Why Roman Reigns Can't Win the 2016 Royal Rumble

Now that the Royal Rumble is for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, is Roman Reigns guaranteed to lose his title?

Raw kicked off 2016 in a big way last night with the announcement that the 2016 Royal Rumble will be for the WWE World Heavyweight title itself, rather than a title shot at WrestleMania. So what does this mean for Roman Reigns and the rest of the WWE roster? Well, it actually changes things quite a bit, with the biggest change being that Reigns is almost guaranteed to lose his title at the Rumble.

Let’s start by saying this: making this match be for the title is an astronomical mistake. It takes almost all the unpredictability away from the result, because the list of possible winners has seemingly shrunk quite a bit.

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Before this stipulation, there were a lot of guys that could have won the Royal Rumble and then built up a feud with Reigns over the months to follow. While it was never the most likely scenario, there was always the chance that someone not currently in the title picture could have won it while Reigns was occupied with some Authority-based angle in a match of his own at the pay-per-view.

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But now, the only thing that makes sense is for an Authority-appointed superstar to take the title off of Reigns. They wouldn’t make this stipulation only to have someone they have no connection with win the title. This seems to be a setup so the Authority can have one of their guys take the title off of Reigns before he eventually wins it back, likely at WrestleMania.

Aside from this being a poor idea from the start, Reigns is almost certainly going to lose the title at the Royal Rumble. Over the last few weeks, Reigns finally got fully over with the fans. The crowd reaction is now a lot less Cena-esque, as the cheers are pretty easily drowning out the boos. That is an absolutely huge accomplishment for WWE, and they risk undoing that if they have Reigns win the Rumble.

The biggest problem Roman-haters have is that he is being pushed so obviously, but after being away from the title for so long, a lot of people warmed up to him. However, if they were to have Reigns outlast 29 other superstars and retain his title against the harshest odds one can imagine, fans will sour on him again, guaranteed. Fans do not want to see another incarnation of super-Cena.

A Reigns victory at the Rumble would be detrimental to his status as the top face of the company, which is why I’m going to trust that WWE knows that and will not book him to win.

So who will win? As noted, it’s more than likely going to be someone appointed by the Authority. So, either the Authority will reveal that they’ve recruited someone new to join them (i.e. Dean Ambrose, Kevin Owens), they “hire” someone to take out Roman (like when Triple H had Brock Lesnar challenge Seth Rollins) or they simply have one of their own enter the Royal Rumble, that being a returning Triple H. No matter what happens, Roman Reigns will not walk out with his championship on Jan. 24th.

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Why Roman Reigns Can’t Win the 2016 Royal Rumble

By Brandon Carney | Jan 5, 2016

Now that the Royal Rumble is for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, is Roman Reigns guaranteed to lose his title?