It’s about to be WrestleMania week, and WWE is pulling out all the stops for next week’s shows, including the return of the Andre The Giant Battle Royale. The big Battle Royal will take place on next week’s SmackDown, and the lineup for the battle has been revealed to be Finn Balor, Jinder Mahal, Apollo, Commander Azeez, The Viking Raiders, Cedric Alexander, Shelton Benjamin, Damian Priest, Shanky, Madcap Moss, Reggie, Akira Tozawa, Mansoor, R-Truth, Robert Roode, and Drew Gulak. That’s not the only big event of the night, however, as there will also be an Intercontinental Championship match.
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The match will be a Triple Threat Match between Intercontinental Champion Ricochet, Angel Garza, and Humberto Carrillo. This occurs after their altercation on last night’s SmackDown, which started with a match between Garza and Ricochet, but after interference from Carrillo Ricochet challenged him to a match right after.
They battled and once again Ricochet was on the receiving end of foul play thanks to Garza, and so now they will all be in the fight for the Intercontinental Title. It would be a big shock for the Title to change hands so close to WrestleMania 38, but crazier things have happened.
Also rather shocking is the fact that United States Champion Finn Balor is part of the Andrew The Giant Battle Royal. It’s rare for a Titleholder to be in the match, especially one of Balor’s stature, and winning this event shouldn’t rank higher than the United States title, so he doesn’t really get much out of this aside from filling a needed spot in the match, even if he wins it.
As for the match itself, it doesn’t have the best history of actually propelling its winners. Cesaro and Baron Corbin’s wins (at WrestleMania 30 and 32 respectively) were the best scenarios, especially for Corbin, since it was his WrestleMania debut. The other matches haven’t really done much for the winners though, whether that be Big Show and Matt Hardy (already legends) or Braun Strowman and Mojo Rawley, who didn’t really benefit much from winning it.
We’ll have to wait and see if that remains the case here or if someone gets a genuine push from it, though if I had to choose someone who could benefit most, it would be someone like Apollo, Reggie, Madcap Moss, or Mansoor. Either of these winners could use it as a platform to launch a new run off of if WWE treats the match as a major deal and if they follow through on some sort of push or creative booking afterward.
Who do you want to see win the Battle Royal? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
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Image Credit: WWE, Netflix
