What’s the story?
After speculating for months about what appeared to be the most open Royal Rumble of all-time, my sources tell me that Goldberg has been touted as the favourite to win the Royal Rumble match!
In case you didn’t know...
It’s fairly standard protocol for the WWE to tell you that its annual Royal Rumble event is “anyone’s for the taking” and that everyone has an equal one in thirty shot, however, that is never ever the reality, with the Rumble usually being between two or three guys at best, and often it’s simply a predictable one horse race.
This year appears to be a massive exception to the norm, with the number of potential winners now exceeding double figures and no clear betting favourite. In addition to that, the betting favourite has changed six times since SummerSlam.
The heart of the matter
In the early hours of this morning, Goldberg mysteriously re-emerged as the favorite, the only person to be the favorite twice. Not only has Goldberg re-emerged as the favourite, but he has gone from a 16/1 outsider to a STRONG favorite with every single company taking bets on WWE and is now as strong as 2/1 in most places (see Ladbrokes.com wrestling market).
This means that if you staked $100 on Goldberg today, he would return $300 ($200 profit plus your $100 stake back). Prior to the change, if you backed Goldberg yesterday at 16/1, you would have won $1700 from your $100.
As you can see, this a massively significant move, which indicates a number of very large bets were placed on Goldberg overnight. One would have to assume that this was smart money, most like placed by friends and associates of WWE staff and writers.
My team at DirtyJesus.Net are experts in sports betting, including WWE betting, and they immediately flagged this up this morning, as a very unusual and suspicious betting pattern and very significant line movement.
Sportskeeda’s take
As it currently stands, it appears that Goldberg is the one who will win the 2017 Royal Rumble match. It is information that certainly confuses me, as I fully expected Goldberg to be robbed of a victory at this event to justify him appearing at WWE Fastlane and challenging for the WWE Universal Title.
It will be interesting to see what Goldberg’s Fastlane appearance entails, with him already guaranteed his title shot at WrestleMania. It will also be very interesting to see if WWE goes the whole way with him, by putting the Universal Title on him.
This also brings up brand new speculation and doubt over the Lesnar vs. Goldberg match itself. Many had the match written in stone on their rumoured WrestleMania 33 cards, however, if Goldberg is winning the Royal Rumble, the ONLY way Goldberg vs. Lesnar could take place on the card, is if Brock Lesnar himself was the WWE Universal Champion.
This could explain all the extra dates Brock Lesnar is currently booked for, as I talked about in my last article. However, as Brock is not booked for WWE Fastlane, he would have to win the Universal Title on Raw, which is highly unlikely in my opinion, therefore, it certainly does seem that the third Goldberg vs. Lesnar match may be cancelled, and held off for a later date.
Perhaps we may see Roman Reigns defending against Goldberg? This certainly is an interesting road to WrestleMania, and you call follow all the breaking developments on my podcast, “The Dirty Sheets” and via my articles right here on SportsKeeda.
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