WWE Royal Rumble 2018: 11 Things That Must Happen

2. Set Up Matches For WrestleMania

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One of the great things about the best Royal Rumbles throughout history is that they have laid out clear paths toward WrestleMania. The Road to that show starts in earnest on Sunday night, and there isn’t a better time to get some stories moving ahead of New Orleans. The WrestleMania card is still somewhat of a mystery, but it must start coming together on Sunday night.

The Royal Rumble match presents extremely simple opportunities for WWE to get the ball rolling on the feuds that will carry it through to the Show of Shows. Illegal eliminations are mind-numbingly irritating, but they do serve a purpose. They are an easy way for a heel to start a legitimate beef with a face. It worked for Bad News Brown and Roddy Piper in 1990. It’ll work for The Miz and Finn Bálor in 2018.

And what of John Cena and The Undertaker? Is the Royal Rumble the right place to start the build towards their much-rumoured WrestleMania bout? I have no desire to see ‘Taker wrestling again, especially following his supposed retirement at the end of last year’s show, but WWE is likely to see enough value in this dream match to go ahead with it.

The road may begin on Sunday night.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.