WWE Star Was Supposed To Be Surprise Entrant In Royal Rumble Match

WWE

A WWE star has revealed he was originally supposed to be a surprise entrant in this year’s Royal Rumble match.

WWE Royal Rumble 2026 took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on January 31, with Liv Morgan and Roman Reigns winning the Rumble matches.

One of the stories of the men’s Rumble was the performance of two-time NXT Champion Oba Femi upon his official call-up to the main roster.

Femi entered at #1, scored five eliminations which tied with Reigns for the most in the match, and lasted over 39 minutes, finishing second in that statistic to Je’Von Evans by under two minutes.

In a new interview with No-Contest Wrestling, Femi revealed that he was actually supposed to be a surprise entrant, and he was caught off guard when WWE announced him in advance.

He explained:

“I didn’t think the Saudi crowd would be hip to The Ruler’s stuff. So shoutout to the Saudi crowd, I slept on them. I slept on the Saudi crowd, but they were there.

“Because when I was in Saudi, I was kind of a surprise but not really a surprise – I thought I was gonna be a surprise, next thing I see, the WWE social media was like, ‘Oba Femi’s going to be in the Rumble!’ I was like, ‘Well, there goes the mystery.’

“But I’m there, I’m not doing anything, there’s no planned meet and greets for me because I was supposed to be a surprise, and the one time I ended up leaving the hotel to just go out there, there were people who saw me and recognized me and they did the chant, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Maybe I’ll be okay come Rumble night.’

“So, very pleasant surprise. Saudi, I apologize, you guys know what’s going on.”

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• wwe
• Royal Rumble
• Oba Femi

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