So I’m sitting here about to start filling in my picks for the pick ’em contest I play every year (the one I won once) and I’m struck by a realization. I have no idea who’s going to win the Royal Rumble. Some years it’s been obvious, others it’s been obvious right up until the moment that it’s not, and sometimes you have a 50-50 shot at getting it right because it’s obvious but just unpredictable enough to throw you off. But this year, in spite of how bad they are at storytelling anymore, they’ve got me stumped.
If you had asked me in December, I’d have said Roman Reigns without hesitation. I’d have stuck to it even when he won the belt. I was even prepared to stick with him once it was announced that he’d be defending it in the Rumble, though admittedly I wasn’t quite as confident.
And then they threw Brock Lesnar in there. Right away I figured Brock wins and they do the rematch from Wrestlemania last year since they never got to finish it…
But then the Wyatt Family laid them both out at the end of Raw, then got to Roman again on Smackdown. So depending on how you look at it, that’s either one or four more possibilities.
Then it hit me that other than the time he appeared on the NXT special from England looking fresh as a daisy, we haven’t seen Triple H since Roman killed him to death at the last PPV. Could he enter as a surprise and take Reigns out right at the end? It makes sense if you’re trying to make Roman look like a wronged babyface. We know he already has to enter at number one, so fighting all the way through only to be dumped out when it looks like he has it won would do that. It would also be an easy setup for a Mania match if they wanted to go that direction.
So long story short, I have no idea what the hell I’m going to write down. And as much as I want to get everything right for the sake of contest points, I’m fine with that. If you’re going to build unpredictability into wrestling, this is how you do it. A long list of possible contenders is far better than the let’s do a stupid thing to mess with everyone system that’s become all too common.
