Royal Rumble Predictions
We are just days away from the Royal Rumble. This is the most exciting event of the year, and in some opinions the second biggest behind Wrestlemania. The card is stacked with title matches and two huge Royal Rumbles. I have my predictions, and some of them, may be very surprising.
We’ll start with the Raw matches. We’ll start with Sasha Banks vs Ronda Rousey for the Women’s Championship. Obviously the popular opinion is Rousey retaining the title, leading to her in the main event of Wrestlemania. I’m going the opposite way here, and saying that Banks wins the title. Rousey suffered her first loss last week on Raw, and I believe that was to set up a title loss. Where she goes from here? Well we’ll get to that in a little bit, but I have the title changing hands and being the big shock of the night. Next we have the Universal Championship match. In a previous blog I said that I believe in Finn Balor. I still do and I always will, but I see Brock Lesnar retaining the title. With Brock scheduled through Wrestlemania with the company so I don’t see him losing the title until then. It kills me to say it being such a fan of Finn but Sunday will not be his night.
We’ll switch over to the SmackDown side now. Once again we’ll start with the Women’s championship between Asuka and Becky Lynch. I think Becky Lynch takes the title back. Granted Asuka deserves the title still, but Becky did so much for the title. Once again, I have a plan for this title that we’ll get to a little bit later, but my heart is going with Becky. We also have Shinsuke Nakamura against Rusev for the US title. This feud is so ice cold and forgotten about, I’m not gunna waste a ton of time on this pick. I say Rusev will retain. The SmackDown tag team championships are on the line and I see The Bar losing the titles to the new team of The Miz and Shane McMahon. Finally we have Daniel Bryan defending the WWE Championship against Aj Styles. Bryan is just starting his run as a heel champion so I wouldn’t imagine it ends so early. No real shocks on the SmackDown side, but a solid match card.
Finally the two Royal Rumble matches. When I made my picks to have Ronda lose, it was all leading to this moment. I have Ronda eliminating Charlotte to win the Women’s Royal Rumble. She can then challenge Becky for the title to main event Wrestlemania. Charlotte will have a gripe being in the final two and she could be inserted into the Mania match later on. Much like I’ve said in the past I see Ronda moving to SmackDown, and this is how. For the Men’s Royal Rumble, Seth will be eliminating Drew McIntyre to win the match. Seth gets his main event and that’s a huge push for Drew. Those are my predictions, and some may seem like a long shot, but I’m confident!
-Joe Pegoraro (@jpeg1017)