Roman Reigns Initial Plans for WWE Title Match at Royal Rumble 2024

The initial idea to plan Roman Reigns’ title defense at the Royal Rumble 2024 has been disclosed, with spoilers being revealed for the scheduled match.

After Reigns was a thorn in 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 be competing against each other for the WWE Undisputed Universal Championship at this month’s Royal Rumble event.

The current plan is Roman Reigns in order to protect his crown medal in the form of a four-way match but it’s emerged that it was not the plan originally set on January 27.

According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, the idea of a Roman Reigns vs Randy Orton singles match was the initial idea that WWE wanted to implement in mind for Royal Rumble.

Meltzer said WWE did not want to see Randy Orton definitively lose at Royal Rumble, Meltzer said:

“The real issue with this is… it was the initial concept involved Roman (Reigns) as well as Randy Orton for the Rumble.

“Essentially there were a few people who didn’t want be able to beat Randy Orton this early and simply believed that there was the potential to make money by putting Randy Orton and Roman in an eventual program but it’s way too early to take it on. However, LA Knight just got beat and AJ (Styles) isn’t powerful enough… I believe AJ is the person they would have preferred because Roman is able to beat him.

“The most fundamental gist of it was that AJ gives them a person they can beat, and LA provides them with an opponent they could beat.”