The finish to the Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns match at the WWE Royal Rumble show was changed by Vince McMahon, per Dave Meltzer. It was noted on Wrestling Observer Radio that Reigns was originally supposed to win the match and Rollins was supposed to be part of the Rumble match but those plans were scrapped.
“Seth Rollins was originally in the Rumble, which is another story,” Meltzer said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard but both Rumbles were changed over and over and over again. In fact, the Seth match with Roman was changed several times too. Essentially, the original finish was Roman Reigns was gonna beat Seth Rollins. I don’t what was gonna happen from there. The basic gist of the Rumble show was that Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar is the big match of the year and everything at the Rumble was to accentuate that as the big match of the year. So both had to look really really strong.”
When asked by Bryan Alvarez why Roman didn’t beat Rollins, Meltzer responded, “because Vince changed the finish because when the decision was made to do all those chairshots at the end, Vince thought that was too much to do to Seth Rollins to destroy him like that. Shane was really pushing for Rollins in the Rumble but when he did that beatdown, the feeling was it would be really stupid to take that terrible beating and then go into the Rumble.”
Meltzer added, “the feeling was that the chairshots were more devastating than the win so they went for the chairshots.”
Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez noted how odd it was that Rollins was on Raw and basically no sold the beating he took on Saturday.
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