WWE’s Original Plans for Roman Reigns’ Match at Royal Rumble 2024 & Reason for Changed Plans

This past Friday’s WWE SmackDown show in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada featured the #1 Contender’s match between AJ Styles, LA Knight, and Randy Orton being ruled a no contest due to The Bloodline’s actions. SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis informed Paul Heyman that Reigns will now be defending his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship in a Four-way match at WWE’s Royal Rumble 2024 event as a result.

Dave Meltzer reported in a recent episode of the Wrestling Observer Radio that his sources stated that WWE officials originally had planned for Reigns to defend his title against just Orton at the event. WWE officials reportedly changed their plans due to their concerns over not wanting Reigns to defeat Orton this soon in a high profile singles match.

Meltzer reported that the reason why Knight and Styles were included in the match was in order to have someone eat the loss since Knight was already defeated by Reigns in a singles match and Styles currently isn’t strong enough for a high profile singles match against Reigns. Meltzer speculated that Styles likely will be the one who will take the loss for this Four-way match.

“The original idea was Roman and Randy Orton for the Rumble and essentially there were parties involved who did not want to beat Randy Orton this early and just felt that there is money to be made with Roman and Randy Orton in a program at some point but it’s too soon to do it.

LA Knight just got beat and AJ isn’t strong enough. I think AJ was the guy that they probably would have wanted because Roman can beat him.

I mean, I presume AJ is going to be the one who is going to lose. Maybe not, it could be LA.

The basic gist is AJ gives them someone to beat, LA gives them someone to beat.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com