The initial strategy of Roman Reigns’ title defense at the Royal Rumble 2024 has been disclosed, with spoilers being revealed for the scheduled match.
After Reigns interfered with the main event between Randy Orton, AJ Styles and LA Knight on the January 5 episode of SmackDown, Nick Aldis announced that Orton, Styles and Knight will compete to win the WWE Undisputed Universal Championship at this month’s Royal Rumble event.
Although the plan currently is Roman Reigns to fight for his title medal in an all-four-way fight but it’s come to light that this isn’t the original plan for the 27th of January.
As per Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, the idea of a Roman Reigns vs Randy Orton singles match was the first concept WWE wanted to implement to host the Royal Rumble.
In announcing that WWE did not want to see Randy Orton definitively lose at Royal Rumble, Meltzer said:
“The real issue with this is… The initial concept involved Roman (Reigns) as well as Randy Orton for the Rumble.
“Essentially there were a few people who didn’t want to be able to beat Randy Orton this early and thought there’s the potential to make money through Randy Orton and Roman in the future but it’s way too early to make it happen. However, LA Knight just got beat and AJ (Styles) isn’t quite strong enough… I believe AJ is the one they’d have liked, since Roman is able to beat him.
“The main idea was that AJ provides them with someone they can beat, and LA provides them with an opponent they are able to beat.”
