Why Seth Rollins Will Win the Men's Royal Rumble

When Roman Reigns walked out in front of that Monday Night Raw crowd and announced that he was battling leukemia, it blindsided the wrestling world.

This was the guy WWE had spent four years (even longer if you count his time with The Shield) building up as the next face of the franchise, the next John Cena or Steve Austin. The creative team had spent the bulk of 2018 building up a feud between him and Brock Lesnar, dragging a kicking and screaming fanbase along the way, that finally concluded with a decisive victory for Reigns at SummerSlam. If even you didn't care for Reigns, of if you firmly believed he could be better utilized another way, you couldn't help but wonder what WWE had planned for a new era where Reigns was firmly on top of the card as the champion in the company.

And then in an instant it all went up in smoke. Reigns was gone, and unlike with an injury there's really no timetable on how long it'll take him to come back. Suddenly there was a power vacuum at top of the flagship show, and WWE had to act fast.

Much to the chagrin of many fans, the company quickly went back to having Lesnar as WWE Universal Champion, the very concept WWE had been drilling into fans' heads to despise during the Reigns/Lesnar feud. But make no mistake — Lesnar isn't the solution to the problem of not having a top babyface star in the company, he's just a Band-Aid.

So who should end up taking Reigns place by conquering Lesnar at WrestleMania 35? Look no further than his former Shield running buddy, Seth Rollins.

Rollins has everything a wrestler could ask for in 2019. He's got a good look, top-tier athletic ability, a high-impact set of moves, a catchphrase WWE fans love to get behind and street cred from his days in Ring of Honor and NXT. But for all that he has, Rollins has never really been the guy in WWE the way Reigns was positioned as, and a lot of that falls at the feet of the creative team for the various decisions they've made. Fans were already tired of The Authority by the time he turned heel and the run-in finishes from J&J and Corporate Kane in his first WWE Championship reign got old fast. Then by the time he got back from injury fans were clamoring for an alternative to Reigns, but the creative team firmly dug in their heels to get a few months out of him against Reigns, Dean Ambrose and Finn Balor. And when they finally did have him switch sides it was less about him being a good guy and more of him being bitter that Triple H picked Kevin Owens over him to be Universal Champion (a story point they never got around to addressing).

But then a funny thing happened at the start of 2018. After spending the bulk of the previous year patching things up with Ambrose and slumming it in the Raw tag team division, Rollins moved back to being a singles star. And wouldn't you know it, one of the best in-ring wrestlers alive today is actually pretty good if you just let him wrestle.

Between his hour-long performance in that gauntlet match, his match with Miz and Balor to open WrestleMania 34 and his Intercontinental Championship title defenses (his 217 matches with Dolph Ziggler notwithstanding), Rollins proved to be a highlight of Monday Night Raw week-in and week-out.

And now that it appears his hopes of getting the IC title back a third time are done for, now seems like the best time to strap the rocket onto Rollins' back and see how far he can go. If he wins this year's men's Royal Rumble, goes into WrestleMania and slays "The Beast," Rollins could be the top guy WWE has been looking for, and the linchpin Raw has so desperately needed.