They Keep Growing. The Royal Rumble Matches Add Seven More Names To The Lineups

Just keep filling in spots. There are few matches in wrestling as fun as the Royal Rumble. Not only does it go a long way towards setting up WrestleMania, but it also offers some of the biggest moments of the year. It might be a surprise return or a big elimination to set up a feud for later, but there can be a lot of things taking place in the match that shapes the future. You need people to do that though and WWE took care of some of them this week.

Two years ago, WWE announced the first ever women’s Royal Rumble. This was a game changer for the women’s division as not only were they going to be able to have their own huge match, but they also had thirty women to put into a single match. That was an accomplishment in itself and they were on equal footing with the men’s version. Now we know several more names in both of this year’s matches.

This week on SmackDown, seven more names were announced for the pair of Royal Rumble matches, with five men and two women being added to the lineups. During the course of the show, several names announced that they would be entering the Royal Rumble matches, with some of them making their announcements at the same time. These new names give us eleven men and three women announced.

Here are the names added this week:

Men
Elias
King Corbin
Dolph Ziggler
Otis
Tucker

Women
Alexa Bliss
Nikki Cross

Some people are ready to go. Check out how these announcements were made:

Opinion: A lot of these names aren’t likely to win but it’s nice to get some of the entries out of the way. More often than not a lot of the names are announced in advance, though I hope that the entire fields aren’t set up. It takes away a lot of the surprise, which is one of the best parts of the whole show. It’s fun to wonder who is coming out next and that countdown clock adds some great drama. They are nice additions, but we don’t need all sixty names announced in advance.

Which of these names is best? Who do you have winning the Royal Rumbles? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. His latest book is KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews.

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