10 Early Favourites To Win WWE Royal Rumble 2018 Match
Who's going far at the Wells Fargo Center?
It's post-SummerSlam season which, not to be too cynical about things, means we're probably in for some dire television in the coming months. With WWE, it's best to use past performance as an indicator of the future - as opposed to cruel, cruel optimism.
AJ Styles survived it - he's AJ Styles - but an otherwise sterling SmackDown suffered when James Ellsworth gurned his way through the autumn months. The Kevin Owens/Chris Jericho bromance was overcooked on RAW. Clash of Champions, Hell In A Cell, and Roadblock: End of the Line were all tainted by the same old cheap heat shenanigans, which only really work when used sparingly. WWE set up residence at the well - and because we've been conditioned to expect little major movement as the year draws to an often agonising close, those matches were bereft of drama and heat. So it's perhaps little wonder that the promised land of WrestleMania season is always something to daydream over, like the summer sun in the face of relentless, gloomy winter showers.
Things can change in a click of the fingers in WWE. Injuries derail plans. Pushes don't pan out. Bray Wyatt didn't even get to May before he was shot down in the embarrassing House Of Horrors match at Payback.
But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
10. Randy Orton
You can never count out Randy Orton, massively-maligned massive 2017 push or no. Higher-ups simply refuse to align his positioning with his perception. He is a top star and will continue to be pushed in kind, irrespective of how overexposed he is. And why wouldn't he be? If you built a sports entertainer from the ground up, he'd look like Randy Orton!
There's also WWE's unrequited love for achievements and records to consider. "Randy Orton is only the fourth man to win the Royal Rumble two years in a row!" doesn't sound that impressive. Then again, neither did "The Universal Title will be defended in a Fatal 4-Way for the first time ever!" - and WWE still parroted the line in order to sell SummerSlam. It's just something they do in an ongoing quest to achieve something without using much in the way of imagination. It's hard to see where Orton fits in now, let alone on the biggest night of the WWE calendar. He's as hot as snow. But again - few saw his march to Orlando coming after Brock Lesnar tore strips off his skull on August 21, 2016.
You can never count out Randy Orton. It doesn't even matter that he cannot point at the WrestleMania sign.