Original Plan For Roman Reigns Vs. Seth Rollins Royal Rumble Finish Revealed

Universal Champion Roman Reigns defended his belt against Seth Rollins in a great match at this past weekend’s Royal Rumble Premium Live Event.

What was less great, at least in the opinion of the majority of fans, was the match’s finish, which Saw Roman get himself disqualified for refusing to release a Guillotine choke.

According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, the end of the match was changed several times, as originally Roman was going to beat Seth clean, and then Seth would be in the Rumble match. Meltzer said:

“Seth Rollins was originally in the Rumble, which was another story – both Rumbles were changed over and over and over again. In fact, the Seth match with Roman was changed several times too. Essentially, the original finish was Roman Reigns was gonna beat Seth Rollins.

“The whole show, the basic gist of the Rumble show, was that Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar is the big match of the year, and everything at the Rumble was to accentuate that as the big match of the year. So both had to look really, really strong.”

Meltzer’s co-host Bryan Alvarez then asked why Roman didn’t just beat Seth clean. To which Dave responded:

“Because Vince changed the finish because, when the decision was made to do all those chair shots at the end, Vince thought that was too much to do to Seth Rollins, to destroy him like that. Which also led to the idea – Shane was really pushing for Rollins in the Rumble, but when you did that beatdown, the feeling was it would be really stupid for him to take that terrible beating and then go into the Rumble.”

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Meltzer added the decision was made to do the chair shot finish as it would be a more believable way of writing Seth out of the Rumble match.

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• Seth Rollins
• Roman Reigns
• Royal Rumble
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