disappointing considering how easy they were to predict. In 2012, it caught a lot of people off guard when the dark horse Sheamus won the Rumble match. In 2013, 2014 and 2015 however, that’s hardly been the case.
Against my better judgement, I told myself that there was no way that WWE would seriously be planning a rematch between The Rock and John Cena for the WWE title at Wrestlemania 29 as that would have been too obvious. Sadly, that’s exactly what they did. Batista was the over-whelming favourite to win the 2014 Rumble upon his return. Not only did he go on to win it but it sparked uproar as fan-favourite Daniel Bryan was not even involved in the match. In a case of deja vu, Roman Reigns was the favourite (with Bryan as a close second) to win last year’s Rumble. Not only did they go with him but it again caused uproar mostly due to how predictable and badly presented the whole thing was. 
In what is a surprise to me, the Road To Wrestlemania looks to be a lot more wide open in 2016 as there is seemingly no clear indication about who is going to take it. A large reason for that is likely the injury sustained by Seth Rollins forcing WWE to change whatever plans they had. However, a lot of these winners are actually hinted towards months in advance to the Rumble event. This year, there’s been no such hinting.
It’s hard to call. There’s been rumours about who the chosen one will be and what the main event of Wrestlemania is going to look like. Roman Reigns defending the title against the returning John Cena has been one heavily discussed idea. While I don’t think this would cause the kind of reaction that Batista and Reigns caused, I don’t think WWE would want to risk a third hijacking in a row of the Royal Rumble. It’s possible but there’s been a lot of talk about Cena vs Undertaker eventually happening in Dallas which would debunk this idea. If not Cena, then who else?
Brock Lesnar would be my personal preference as I would love to see the rematch from last year’s main event. However, not only has Lesnar been linked with a match with Kevin Owens for Mania, Lesnar’s issue is WWE’s resistance to pay him to appear regularly on WWE television. This would make a title reign difficult. Not impossible as his last reign demonstrated, but still difficult. Unless Lesnar were to drop the belt at Extreme Rules, WWE would much rather have an active champion coming out of Mania.
Triple H has been suggested to me in recent weeks about a potential Rumble winner. It would suggest with the events of TLC that a Reigns/HHH match at Wrestlemania would be on the cards. However, there’s the question of why Triple H would even NEED to win the Rumble to earn a shot at Roman. Triple H runs the company in the storyline so unless he were to be ousted from power or somehow suckered into a tough position like Vince was in 1999, his involvement wouldn’t make a lot of sense when he could easily just give himself a title shot. I suppose he could make himself the #30 entrant and eliminate all the babyfaces at the end in some egotisitcal abuse of power. However considering that he once essentially put himself in a number one contendership match at Wrestlemania 30 against Daniel Bryan for a shot later that night, I don’t see why he’d need to be in the Rumble at all. If Reigns vs Triple H were to happen, I’d highly doubt it’d be for the title.
Then there are the dark horses and other names to discuss. Dean Ambrose could win it to go up against his former Shield brother Roman but surely he’d have to drop the Intercontinental title first which makes things difficult when he’s just won the thing. Bray Wyatt would be an intresting one but I’d highly doubt they’d give him the Rumble when they couldn’t even let him beat the Undertaker at Survivor Series. Undertaker himself is a candidate but again, his schedule and health causes problem. Undertaker’s been good in terms of his conditioning in the last few months but would likely take on a more intense schedule as champion unless he were to only have a month long reign.
Kevin Owens is another long shot as is Sheamus. I doubt any of them would be given the Rumble but these would be two great opportunities to make a new established main event heel. Then there’s Daniel Bryan if he’s actually a lot more healthier than he’s let on in interviews.
There’s a lot of names to pick from this year with the main event at Wrestlemania 32 in Texas being the prize. Leave your comments below and tell me who you think will win the 2016 Royal Rumble…
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