WWE Royal Rumble 2018: Roman Reigns Should Have Most Eliminations

Roman Reigns is one of the early favorites to win the WWE Royal Rumble 2018, but even if he doesn’t end up emerging as the victor, he should finish the night with the most eliminations.

After defeating The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship, Roman Reigns has been on a tear as Monday Night Raw’s only available male singles title-holder. Reigns has defended that title each and every week, and he’s arguably doing just as good of a job as Miz did at making the IC Title feel prestigious. He’s torn down the house with the likes of Jason Jordan and Cesaro, proving to fans that he does indeed deserve to be “The Guy” in WWE.

John Cena, Shinsuke Nakamura, AJ Styles, and several other superstars can all lay claim to being legitimate options to win the WWE Royal Rumble 2018. And while Roman Reigns is regarded as one of the favorites due to his rumored WWE Universal Title match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 34, it might not be wise for the WWE to book Reigns for a second Rumble victory in his career. Though the reactions have turned in Reigns’s favor since the Shield reunion, a Rumble win for the Raw superstar may be too presumptuous.

As somebody who is picking someone other than Reigns (Nakamura, to be precise), I believe Reigns should have the most eliminations at the Rumble match regardless.

There’s no doubt that Reigns is “The Guy” in WWE, and the company intends on continuing to project him as a resilient babyface who cannot be conquered. That’s ostensibly the reasoning behind every other superstar’s failure to kick out of the F5. Bill Goldberg, Samoa Joe, Braun Strowman, and AJ Styles have all failed to kick out of Brock Lesnar’s finishing maneuver, whereas Reigns is expected to accomplish this.

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Reigns defeated John Cena at No Mercy by kicking out of everything Cena threw out of him. Super-AAs, Double-AAs…it didn’t matter.

They told the story that Reigns is even more resilient than Styles, who kicked out of the Super-AA at the Royal Rumble 2017 but failed to kick out of the Double-AA during the same match.

Because of this, Reigns needs to have a stellar performance at the Rumble, regardless of whether or not he wins or loses. If he loses, he needs to go out there and eliminate the most people, staying in the match for a lengthy period of time.

Braun Strowman and Kane are both set to face Lesnar in a Triple Threat for the Universal Championship at the Royal Rumble, and they were the two other favorites to have the most eliminations. That should give a key advantage to Reigns.

If Reigns wins the Rumble, the WWE obviously has to go all-in with it. With the way they’ve portrayed Reigns over the years, it would be both strange and disappointing for him to win the Rumble without a storybook ending type of performance. Repeating a Rumble win in Philadelphia could be risky, but the crowd was actually behind him at points during the match.

More importantly, there’s no Daniel Bryan in the Rumble this year, and the WWE Universe is more in support of Reigns after his consistently high-quality matches (as well as his reunion with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins).

So if Reigns wins the Rumble, the WWE has to make his second win count by having him produce an effort for the ages. And if he loses, they need to do their best to make him look good in the losing effort, especially since Strowman and Kane likely won’t be involved due to their Universal Title match with Lesnar.

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No matter how you spin it, Reigns needs to come out of the Rumble looking like the star of the show. I would like to see Nakamura or another SmackDown Live star come away with another Rumble victory, but that doesn’t change the fact that Reigns should pile up the highest elimination count during the course of the match to assert his supremacy further.

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