Ranking Every WWE Title Match At Royal Rumble - From Worst To Best
20. Royal Rumble 2024 - Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles vs. LA Knight vs. Randy Orton
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Known as the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at that time, the 2024 Royal Rumble saw Roman Reigns defending his gold against three of SmackDown's top talents. Going up against Roman, we had two-time former WWE Champion AJ Styles, the white-hot rising star of LA Knight, and the legendary 14-time former World Champion and nailed-on WWE Hall of Fame headliner Randy Orton.
While this title match lacked the emotion of the previous year's Royal Rumble event when it comes to Roman Reigns - more on that later - what this had in common with its predecessor was plenty of Bloodline shenanigans. On that front, most notably we had Solo Sikoa breaking up a pinfall attempt when Orton looked to have had the match won.
The in-ring action here was good, solid, the sort of work you'd expect when looking at those involved. What the match really suffered from, though, was a lack of stakes. Granted, Randy Orton was made to look strong here, but nobody believed the Tribal Chief was dropping the Undisputed WWE Universal Title when so much had been made of the wider story of the likely WrestleMania rematch with Cody Rhodes being on the horizon. As for Styles and Knight, they were just bodies here, designed to help the match chug along, and lay the path for their own one-on-one match at 'Mania.
Decent, well-worked pro wrestling, but ever-so-predictable low-stakes pro wrestling.