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In an unforeseen twist in the tale, Brock Lesnar was announced as the #1 entrant in the Royal Rumble match on RAW, which meant that the Beast Incarnate won't be defending the WWE Championship at the upcoming PPV.
The announcement has been received positively by the fans, as it opens up an interesting world of possibilities regarding his WrestleMania opponent.
Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez spoke about the latest development on the post-RAW edition of the Wrestling Observer Radio.
Meltzer said that it wouldn't make sense to have Brock Lesnar run through all the competitors in the match and win the Royal Rumble from the first spot. He speculated that WWE could be using the Rumble match to introduce Brock Lesnar's WrestleMania opponent.
The Beast Incarnate's 'Mania opponent could be one of the final two contestants in the match along with Brock Lesnar. Eliminating the WWE Champion would be enough to book a title match for the Show of Shows in April. As you may have noted, Brock Lesnar winning the Rumble was hyped up as a spoiler and not a prediction by Paul Heyman, and as you may also know, Heyman has never got his spoilers wrong. The streak could finally end.
Meltzer stated that there are various names who could get the push to face Lesnar. It could also be one of Paul Heyman's projects, one of which, includes Aleister Black. However, it could be too soon to have Black in a big event match against Lesnar.
Here's what Meltzer said:
I guess he wants to redo that Ric Flair Royal Rumble. Umm, I mean the way to do this. I don’t think Brock as Champion running through and winning, again, I don’t think that makes sense. As far as Brock running through and then make a star by eliminating Brock when they are the last two, that makes all the sense in the world and then building up a WrestleMania match, whether it’s, whoever. Whoever you want to shoot the rocket on.
Roman Reigns is not the guy. It’s been done before. Seth Rollins is not the guy. Who the guy is? There’s a lot of guys that Paul Heyman is got projects on, obviously, you can tell each week who they are, I don’t know if it would be one of them and what I’m thinking with those guys, every single one of them, is to me, main eventing Mania against Brock, I mean it feels quick.
I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it feels quick for Aleister Black to throw out a name, and I know that they are super high on Aleister Black and I’m not saying if he goes in there and beats Brock when they are the last two, it would shoot him through the moon, but for Brock to beat everyone, then who is he going to face at WrestleMania unless they’ve got (some outsider). What outsider can you get?
As we had reported earlier via WrestleVotes, WWE reportedly put Lesnar in the Rumble match with the intention of having a unique way of setting up the WWE Champion's WrestleMania match.
We also reported that a huge name has been ruled out to face Lesnar at 'Mania 36.
What are your predictions? Let us know in the comments section below.
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