WWE Reveals 4 New Names For Royal Rumble 2023 On SmackDown

Ladies and gents, behold the first entrants for the men's and women's WWE Royal Rumble bouts.

Kofi Kingston Santos Escobar
WWE.com

WWE confirmed three names for the men's Royal Rumble and one for the women's during Friday's episode of SmackDown.

Liv Morgan was the only woman revealed for the latter, but the former SmackDown Women's Champion did say she wants to enter the match first and go the whole way. That bold strategy does suit the spitfire babyface nature of Liv's character, to be fair.

How about the men's side? Kofi Kingston, Santos Escobar and Ricochet are the first three wrestlers to declare themselves for Rumble duty come 28 January. On SmackDown, Kofi managed to throw Escobar over the top rope during their singles match, which was clearly a preview of what's to come later this month.

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WWE do this every year like fans are going to forget how the long-running Rumble works.

Ricochet is an interesting one, because he's also involved in the ongoing Intercontinental Title feud between reigning champ GUNTHER and Braun Strowman. It's likely he'll work some spots with Imperium members Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci in the Rumble, assuming of course that both men bag slots in the 30-deep field.

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More names will be announced shortly.

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Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.