2024 Royal Rumble Preview

While WrestleMania is circled on wrestling fans’ calendars across the globe, it is January’s Royal Rumble that hardcore fans hold near and dear to their hearts every year. This year, the 30-man/woman spectacle will be held at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the winner of each Rumble will receive a title shot at Mania.

The Royal Rumble began in 1988 and has become a promotional staple of the WWE’s yearly content slate. The event’s simplicity attracts hardcore and casual fans alike, as the rules are easy to understand.

Basically, two men/women will start the match with a new entrant into it every 2 minutes (or that about). A participant is eliminated when they are thrown over the top rope and both feet hit the floor. On the surface, the match seems straightforward when you introduce those kinds of rules in an event that contains some of the best athletes and acrobatics in pro wrestling.

Typically, the Royal Rumble is used to further a storyline, months in place, that culminates at WrestleMania. The Royal Rumble is not as fun in these cases because the conceivable winners amount to one or maybe two different superstars.

This year, we have plenty of potential winners and storylines that make this potentially one of the best Royal Rumbles ever, and certainly within the past several years.

Men’s Royal Rumble Preview

The leading plot as we head into Saturday’s men’s Royal Rumble is between Cody Rhodes and CM Punk, two men almost guaranteed to be in the final four. Cody looks to “finish his story” as he attempts to duplicate his success at last year’s Rumble where he entered at the coveted 30 spot and won the whole thing.

However, Cody would go on to lose to Roman Reigns at Mania, thus unable to achieve his goal of winning the WWE title, the championship his father never won. This is great motivation even if it is a rerun, but when you factor in Cody on the cover of WWE2K, it seems more plausible than ever that Cody could win the big one at Mania this year, meaning he should enter as a favorite to win.

But what makes this Rumble so special is the unknown, and with the shifting landscape over at WWE HQ and the recent TKO/Endeavor news coupled with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson landing on the board, it is safe to say that things are probably fluid even 48hrs out from the show.

Of course, The Rock vs Reigns is the match WWE and fans worldwide want to see. It will bring big money and attention as the headliner for WrestleMania, so the possibility of The Rock entering the Rumble as a surprise entrant—surprise entrants are a staple of the Rumble experience—and winning it all might be faint. Still, it is well within the possibility of storytelling.

That said, Rock-Reigns doesn’t need the Rumble to help set it up, as The Rock himself referred to “sitting at the head of the table” during his surprise segment on RAW: DAY ONE earlier this year.

Of course, the Rumble can still be won by a returning veteran with ratings power that stretches promotions. Since CM Punk’s return at Survivor Series, fans have been fantasy-booking him to enter the Rumble and win it all. CM Punk has just as much of a storybook connection with the Royal Rumble as Cody does because it was the January event where Punk lost his title to The Rock. It was the 2014 Rumble where we last saw Punk in WWE before returning at the end of 2023.

Like The Rock, Punk doesn’t need to win the Rumble to up the stakes with the proposed Seth Rollins match. Rollins is dealing with a knee injury, but not dropping the belt at RAW this past week makes it plausible that the WWE intends to take a “wait-and-see” approach with Rollins’ injury—an MCL grade 2 tear and partially torn meniscus that has with it a 3–4-month timetable on the shelf.

Punk and Cody had a fiery segment against one another on RAW this past week that upped the excitement level for this weekend. If I were a betting man, it would be hard not to lay my money on either of these men.

However, there are dark horse participants like Gunther who have all the momentum heading into the 30-man over-the-top Rumble. Aside from being the current and longest reigning intercontinental champion, Gunther was featured heavily on RAW this past week for all his impressive stats in last year’s Rumble. In fact, Gunther made it to the final two in the match.

Women’s Rumble Afterthought?

For all the potential heading into the men’s Rumble, the same cannot be said about the women’s. This is unfortunate because last year’s women’s Royal Rumble was booked so well and essentially launched Rhea Ripley into the stratosphere she currently orbits.

Not much attention has been paid to the women’s Rumble, and I don’t mean it in terms of TV time and segments. It just feels like WWE is telling us (not showing us) that Nia Jax and Becky Lynch are all but sealed as the final 4, and I’ll add Bayley, who has seen an uptick in betting action for her to win the Rumble.

Rhea is one of the best women’s world champs in recent memory, and her reign has been supreme, but the women competing in the Rumble are going to have to put the match on their back and put up a great showing to jumpstart a feud with whichever champ is chosen by the Rumble winner.

Bianca Belair should have more momentum heading into the Rumble, but she is fully capable of building on that in the match itself.

All in all, the men have nearly doubled the confirmed participants as the women, which should indicate the timeshare these two divisions are receiving with creative.

4 Way, 1 Winner

The WWE Championship will be defended. It has certainly been long enough that it has to be a fatal 4-way.

AJ Styles, LA Knight, and Randy Orton will challenge the Bloodline’s “Tribal Chief” Roman Reigns for his title. We’re sure to get a Bloodline interference, one that either confirms that Solo is a buffoon or one of the most dominant forces in WWE—it is difficult to say which since WWE has booked him as both in the past six months.

No matter what the finish, Reigns is walking away as champ. WWE did not bring Roman this far to have him drop the title outside of Mania.

Still, the fact remains that The Rock seems like his potential Mania opponent, and that match doesn’t need the title. The Rock may not want the title on the line considering the optics of him coming in and winning the title, again, taking chances away from full-timers.

If you consider that Johnson was given the rights to the name “The Rock” and he was given a board seat at TKO, all points to Dwayne negotiating a big-time fight.

As a writer who covers boxing, I can tell you that when a fight gets big enough, the A-side can get away with making requests that he would not usually get away with, but knowing your value and holding most of the leverage gives you almost anything.

If Roman walks out of Tropicana Field without the title, I suspect it will only happen to further the bigger storyline coming our way.

Logan Paul-Kevin Owens, What’s at Stake?

So, the United States title is on the line, but the stakes in this match have hit new heights. Most fans initially thought the pairing of Logan Paul and Kevin Owens was weird, but it was the perfect matchup. In one corner, you have Mr. Wrestling, Kevin Owens/Steen, who ran the Indy gauntlet and came out the other end a genuine WWE superstar, and he’s facing the ultimate snot-nosed heel who has “everything handed to him.”

Truthfully, Paul works very hard to improve his wrestling craft, and he seems like a natural, but in the storyline, Paul has been given everything Owens had to work and sacrifice for decades.

This match offers both competitors something meaningful. For Paul, he gets a master class in wrestling from one of its top professors. For Owens, he gets worldwide exposure outside of the wrestling universe and into the commercial landscape.

Regardless of whether Logan retains, let’s hope he has enough left to make a Rumble appearance because if he is planned for the match, then we know he’ll work hard to top his “double clothesline from opposite aprons” moment with Ricochet last year.

Mario Mungia

Mario Mungia Jr. has a decade worth of experience as a combat sports journalist and correspondent which began with ThaBoxingVoice (TBV) as a podcast co-host, writer and editor-in-chief. Aside from his online resume, Mario spent a fair portion of his early career working for Spanish/English magazine Premier Round and the Mexican website Izquierdo. Mario has also contributed to NYFights while simultaneously working for MIC Sports Network as part of the broadcast crew covering local high school sports. Since then, he has launched his own podcast/live stream (Infighting/Work In Progress) and is covering pro wrestling for FightsATW.

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