One of the most fun PPVs of the year, the Royal Rumble, is just around the corner. One of the obvious things to speculate during this season is who will win the rumble and headline WrestleMania.
This year’s WrestleMania has a lot interesting things surrounding it, from the possible return of The Rock, to Vince McMahon returning as the booker of the main roster of WWE; all interesting factors that make the rumble even more exciting.
If we go by betting odds, there are three candidates to win the rumble this year, on the men’s side. The biggest favorite in terms of betting odds is Cody Rhodes. For most he makes a he most scene as a star big enough to challenge Roman Reigns at WrestleMania, all directions points that WWE will play it safe, and give the rumble to the American Nightmare.
The second favorite in terms of betting odds and fans is Sami Zayn. The Bloodline storyline has been one of the few consistent good stories under Levesque’s reign as booker of WWE. The story feels close to it’s climax of Sami turning on the Bloodline and challenging Roman. This situation somewhat parallels to what happened with Batista (Rhodes) and Bryan Danielson (Zayn) back in 2014; all pieces are there to make history repeat itself, even though that was not the intention of WWE. Zayn feels more like a transitional feud for Reigns before WrestleMania, which is a shame.
The Rock is the third favorite in terms of betting odds. The plan of the last three years of WWE and Vince McMahon was to have Roman and The Rock face each other at the biggest stage of them all, that has been the plan for the longest time, it’s the reason Roman was protected to much these last few years and basically went through all the WWE roster to prepare for he stage for this. Recent reports indicate that Rock may not be able to get on in-ring shape on time and scrapping, at least for now, the plans of Roman Reigns vs. The Rock. We also have to consider the busy schedule of The Rock as a movie star and executive/owner of the XFL, making everything even more complicated for the match to even take place someday.
The return of Vince McMahon is something that may play into the booking of the Rumble and the plans going ahead of WrestleMania, this obviously goes for both the men’s and women’s rumbles.
The betting odds for the women’s Runble is basically a two-horse race between Rhea Ripley and Becky Lynch, and with the first with the best odds to win it. It makes sense to give Rhea Ripley the Rumble since she has been the most featured wrestler in the women’s division these last few months.
A third favorite according to the betting odds, is Bayley but her odds are not as strong as those of Lynch and Ripley. It also doesn’t make sense for her in terms of story to win the Rumble since she already challenged for the title not too long ago.
The betting odds are a good way to measure who are the favorites to win the Rumble, but with the uncertainty of Vince McMahon’s return as booker, it makes everything still being up in the air making any plans change until the very last minute. The Royal Rumble promises to be very interesting to watch and analyze as we come closer to the road to WrestleMania.
