More Backstage News on Brock Lesnar’s WWE Royal Rumble Opponent & Perception of Finn Balor

There’s been a bit of a growing story recently involving WWE Raw brand superstar Finn Balor, who according to reports was next in line to face Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at the 2018 Royal Rumble.

Several sources have claimed that Balor was pulled from the spot because Vince McMahon didn’t think he was over enough to be in such a high-profile position on one of the company’s most important events of the year. However, Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso disputes these rumors, claiming that Balor was never being considered to begin with, and that McMahon believes he is “bland” without The Demon gimmick.

As we pointed out in an earlier column, it seems unlikely that Vince wouldn’t even consider the 36-year-old superstar for a match against Lesnar, given his status as the first ever Universal Champion and his much-praised WWE TLC victory over AJ Styles, who faced the “Beast Incarnate” at Survivor Series.

In an update to the situation, Dave Meltzer in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting that Lesnar vs. Balor was indeed the planned Royal Rumble main event as recently as this past weekend. He also noted that McMahon changed his mind and opted to go in a new direction on Monday, prior to this week’s WWE Raw.

Now the question is: who WILL challenge Lesnar for the Universal Championship at the Royal Rumble? There’s always the possibility that he doesn’t defend the title at all, but that is the least likely of all the ideas given that they’re building to the main event of Lesnar vs. Reigns at WrestleMania and not having your top title defended for four straight months is just not a great idea as far as numbers go. Meltzer, via the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, also reported that McMahon was “down” on the idea of Lesnar facing Braun Strowman again as they went into their last match with a tremendous amount of hype and the general consensus is that it just wasn’t very good.

Unless there is a major call-up from NXT, here are the top names on the Raw side that could even possibly be considered at this point: Strowman, Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns, John Cena (who works for both brands), Kane, Samoa Joe and The Miz.

Strowman and Reigns are out for obvious reasons. Cena is always a possibility in any situation but there’s been no indication they’ll go that route and Cena should probably not take a loss on that level if they have big plans for him at WrestleMania. Samoa Joe could be a good fit as they’ve worked together successfully in the past and they’ve been doing a good job building him up since his return. The others could all probably perform at a main event level with Lesnar, but none of them are more popular that Finn Balor or could work a match on his level, which is the whole point.

Rollins and Ambrose currently work as a tag team, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility that one of them could step up to face Lesnar for the title. That could play nicely into Roman Reigns coming in to make the save and set up their program, or they could even use it to break up The Shield if they wanted to go that route. Some have suggested Jeff Hardy, and while he was easily the most over name in the company during his brief run as world champion and a guaranteed draw, he’s not expected to return for another 4-6 months.