WWE: Braun Strowman’s Future Depends On The Royal Rumble

After losing his Universal Championship opportunity, Braun Strowman needs to make an impact at Royal Rumble in order to maintain his main event status.

The last two weeks haven’t been too kind to Braun Strowman, or his chances at The Royal Rumble.

After losing his Universal Title opportunity due to dismantling Vince McMahon’s limo, Strowman nearly lost a one-on-one match to the new Universal Championsip challenger, Finn Balor, on Raw.

While there’s nothing wrong with building Balor up before his match against Brock Lesnar, he certainly needs and deserves a push right now after all; there is something strange about having Strowman nearly take a major loss just one week after being stripped of his much lauded title opportunity.

It certainly appears like Strowman has oddly entered into a bit of a downward slide as a result, despite what recent reports suggest about his current main event push.

As originally reported by Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio and heard through Raj Giri on WrestlingInc, Braun Strowman was potentially pulled from his Royal Rumble match in part to protect his momentum and push. WWE just didn’t want ‘The Monster Among Men’ to take another loss against Brock Lesnar.

That report seems to wildly contradict what we all witnessed on Raw.

Strowman was not only on the precipice of losing to Balor, but was unable to dispatch of his Royal Rumble replacement even when Balor was actively fighting Lesnar at ringside in order to keep ‘The Beast Incarnate’ at bay.

The thing is, I don’t doubt the veracity of that report either. I truly believe there is some sort of plan in the works for Braun Strowman. Too much time and effort has been invested in his career thus far to strand him without direction somewhere in the midcard.

The question then becomes simple. What is WWE’s plan for Braun Strowman, and how much more longer will they let his momentum slip away before executing said plan?

At the end of the day, I believe all of this speculation leads to The Royal Rumble. At that event, WWE could very well be forced to choose a path for Strowman.

The company could easily present Strowman as a major threat at the show, by featuring him strongly in the actual Men’s Royal Rumble match or even having him win the match.

Similarly, they could involve him in the Balor versus Lesnar match, regardless of how that would arguably hamper the development of his current face persona depending on what that involvement would entail.

On the other hand though, WWE could just as easily choose to give Strowman a minor role at one of their biggest shows of the year, or worse yet, leave him off the event entirely.

Such an outcome would arguably indicate a repositioning of Strowman’s character and push before WWE heads into their WrestleMania build in earnest. What that exactly would mean would surely become a hot topic in the coming weeks then. All that would likely be assured in that case would be that WWE intends to cycle back Strowman’s main event run for the time being.

Either way, WWE’s storyline plans for Braun Strowman could be revealed at The Royal Rumble one way or another. That event could easily become crucial to determining the current direction of Braun Strowman’s WWE future, at least in the short term.