WWE
A WWE Raw star was originally planned to win the 2026 Men’s Royal Rumble Match according to a new report.
The WWE Royal Rumble 2026 premium live event saw Roman Reigns win his second Rumble Match of his career, last eliminating GUNTHER to earn his main event spot at WrestleMania 42.
“The OTC” has since chosen World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk as his opponent at WrestleMania 42, however, WWE’s original plans for the “Grandest Stage of Them All” would have resulted in a different opponent for Punk in Las Vegas.
According to Dave Meltzer in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Bron Breakker was at one point planned to win the Men’s Royal Rumble and challenge CM Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 42, while the eventual Men’s Rumble winner Roman Reigns was set to face Cody Rhodes.
Detailing the changing WrestleMania 42 plans throughout the build to the two-night event, Meltzer writes:
Roman Reigns vs. CM Punk will be the big match at this year’s WrestleMania after Reigns won the Royal Rumble on 1/31 in Riyadh, by throwing out Gunther, and picked Punk as his opponent in a great back-and-forth promo battle on the 2/2 Raw show in Philadelphia.
The other main event, likely on the Saturday show, is Drew McIntyre vs. Cody Rhodes for the WWE title, although it is still possible to add Jacob Fatu to this match. The final two main events have changed twice since the year’s plans were made.
The basic idea is the four biggest stars in the company were and are Reigns, Punk, Rhodes and Seth Rollins. So the plan was for Rollins to defend the world title against Reigns, a match they’ve avoided since Rollins won the three-way at last year’s WrestleMania and took Paul Heyman from Reigns. Rhodes would then defend the world title against Punk in a babyface vs. babyface match which the company has avoided doing but teased multiple times since Punk’s return.
The injury to Rollins caused changes, as they went with Punk as champion with the idea of a three step program with Bron Breakker getting a title match on the Raw Netflix anniversary show and losing, coming back and winning the Rumble and then facing and beating Punk for the title at Mania to basically anoint Breakker as the top full-time star and eventually build to another match that has been avoided, a Breakker vs. Reigns singles match. Rhodes was to defend the title against Punk, who would win the Elimination Chamber.
Enter McIntyre, who pushed the idea that since he had lost multiple times to Rhodes, that it would be better for him to win the title in the already announced Three Stages of Hell match. Rhodes was on board with that idea. As noted here previously, they had a lot of creative worked out for Rhodes vs. Reigns, a match-up between the two people the company considers as the two biggest stars, with Rhodes as the full-time biggest star and Reigns as the part-time but actually viewed as the current biggest star of all. Paul Levesque, said to be the Wednesday before the Friday of the Three Stages of Hell match, agreed with Rhodes and McIntyre. His feeling is that the direction felt predictable and that Rhodes vs. Reigns had already headlined two WrestleMania shows. Reigns, Rhodes and Punk are viewed right now as the three biggest stars, so essentially McIntyre was getting Breakker’s spot in the title picture. When the decision was made, they had to scrap Breakker winning the Rumble and the choices were either Rhodes or Reigns.
The idea was to not have Rhodes win, trying to make him earn his title shot in the Elimination Chamber and build the show until the end of this month around Punk vs. Reigns as the big match. They could have picked Rhodes or Reigns, but based on the story being told, Rhodes winning the Chamber (and it still could go to Fatu and they could throw a curve ball but I don’t see this year’s Mania pivoting away from Rhodes in a title match) making the most sense.
To make sure you stay up to date with all the biggest wrestling and WrestleTalk news, follow us on Threads by clicking this link!
5 hours ago by Jamie Toolan
