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The Royal Rumble match, as you may have heard by now, underwent many last-minute changes before the show.
As noted on the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Radio, seven Superstars who were announced for the men's match didn't enter the main event of the PPV.
Otis, Tucker, Buddy Murphy, Rusev, Bobby Lashley and Kane were advertised to enter the Royal Rumble. Cain Velasquez had also announced that he would be in the match. However, all the aforementioned names didn't make the final cut.
Rusev and Lashley were taken out of the match after they were involved in a parking lot brawl.
No explanation was provided regarding the absence of the other announced talents. Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussed the ambiguity surrounding the removals on the post-Rumble edition of the WOR.
Meltzer: On the men's side, there are a couple of interesting things because Kane, okay, before the show, R-Truth came out and he went back-and-forth whether he would be in the Rumble or not. Didn't Kane say on SmackDown say a couple of weeks ago that he was in the Rumble this year?
Alvarez: I feel like he did. They announced Tucker and Otis and they weren't in it. They took Rusev and Lashley out of it.
Meltzer: They at least announced right at the start that Rusev and Lashley had gotten into a fight.
Alvarez: Those two guys, but not Otis and Tucker, not Buddy Murphy, Kane.
Meltzer: Well, Buddy Murphy at least showed up, but yeah, he wasn't in the Rumble.
Alvarez: So yeah, there were six no shows that had been advertised for the Royal Rumble.
Meltzer: And also Cain Velasquez was told that he was in the Rumble and obviously that changed. There were obviously a lot of changes made as far as what they were going to do at the end. A lot, as is always the case. But I'm trying to figure out, with Kane, it was like a big segment on the show. They brought him on SmackDown for the first time in a long, long time, for the big announcement that he was in the Rumble then it was nothing even followed up on.
The most interesting name in the list is Kane, who confirmed his Royal Rumble spot during a recent SmackDown appearance.
Meltzer stated that Kane was never scheduled to be in the match to begin with. The Big Red Machine was backstage at Royal Rumble along with other legends such as The Undertaker and Big Show.
Kane never scheuled. Now that thing on SmackDown where he did that segment makes even less sense.
As reported earlier, WWE made many changes to the match to reach the end goal of crowning Drew McIntyre as the winner, which reportedly was also not the original plan.
All the changes thankfully didn't affect the quality of the match and the story that told as Royal Rumble 2020 was one of the best we've seen in years.
