Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialWWE Royal Rumble 2018: Potential Winners from Raw Brand Ranked

WWE Royal Rumble 2018: Potential Winners from Raw Brand Ranked

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With the sheer abundance of men and women competing in the Royal Rumble matches this year and four champions who need to watch their backs for potential challengers to their titles, I figured it would be best to examine the each brand’s top contenders separately.

As it is first in the television lineup, let’s start things off with the crop of possible winners from Monday Night Raw who could end up challenging Alexa Bliss and Brock Lesnar (assuming they don’t drop their titles beforehand)…

WOMEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH

 

3. Stephanie McMahon

I had Paige on my list for weeks in my notes until her injury rendered her incapable of competing. Following that, I tried my best to think of any way it would make sense for Bayley, Sasha Banks or Mickie James to get on this list, but couldn’t figure out a way to justify it.

In fact, I even went so far as to write up a section entitled “There is no third option on Raw” before it stumbled on me that if it doesn’t come down to a SmackDown star or the two other names listed below, the next best woman on Raw would be the commissioner herself.

It sounds crazy, but we’re talking about the McMahon family here. Nothing is too crazy to rule out when it comes to them.

Stephanie is a former women’s champion, her father’s held the WWE and ECW Championship belts, her brother jumps off Hell in a Cell cages all the time and her husband is one of the most decorated champions in the company’s history.

You know it has to be at least a little tempting for them to have the record books say the first-ever women’s Royal Rumble winner was Stephanie herself, right?

It’s not going to happen, as that would then mean she would be wrestling for the title at WrestleMania, instead of most likely just having some kind of extraneous role alongside Triple H’s match per usual, but if you look at the options available, doesn’t it make more sense than something like Dana Brooke or Sonya Deville winning?

2. Nia Jax

Royal Rumbles tend to put a lot of focus on the biggest competitors being the hardest to eliminate and, as such, the biggest threats.

Sometimes, this rings true, like with Yokozuna in 1993 or Andre the Giant in his regular battle royal victories, but more often than not, these titans are just obstacles for the winners to overcome.

Nia Jax will undoubtedly be the largest competitor in the women’s Royal Rumble match by far, as nobody comes close to her intimidating size on either roster, including NXT, even with returning former stars and someone like Piper Niven from the Mae Young Classic factored in. Jax is simply the biggest of them all and there’s no doubt WWE will play that up.

Her friendship with Alexa Bliss is another thing that leads to her as a possible winner, as they didn’t quite get a chance to compete against each other the way that they probably would have wanted to.

1. Asuka

She’s undefeated. Technically, if she loses the Royal Rumble match, she’ll no longer be able to say that, even though there’s a chance WWE will just play the trump card of referring to her as “never pinned or been made to submit” instead of full-on “undefeated” from then on.

I sincerely hope that isn’t the case, as it tarnishes the situation, and it also means we get somebody else challenging Alexa Bliss instead of Asuka, or The Empress of Tomorrow has to jump through hoops to get into some Fatal 4-Way or Triple Threat gimmick.

In my mind, it makes much more sense to keep it simple, have Asuka retain her streak, win this match and go on to dethrone Bliss at WrestleMania, as she’s the rightful next Raw Women’s Championship holder anyway.

MEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH

Let’s be honest, we all know who is winning here and at the #1 spot, but it wouldn’t be much of a 3-Count if we only had one name, so for the hell of it, let’s spit out two other ideas just in case something weird happens like an injury or whatever.

3. Samoa Joe

For argument’s take, what if the suggestion from Table for 3 of a submission match between Samoa Joe and Brock Lesnar was taken to heart and they wanted to pull off something like that in order to give someone a huge boost in beating Lesnar, who could possibly return to UFC and not want to sign back with WWE for the remainder of 2018?

I know, I know….that’s not going to happen. But hey, it’s more likely than something like Woken Matt Hardy vs. Brock Lesnar, or R-Truth getting the title shot or whatever.

Normally, I would put Braun Strowman in this spot, but he’s already facing Lesnar in the title match, so that kind of rules him out in my opinion.

Samoa Joe’s injury puts a dark cloud above his chances, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t think he has that much of a chance to begin with, so I doubt that will really screw up the current winner plans if he’s unable to compete.

2. John Cena

As a free agent, John Cena is technically without a brand, but with him making an appearance on the 25th anniversary of Monday Night Raw, that basically swings the pendulum back to the red brand as far as his allegiances go.

Any time Cena is in a match, you can’t fully count him out, even if he’s more of a part-timer now than ever and clearly isn’t the priority as far as who will be guaranteed to take the top spot.

With his 17th world title reign lingering in the air as a possibility, it would make sense for something like that to happen at WrestleMania since it’s The Grandest Stage of Them All.

Granted, if that DID happen, I would think it would be much more likely that he would be challenging for the WWE Championship and switching back over to SmackDown in the process, but there’s also a slight possibility that Brock Lesnar would be built up in order to present the highest stacked deck against Cena so we finally consider him the underdog again.

That’s all well and good, but we know the real answer here…

1. Roman Reigns

The other two picks are meaningless in comparison. There’s no chance they even come close to potentially winning over The Big Dog, who has zero competition on Monday Night Raw’s side of things (particularly with Cena as a free agent and not truly on the red brand).

We’ve known that Reigns will face Lesnar at WrestleMania for an entire year, so this should come to no surprise, as WWE has not budged on this idea whatsoever, even going out of their way to eliminate pretty much every other option by already doing the matches, like Strowman vs. Lesnar, Joe vs. Lesnar and so on.

Not only is Reigns the most likely candidate to walk away victorious on the Raw brand, he’s arguably the top pick people should be looking out for even with SmackDown factored in. The decision of who wins the Royal Rumble depends solely on whether WWE wishes to have the Universal Championship defended in the Elimination Chamber or if the cage is going to be with the No. 1 contender’s spot on the line.

If the Elimination Chamber has Lesnar included, Reigns wins the Royal Rumble, 100%. If Lesnar is off the Elimination Chamber card, then Reigns wins that match instead, opening the Royal Rumble to someone on the SmackDown side of things.

Those are my picks, but what do you think? Tell us your predictions in the comments below!

For more information on Royal Rumble statistics, check out my running page of records on Smark Out Moment here: http://www.smarkoutmoment.com/p/wwe-royal-rumble-statistics-records.html

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