Recent reports have confirmed several changes took place during Royal Rumble 2022 and it included Roman Reigns’ title defense. The top WWE Superstar defended his Universal Championship against his former Shield brethren Seth Rollins and lost that match. However, he didn’t drop his belt owing to the fact that the loss was handed via disqualification.
On a recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that WWE originally had planned for Seth to be part of the men’s Royal Rumble match. Rollins defeated Roman Reigns in the opening match, via disqualification but the original idea called for the Tribal Chief to win the match via clean pinfall or submission.
Royal Rumble 2022: Former Champions Rejected WWE Offer For An Appearance
But then the chair shots were added for the post-match beatdown by Roman Reigns which caused the DQ and hence Vince McMahon personally changed the finish. The attack and a defeat would have been too much for Seth and hence the clean defeat was scrapped. Also for the storyline beatdown, it was decided he should not be in the Royal Rumble match.
Jon Moxley Had Best Conversation With WWE Chairman After Getting Intimate With Renee Young
Roman Reigns suffered his first PPV loss in 2 years
As a result, Roman Reigns suffered his first WWE pay-per-view/premiere-live-event loss since Royal Rumble 2020 which ended an impressive 734-day run. The multi-time world champion competed in the Men’s Rumble match in 2020 and was the final man eliminated from the match by the winner Drew McIntyre. But on that same night, he won a match against Baron Corbin.
Also, it was noted in the report that the entire plan for Royal Rumble 2022 was to push the scheduled Wrestlemania match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, as WWE feels that this would be the biggest match of the year. This is the reason why everything that happened on the show was concentrated on this storyline, only. Lesnar won the Men’s Rumble match to solidify the match, afterward.
As of now, Lesnar is attempting to regain his WWE Championship at the upcoming Elimination Chamber event so that ‘Mani match could be billed as a Title vs. Title match. The Beast will compete inside the steel structure for the very first time against the current champion Bobby Lashley, Rollins, Austin Theory, Riddle, and AJ Styles. He’s also the predicted favorite to win the match and the title.
