WWE Royal Rumble 2017: 10 Potential Dark Horses
7. Luke Harper
Are WWE finally giving Luke Harper his due? The Wyatt Family loyalist has played a key role in the ongoing Bray Wyatt/Randy Orton story, and he was made to look like a beast on this week’s SmackDown. He was unable to defeat Dolph Ziggler, The Miz, and Dean Ambrose in the night’s number one contender’s match, but it took each of their finishers to put him down, and he was presented like a real monster for the first time in an eternity.
Harper’s a hell of a wrestler. Not only does he bring a supreme power game to the table, but he’s exceptionally light on his feet for a man of his size. He might just be the best “big man” in the business today, and while his previous singles run was a failure, Harper is an ideal candidate for a push up SmackDown’s surprisingly threadbare singles ladder. All he needs to do is concentrate on destroying fools in the ring and let Bray do his talking, and he’ll fly up the card.
WWE will need to keep pushing Harper as SmackDown’s resident monster to pull this off, but he’d certainly be a more welcome winner than Braun Strowman. Braun has admittedly improved leaps and bounds since striking out on his own, but Harper’s in a completely different league. With Bray and Randy concentrating on tag action, Luke is primed and ready for his career’s second big singles run.