Expect Roman Reigns to defend his title at Royal Rumble — but not against LA Knight

Looks like the Megastar won’t be getting another shot at the Tribal Chief at the 2024 WWE Royal Rumble.

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Roman Reigns won’t be at Survivor Series, but he should be back in the fold for Royal Rumble in January. The Undisputed WWE Universal Champion should also be putting his title on the line, and while we don’t know yet who may step up to challenge him, a new report suggests there’s one name that can be crossed off the list of potential contenders.

That would be LA Knight. The most organically over wrestler in WWE over the past few months already got one shot at Reigns at Crown Jewel, but he fell short thanks to intervention from the other members of The Bloodline.

Since then, Knight has made it clear that he intends to dismantle Reigns’ group one member at a time, which has led some to believe that the end game would be a rematch between Knight and Reigns at Royal Rumble.

But as Lee Corso might say, not so fast, my friend.

Dave Meltzer addressed the topic of Reigns’ next match in his latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required), saying that while the Tribal Chief will be in action, it’s probably not going to be against Knight.

We were told that as of this time Reigns vs. Knight is not the title match at Rumble. That is Reigns’ next match. There are those who feel it should be Knight in that spot but we were told Levesque has another plan right now

With Survivor Series going down this weekend, there’s certainly enough time to position someone else to face Reigns. One idea is a returning Randy Orton, who never got the program with Roman that was expected last year due to injury.

As for Knight, maybe his beef with The Bloodline culminates in a match against Solo Sikoa, at least for now. There’s also the possibility that he will be in the Royal Rumble match itself, where he’d be expected to be among the favorites to win it.

In any case, WWE likely won’t sit on Knight too much since he remains hot right now. And Reigns is Reigns, so he’ll be one of the big selling points of Royal Rumble no matter who he faces, and he’ll almost certainly win so he can retain his title heading into WrestleMania 40 next spring.