10 Shocks WWE Could Pull At The Greatest Royal Rumble
Rowdy Arabia
Is there any way WWE's Greatest Royal Rumble ultimately disappoints?
It is perhaps the most loaded card in WWE history not named WrestleMania. Seven title matches support two feature contests pitting John Cena against Triple H and The Undertaker against Rusev. All of those sit in the shadow of the real main event - a 50 man Royal Rumble. 50 f*cking men. There's quite literally never been a match like it. There almost certainly won't be one again.
Only once have WWE messed around with their most treasured gimmick. In 2011, Alberto Del Rio won the only 40-man variant of the clash to earn an opening match loss at the subsequent WrestleMania. Such indignity won't await the winner of this marathon match, though the audacious trophy currently lined up for the winner doesn't really seem quite a fitting enough reward.
The promotion of this event has proven just how much WWE are willing to stretch themselves to impress their Saudi sugar-daddies. Merely just delivering upon the lofty expectations of the near-60,000 likely to file in to Jeddah's King Abdullah International Stadium seems like the least they'll do to make good on assisting the country with its worryingly aggressive rebranding.
10. The Main Event
John Cena, Triple H, The Undertaker, AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns will all compete in contests that could objectively be considered Greatest Royal Rumble's 'main event', despite the fact that the show's headliner is a 50-man f*cking Royal Rumble.
Though littered with questionable geo-political ramifications, the stacked card reads like the WrestleMania redux it was perhaps always intended to be. WWE presumably didn't have loads of input as to the hows and whens of the event, but its insertion on the calendar drastically altered at least one 'Show Of Shows' clash.
Rumblings on Brock Lesnar's newest contract have posited that he'll earn half a million dollars per appearance going forward - an astronomical rate considering WWE's current financial model - which seems to imply that the company have had to fork out big in order to delay their major title change for the Saudi supershow.
The aesthetic benefits Roman's potential Universal Title win substantially more than the glum hum of a p*ssed off New Orleans crowd, and WWE may double down on that by putting 'The Big Dog' in the battle royal's catbird seat as well. John Cena or Triple H will lose a high profile clash on the night itself too - could one of them look to rectify things by making history at the expense of 49 other victims?