What If Roman Reigns Never Won The 2015 Royal Rumble Match?
The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, has been at the top of the WWE ladder for a long time now. While the man himself has divided the WWE Universe to its core, it is no secret that Roman Reigns is one of the company's biggest stars in the modern era.
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A 3-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion & a 4-time WrestleMania main-eventer, Roman Reigns' track record speaks for itself. That often leaves people asking - Where did it all begin?
Readers might recall that Roman Reigns was pushed to superstardom ever since he won the 2015 30-Man Royal Rumble match.
As we all know, that win itself subjected Roman to a lot of criticism, leaving the fans frustrated due to a lot of indirect reasons. Ever since then, The Big Dog has been a controversial figure in this industry.
So it all leads to us asking one important question - What if Roman Reigns never actually won the 2015 Royal Rumble Match?
The next few slides will look at 5 potential alternate scenarios if Roman Reigns never went on to win the 2015 30-Man Royal Rumble Match...
#1 Who Else Could Have Main-Evented WrestleMania 31?
As we all know, Roman Reigns eventually went on to face Brock Lesnar for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 31. However, Seth Rollins' cash-in at the end labeled the whole situation "Heist Of The Century".
If Reigns never won the 2015 Royal Rumble match in the first place, it leaves us with a few other contenders for the WrestleMania 31 Main-Event match.
Bray Wyatt? The Eater of Worlds had scored an impressive 7 eliminations to his name for the 2015 Royal Rumble match (the highest for that event, only to be followed by Reigns & Rusev with 6 eliminations). Wyatt eventually went on to face The Undertaker at WrestleMania 31, only to lose to the Deadman (which is still an honor, by the way). Does Bray Wyatt vs. Brock Lesnar sound like a potential money-making main-event for WrestleMania 31? I'll let the readers be the judge of that.
Rusev? Back then, The Bulgarian Brute was a force to be reckoned with. As mentioned above, he did eliminate 6 people in the 2015 Royal Rumble Match. In early 2015, Rusev had a lot of heel heat riding with him. Accompanied by Lana, Rusev was one of the best heels at that point in time. But, we know that he went on to face John Cena at WrestleMania 31, only to lose against the Cenation. Does Brock Lesnar vs. Rusev sound like a potential money-making main-event for WrestleMania 31?
Dolph Ziggler? Cesaro? While many other names sound like they'd be a decent pick for main-eventing WrestleMania 31, it is only one name that triumphs over the rest:
Daniel Bryan. Let's be real now. The WWE Universe wanted the underdog to finally win this one. Sure, he did main-event WrestleMania last year, but then Bryan got injured after WrestleMania 30, due to all the neck injuries piling up. So the WWE fans thought that they could re-witness all that WrestleMania 30 magic once again in 2015. Unfortunately, due to the bad structuring of the 2015 Rumble Match itself (& Daniel Bryan's unexpected elimination), the fans decided to hijack the show & as a result of that, Roman Reigns got booed for winning in the end (even if that was not his fault).
So, no matter whom you pick as a main-eventer in this alternate scenario, one thing is for sure - People wanted Daniel Bryan to win. Either that or the whole Rumble match was poorly structured from start to finish...