WWE Needs To Revamp The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal

If WWE insists upon having a yearly Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania featuring some of the company’s biggest stars, then it’s time for some changes.

WWE has officially announced the surely much anticipated return of its annual WrestleMania match for those superstars it just can’t find a good rivalry for. That’s right, it’s Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal season.

The ugly duckling of WWE’s massive multi-man matches, the most intriguing aspect of the battle royal has tended to be its placement on the card. After all, if it’s not on the pre-show, then that’s one bathroom break taken out of the staggeringly long WrestleMania broadcast.

While that probably sounds like a cynical way to look at a match that gets a lot of deserving superstars onto the WrestleMania card, it’s the truth. WWE has yet to give us a compelling reason to care about the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

The winner of the match, whether its Matt Hardy or Mojo Rawley, rarely sees much of a boost from it. In fact, you could argue the biggest impact the battle royal has had on a superstar was on Jinder Mahal at WrestleMania 33.

Mahal being eliminated by Rob Gronkowski was the first time we had really seen Mahal in the spotlight in WWE, and shortly after he won the WWE Championship in a shocker.

If that’s the best this match has offered in it’s history though, then something needs to change.

There’s absolutely no reason that the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal couldn’t be a match that featured at least some level of intrigue besides an unexpected celebrity cameo. It would be so simple to make the battle royal something which would make us believe, at least for a moment, that it’s just not a way to cram more superstars onto the card.

All that the battle royal needs is some stakes. Some reason why a competitor would want to win the thing. That’s all.

I know WWE has given us a couple of explanations for why someone would want to be in this match, chief among them seemingly that a superstar would want to have the massive Andre The Giant trophy at ringside for a couple months.

Not a particularly compelling explanation if you ask me, considering the trophy is largely meaningless besides being a lavishly large representation of a former legend.

Actually, honoring that legacy of Andre The Giant could turn into a compelling reason to partake in the battle royal, a fact which some superstars have chose as their driving force behind entering the match in the past,

Unfortunately, this particular bout hasn’t exactly done the best job of encapsulating the dominant nature and tremendous legacy of Andre. It needs more of an illustrious legacy beyond admittedly fun surprise appearances from celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal.

What this battle royal needs is a prize that has a real impact on WWE. Something which carries some actual importance, something like a future championship match.

While I wouldn’t expect, nor want, WWE to make this into a cheap knock-off of the Royal Rumble by giving the winner a WWE or Universal Championship opportunity, that still leaves some options on the table for giving the winner a shot at an actual title.

Primarily, the battle royal could grant the winner an opportunity at competing for the United States or Intercontinental Championships. A mid-card Royal Rumble, if that’s how you would want to see it, where everyone without a direction would be fighting for a way to instantly gain that relevance through the form of earning a chance to win a title.

The match could then likely take place at whatever pay-per-view WWE chooses to have follow WrestleMania each year, with Money In The Bank holding that spot this year for example.

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That simple change then immediately gives a litany of reasons to watch the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

For starters, it makes us all cognizant that a rarely seen or pushed superstar, someone like Zack Ryder or Curt Hawkins, could actually take a massive step up in the company if they were to come out on top.

It also lets fans dream a little about what might happen if an NXT superstar who appears in the battle royal actually wins the whole thing. Right now, you could argue that winning would still give said superstar a path to the main roster, but certainly not with the same momentum as a near immediate title shot.

Finally, it would give a reason for big names like Braun Strowman to actually be content with being in the match.

No matter how you feel about Strowman right now, he’s been one of the company’s top stars over the past year after all. It’s a bit odd to see him just settle for such a low spot on the card, especially with his reputation for demanding big matches. Tying an actual opportunity at a belt to the match would be a sure-fire way to rectify that strange storyline decision.

All together, if WWE were to take the simple step of revamping the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal by adding a United States or Intercontinental Championship opportunity as the prize, then a spot in the match could no longer be a place on the card to scoff at. It could then be seen as chance at earning the opportunity to make a real impact in WWE moving forward.