Reigns in 2016 Rumble
By Scott Keith on 11 January 2020
Was the WWE Royal Rumble of 2016 changed to Roman Reigns defending the WWE Championship in the Rumble match from the usual winner challenges for the title at Wrestle-Mania? The hate for Reigns was still pretty strong at that point, so it seemed like they changed whatever the plans were to try and make him as sympathetic as possible having the deck stacked against him.
That was the idea. Didn't work. Which is all the dumber because they already had succeeded in getting him over with the RAW in Philly where he won the title back from Sheamus. The thing was done! They didn't NEED to coronate him further, but because Vince was so beholden to Wrestlemania as the be-all and end-all of getting someone over as a major star and top guy, it HAD be done there again. And thus we got what we got instead.