Royal Rumble 2022: Spoiler on huge championship change at WWE PPV

Bengaluru, January 17: Universal Championship Roman Reigns may possibly drop his title at the upcoming 2022 Royal Rumble to his friend-turned-foe Seth Rollins.

WWE generally takes the championship away from a champion after setting up a massive record and that trend might just continue with the top-most superstar of their roster.

Roman Reigns surpassed Brock Lesnar to become the longest-reigning Universal Champion of all-time in WWE. As it stands, he is on his 505th day of his title reign, while Lesnar’s reign lasted for 503 days. This also makes Reigns the longest-reigning world champion of the modern era of WWE.

The greatest of this generation, the best to ever hold the #UniversalTitle.

The numbers, the main events, the dominant performances… they don’t lie.

504 days and counting… #GOAT https://t.co/CEgtWvzYdl

— Roman Reigns (@WWERomanReigns) January 16, 2022

The Head of the Table has also not been pinned or submitted since December 2019 but his undefeated streak is coming to an end. Dave Meltzer revealed on Wrestling Observer Radio that the current plan is to make Seth Rollins the next Universal Champion at Royal Rumble 2022.

This move affirms WWE’s efforts to shuffle things up for Wrestlemania 38 as Roman Reigns will then go after Brock Lesnar’s WWE Championship in their next big encounter (Lesnar will retain his WWE Title against Bobby Lashley at The Rumble, per the report).

On the other hand, Rollins will head into the Show of Shows as the reigning Universal Champion to defend the strap against a top superstar from Raw (possibly Kevin Owens/Bobby Lashley/Big E)

“The plan for Day 1 was that Seth was gonna be the WWE Champion coming off of the show and Lesnar was gonna be the Universal Champion coming off of the show. So Lesnar is now the WWE Champion.

"Seth was going to defend the title on one of the WrestleMania nights and then Lesnar and Roman were gonna be for the other title on the other WrestleMania night," Meltzer noted in his report. (quotes courtesy Wrestling News)

Rollins vs. Reigns announcement for The Rumble was an interesting one because it will be a co-branded match where the two superstars belong to different WWE brands. But WWE must have given a thought to finding a proper way of dethroning Reigns from his title run which led to this decision.

These two former Shield brethren wrestled in almost a dozen televised/PPV shows in the past with Rollins gaining the upper-hand. The Monday Night Messiah scored several victories over The Tribal Chief including two clean World Heavyweight Title pin-fall wins. (at Wrestlemania 31 and Money in the Bank 2016)

Even during their last TV encounter on the October 11, 2019 edition of SmackDown, Rollins got the win via DQ. As you can see, Rollins has been built to be the most suitable candidate to finally deliver a loss to Reigns and the inevitable should happen at The Rumble.