WWE King of the Ring 2019: Who will win the tournament this year?

Quarterfinals & Semifinals

If the opening round goes as predicted above, we’ll have the following Superstars left vying to be WWE King of the Ring:

• Raw: Drew McIntyre, Cedric Alexander, Ricochet, Samoa Joe
• SmackDown: Kevin Owens, Andrade, Buddy Murphy, Ali

Personally, I don’t think any of those eight superstars would be a bad King. Furthermore, I don’t think any of the possible matchups would be bad, no matter what round of the tournament we’re talking about.

So let’s figure out how we get a winner for the Raw half of the bracket. The quarterfinals should feature a pair of rematches in McIntyre/Alexander and Ricochet/Joe. In the first, I’m picking Drew to take the victory; in the second, Ricochet will once again beat Joe, just like he did when he won the United States Championship.

That means the semifinals — scheduled to take place at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 9 — would see Drew McIntyre taking on Ricochet. While King Ricochet is literally already a thing, there’s too much unfinished business between The One and Only and AJ Styles for this to be Ricochet’s tournament to win.

Whether Styles and The O.C. get involved or not is one thing, but McIntyre — who would have vanquished rival Alexander en route to the semis — should win the Raw side.

On Tuesdays, I feel like the goal is to wow the WWE Universe with tremendous match quality. That’s why SmackDown usually seems to have the better matches week in and week out, at least in my opinion. How could you go wrong with Andrade/Ali if that’s the case? And that would make the second quarterfinal match Owens/Murphy, and after what Buddy did with Roman Reigns, I’m intrigued to see how he meshes with other top stars.

Putting aside match quality for a minute, I think Murphy may temporarily see his carriage turn back into a pumpkin, and his Cinderella story will see a brief setback as KO takes the cake. And, I can’t express how much I think Andrade is a legitimate threat to win the tournament, so Ali probably goes home in round two.

As much as “Rey Andrade” would be a tremendous continuation of El Idolo’s feud with Rey Mysterio, I think in the end Kevin Owens is the man to represent SmackDown in the WWE King of the Ring finals. A victory in the semis in MSG would be a huge moment for the New York City crowd.