WWE Royal Rumble 2017: Preview and predictions
Predicting every match for the WWE Royal Rumble 2017 pay-per-view.
On Sunday night, the WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view will take place from the Alamodome in San Antonio, TX. This will see five championships defended, four of which will come on the main show. The main event will be the traditional Royal Rumble match, which will give one WWE Superstar a World title match at WrestleMania 33.
This is one of WWE’s biggest nights of the year and arguably is the first day of WrestleMania season. This is the company’s most important time on the calendar to build up their biggest show of 2017 and take us into the spring. So plenty of what happens at the Royal Rumble will have long lasting impact.
How could these matches go down and bring us to WrestleMania? We predicted every bout that will take place at the Royal Rumble below:
Raw Tag Team Championship Match
Cesaro and Sheamus (c) vs. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson
Royal Rumble will be the first title defense for Cesaro and Sheamus since they defeated the New Day for the Raw Tag Team Championship in December. They are facing Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, who will receive their latest title shot after being around the picture in the summer and into the fall.
It looked like Anderson and Gallows had won the titles a few weeks ago, but due to Sheamus shoving the referee, the pinfall would be reversed. The decision would be a strange one since it felt like the roles should have been reversed, further draining the moment of a weak Raw tag team scene.
Now these two teams will compete on the Kickoff Show to determine who’s the Raw Tag Team Champions. It’s a two-hour pre-show, so they should get a fair amount of time to have a match. Not expecting a title change here, especially since it’s during the part of the event that’s not really attached to the main four hours. Any title changes are likely going to be saved for when we get to 7:00 p.m. ET and beyond.
The loss here should take Anderson and Gallows out of the title picture again. WWE failed to capitalize on any momentum they had in the summer, and have all but missed the boat on doing something relevant with this tag team.