6 Superstars Who Should Not Have Won The Royal Rumble Match

#4 Randy Orton - 2017

Did nothing to help his big-time feud

WWE attempted a big swerve with this one. In the weeks leading up to the event, for the first time in about 5 years, the winner of the Royal Rumble match had not been leaked out. And with Roman Reigns in a WWE Universal Championship match that night, it seemed like anybody's game (although he would enter as a surprise at 30).

Alas, this speculation stopped dead in its tracks just one week before the Royal Rumble when plans for Randy Orton to win his second Rumble match came into light, and this was after Triple H publicly said that he felt the winner of the match would surprise everyone. While it was a shame that the Royal Rumble match winner was leaked out for the 5th year in a row, what was a bigger shame is that the winner was to be Randy Orton.

Now that is not a dig at Orton, in fact, him winning the 2009 Royal Rumble made complete sense, but not this time. Orton should not have won the Royal Rumble match simply because his feud with partner Bray Wyatt at the time, who Orton would face for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania, was the worst feud of 2017. In fact, it was probably the worst feud of 2016 too.

Everything about it was horrendous, from the acting to the predictability, to the matches themselves. And to make matters worse, Orton's reign as Champion was forgettable and he lost it after an uneventful 6 weeks. At the time, there were WWE Universal Championship plans for WrestleMania of Champion Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho, and while those plans changed just a few weeks later, I think they should have remained the same and Jericho should have won the Rumble match.