WWE announced today that there will be a special live event held at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Friday, April 27th that has been dubbed, surprisingly enough, Greatest Royal Rumble.
Immediately, I had the same reaction a lot of people probably had: “Huhh?? Wait, is that a typo?” I mean, I could have sworn the 2019 Royal Rumble was set for Phoenix, Arizona, but maybe my wires got crossed somewhere along the lines.
Lo and behold, it’s not the 2019 event, but just an entirely separate thing altogether, which means it’s up for pure speculation in all sorts of different ways.
Who will be competing? Is there anything on the line for the winner to receive? Do any wrestlers stand out as potential winners?
Now is as good a time as any to run rampant with theories on all manners, so let’s just dive into it!
The Idea Itself
I’m a bit on the fence of whether or not I like this, as there are two completely different elements fighting each other on which is more important.
I like the idea that WWE is trying to appeal to another country to bring in more fans and to further extend the reach of the product to a more globalized scale, and having a big event is going to do much more than just a live tour of house shows, that’s for sure.
But why a Royal Rumble? Why not maybe do something different and special just for this crowd, like debuting a new gimmick match entirely or bringing back something we haven’t seen for many years (or, possibly, at all in WWE, if you can take a concept from WCW or ECW and usher that into the modern era like WarGames)?
In a way, I feel like this hurts the actual Royal Rumble, which should be one of the most protected things in company lore, in my mind. Granted, I know having this event isn’t going to make people think less of the Royal Rumble come January 2019, but I’m just not a fan of having a secondary one take place at random like that.
Right now, there are more pros to do this than cons, but I’m nitpicky enough that I can’t shake the uneasiness of it being a Royal Rumble.
In time, we’ll learn more about the specifics, and that could help or hurt my position on the idea. At the moment, I have to be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Pinpointing Some Participants
The only bit of information that we’re aware of is that there will be 50 superstars in the match—nearly twice as many as the average event and 10 more than the previous record of 40 (that’s how math works).
I know I had previously written in January 2017 about how WWE should consider the possibility of a 60-man Royal Rumble just to tout that it’s the biggest one ever and utilize absolutely everybody at the company’s disposal, but I never thought they’d actually do something like that, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be on a random live event in Saudi Arabia, of all places, that’s for sure.
They’ve advertised some pretty standard names ahead of time: John Cena, Triple H, Roman Reigns, AJ Styles, Braun Strowman, The New Day, Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt and Shinsuke Nakamura.
Obviously, if those guys are all healthy and not otherwise occupied, I would expect to see all of them performing in this match, with the possible exception of Triple H, as he isn’t a regular roster member like the rest.
There are well over 50 superstars on the active main roster, with roughly 30 a piece on Raw and SmackDown along with 16 on the 205 Live side of things.
Since nothing has been said about what the stakes are (more on that later in this discussion), we can assume all champions are eligible and there’s nothing stopping the cruiserweights from competing.
The same goes for people in NXT and the United Kingdom division, too, opening up the floor to another 50+ people just when taking those into account. Effectively, you could have TWO of these matches, but that would just be insane, wouldn’t it?
April 27th isn’t far enough away to start booking fantasy scenarios of lots of NXT talent coming up to the main roster, but we’ll be after WrestleMania by that point and heading toward Backlash, where the Raw and SmackDown brands will somewhat unify for pay-per-views, meaning there’s always a chance some people from the minor leagues get called up to team red and team blue.
That isn’t necessary, though, as we’ve seen people compete in the Royal Rumble and Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal without making the transition to the main roster even in the span of a year, so don’t be surprised if you see some names here that you aren’t super familiar with.
In particular, everybody of Middle Eastern descent should realistically be in this match, as it would just feel strange for someone like Jeet Rama or Kishan Raftar not to be competing while Steve Cutler gets a spot, wouldn’t it?
Plenty of injuries are going to get in the way, so don’t expect Dean Ambrose or R-Truth and company to be competing unless they’ve been healing well enough to step in the ring at that point, but it’s doubtful.
Also, don’t hold your breath for legends like The Undertaker, company outsiders like Chris Jericho (at least, at the moment, that’s where he stands) or retired stars. I wouldn’t even think Kurt Angle would be in the running, and I think one of the absolute safest bets is that Brock Lesnar won’t make the hike over there, so count him out.
With 50 superstars, though, there should be a fantastic mix of all sorts of different main event, midcard, jobber and unknown talent to satisfy everybody.
Who Should Win? Who Will Win?
Sometimes, in a non-American environment, WWE goes with the obvious booking of picking the winners based on the location, meaning the British Bulldog can win big at SummerSlam ’92 in the United Kingdom as the highlight of his career and Ric Flair is always going to get a pop in North Carolina.
Other times, you get the Montreal Screwjob for Bret Hart and the very often Monday Night Raw hometown hero loss that has happened to mostly everybody at some point.
As far as I’m aware, WWE has no superstars on the roster who are from Saudi Arabia, so there isn’t a hometown boy who stands above the rest, although if you expand to other areas in the Middle East, a few possibilities open up.
The previously mentioned Jeet Rama and Kishan Raftar are from India, as is the recently signed Mahabali Shera. Since they’re on the live event circuit from NXT and not even on the actual television show, I can’t imagine them getting the win over all of the other established names.
The most obvious choice is to just go with Jinder Mahal, and that might be exactly what WWE has in store, despite its predictability. With that being said, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that he would be holding the WWE Championship during the tour last year and that didn’t happen, nor did he successfully defeat Triple H in their match, so WWE has proven that the writing team doesn’t always book Mahal in the laziest way.
Sami Zayn is Syrian, which is in the same part of the world as Saudi Arabia and closer to anything else anybody would be associated with, save for if it’s suddenly revealed Jason Jordan is actually from Jordan or if Sgt. Slaughter and Iron Sheik make random returns to sympathize with Iraq and Iran, but you can bet your house that that isn’t happening. Perhaps Zayn would be a decent choice as this isn’t a Royal Rumble that needs to necessarily mean anything, and for him to win, it could be the first true thing he’s accomplished on the main roster without getting in the way of the plans for the bigger stars.
There’s always the Roman Reigns option, which could go over super well or horrifically bad. I’m completely oblivious to whether Reigns is popular in Saudi Arabia and I could see it giong either way. The same goes for John Cena, although I’d bank more on Reigns winning than Cena.
Maybe this is where Braun Strowman comes in and just decimates and wins like he should do in pretty much every match? I would be down for that for sure, as I’m always on board with The Monster Among Men looking dominant.
Oddly, though, I’d rather even give this to Samoa Joe if he were healthy enough to compete. I think he’s been passed over for too many things since coming up to the main roster, missing last year’s WrestleMania, never winning a single title and most likely missing this year’s WrestleMania as well, and I doubt he’s going to be taking that Universal Championship away from Roman Reigns any time soon after Mania, so I say give him this win and let him establish some credibility that can keep him in the main event scene for when he swaps over to SmackDown in what I feel like is a pretty likely trade.
I wouldn’t be totally opposed to a completely random upset, though. It sounds ridiculous, but I think it would be kind of cool if a total outsider pick like Shelton Benjamin were to win. It isn’t going to happen, but I’d find it interesting and it would certainly make me second guess WWE’s predictability for a little while going forward, that’s for sure.
I do think the most realistic choice for who WILL win boils down to a choice between Strowman, Reigns, Orton and Mahal, though, with Orton’s being thrown in there just because they might rule out a lot of other names and then decide they still want some in-house main event guy to stand tall at the end.
What Should Be on the Line?
If this isn’t being televised or broadcast after the fact on the WWE Network, much like how Starrcade was just for the people at that particular show, I don’t think anything should be up for grabs at all, other than bragging rights, of course.
On the other hand, if this has any kind of actual weight to it, the easy option is to go with a title shot, assuming the Universal and WWE champions aren’t included in the match. Backlash will be happening a week later on May 6th, so it’s hard to imagine they would wait that long to settle who gets a title opportunity at that event, but stranger things have happened in the past, so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility.
If the Superstar Shake-Up takes place at Backlash itself and not beforehand, maybe the winner of this match could be granted the choice to stay with their current brand or move over to the opposite side without the commissioners and general managers having any say in the matter. That’s a little too complicated, though, and it’s not a realistic booking strategy I can see WWE implementing, as that’s the type of thing that worked better as the “safety from being fired” goal with WCW being folded into WWE.
Sometimes, it’s okay to have the goal of the match to simply be winning the match and being crowned the victor, without a belt or cash prize or something being up for grabs, and I think that’s the best way to go about things for this event, given the information we currently know at the beginning of March.
All in all…
I’m intrigued about this, and I think it represents an overall neat attempt to do something outside the box for an audience that could use a boost, but I’m hesitant to get fully behind it until I know all the details, as there are still plenty of ways this could turn into a mess in some fashion.
Until that information is out there and we can add more things into the pros and cons lists, I’ll remain optimistic that this will be a fun extraneous show that won’t have a huge effect on all that much of anything going forward, but could give WWE something else to pat themselves on the back for and maybe expand the company’s reach a little more.
And in the end, isn’t that the real goal in mind? We’ll see if they can accomplish that mission.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts on this announcement? What would you like to see happen as far as the booking goes for the so-called Greatest Royal Rumble? Drop those thoughts in the comments section below!
