WWE Royal Rumble: Predicting Buddy Murphy’s 3 Opponents

Credit: WWE Network on Twitter

On the final episode of 205 Live in 2018, General Manager Drake Maverick announced three qualifying matches that will determine Buddy Murphy’s opponent for the Cruiserweight Championship at WWE Royal Rumble.

Last month at Survivor Series, Buddy Murphy defeated Mustafa Ali on the main card of the Pay Per View to retain the Cruiserweight Championship, and he followed that victory up with another PPV win against Cedric Alexander, with this one occurring in December at TLC.

Murphy, however, won’t just face one opponent at WWE Royal Rumble, as 205 Live General Manager Drake Maverick announced that “The Juggernaut” must fend off three opponents in order to retain one of WWE‘s most coveted championships.

Maverick listed three qualifying matches for 205 Live, and each winner will be inserted into the match against Murphy. Lio Rush and Kalisto will fight for one spot, Drew Gulak will face Akira Tozawa, and, finally, Cedric Alexander and Hideo Itami will battle it out for the final spot in the match.

Murphy will have the odds stacked against him, and this could be an opportunity for WWE to take the title off of him without needing him to get pinned. This protection could be important for Murphy, as he is a candidate to move up to the main roster. We’ve seen Mustafa Ali have a great deal of success on SmackDown Live since being called up, even pinning WWE Champion Daniel Bryan and former NXT Champion Andrade “Cien” Almas in back-to-back weeks.

But let’s keep the focus on 205 Live and predict all three opponents for Murphy’s Fatal Four-Way title defense at the WWE Royal Rumble PPV.