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#9 Kevin Owens vs Roman Reigns at Royal Rumble
Kevin Owens had reigned atop WWE Raw since August 2016, when he capitalized on interference from Triple H to capture the Universal Championship.
Owens and Reigns had a long rivalry for the Universal Championship. Reigns' first title shot against KO came at Roadblock: End of the Line in December, but he was stymied when Jericho interfered and hit Owens with a Codebreaker, which resulted in The Big Dog losing by disqualification and leaving the pay-per-view without the belt. That led to Raw general manager Mick Foley booking a unique rematch with Y2J trapped in a cage to prevent him from getting involved.
While that prospect seemingly terrified Jericho, he and Owens made the most of the build toward the Royal Rumble by doing everything possible to throw Reigns off his game. Owens even built up a tower of chairs at ringside, which didn’t come into play for a while. However, it ended up coming back to bite him when Reigns punched KO off the apron and knocked him into the pile of steel. The pain of this had to be about as real as it can get.
Owens pretty much fell out of it after this happened. He took a bunch of offence from Reigns and seemed to be on the verge of losing. Then came Braun Strowman, who ran in and attacked the Big Dog, power slamming him through a table set up in the corner of the ring. This left Owens room to pin Reigns and retain the Universal Championship.
