Roman Reigns’ Booking Will Cause the WWE Royal Rumble 2016 Match to Disappoint
Despite intrigue at first, Roman Reigns’ use may be the cause of this year’s Royal Rumble to fail.
For about three weeks, WWE World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns could do no wrong. He obliterated Triple H at WWE TLC, defeated Sheamus for the title, and got the best of Mr. McMahon.
Then The Authority started stacking the odds against Reigns. It began with him having to go through the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament despite already being named the No. 1 Contender. Then Sheamus cashed in at WWE Survivor Series. Following this was McMahon being at ringside for the WWE WHC match, then with him being the special referee for the rematch, and concluded with making the former Shield man defend his belt in the Royal Rumble match.
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Stacking the odds against the top babyface is classic WWE booking. They did this with Hulk Hogan and John Cena for years, who overpowered anyone that came in their paths. It got tiresome fast, though, especially with Mr. HLR. He has been overcoming multiple heels or the worst of situations for over a decade.
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Reigns is getting this treatment. Unfortunately, it may lead to the demise of the Royal Rumble match for a consecutive year.
The thing about all this is none of this is Roman’s fault. He’s a talented Superstar who has the qualities of becoming a headliner. The booking he’s being given is not doing him any favors, though.
As noted above, when WWE stacks the odds against someone, they usually overcome them. With the 2016 Royal Rumble match, they’re making Reigns have to beat out 29 other Superstars to retain his title. The announcement of this was intriguing, until WWE started making things a bit obvious on the Jan. 11 edition of Raw. This was when “One vs. All” was created, meaning that Reigns would have to go through about a third of the WWE roster to win a match.
By constantly putting Reigns in an unfavorable position, it likely mean it’s to set up his victory at Royal Rumble. Rarely does WWE stack the odds against someone and not have them overcome it. They even did this for Seth Rollins, who lost the WWE United States Championship but somehow retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship over Sting at WWE Night of Champions 2015.
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What also doesn’t help is the lack of viable options to win the match, which is also not Reigns’ fault. There’s him and Brock Lesnar. That’s it. No Rollins, John Cena and Randy Orton due to injury. Other talented Superstars have been booked so poorly that seeing them win the title would be an absolute stunner. There’s the argument that Triple H is an option, but having him walk out of Royal Rumble as champion would be surprising.
There’s a good chance the Rumble will come down to Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar to battle it out. It wouldn’t be surprising and it could actually make for a fun ending. However, it’s all too predictable, which has hurt this prestigious match in recent years. Just look at Reigns’ win last year and Batista’s in 2014. Boos reigning down from the crowd isn’t needed for another year.
The Royal Rumble match is in twelve days and, again, it will be Roman Reigns vs. All. The argument can be made that he should be walking out of the show with his belt, but with the way his booking has been, the Roman Empire could come falling down again.