WWE News: Big Backstage Update On Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal At WrestleMania 31, NXT Stars Added?


At WrestleMania 30, WWE debuted a big new match that was set to occur yearly at WrestleMania. It made a lot of sense, as it allowed for several WWE Superstars to have a role in WrestleMania regardless of their position in the company at the time. The winner ideally would come up with a big push, and the entire match itself would be helpful to the WWE as a filler.

The match is called the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. WWE Hall of Famer Andre the Giant was a big force in battle royals his entire career, as he never seemed to lose one. The only one he did lose seemingly was over two decades ago when he lost at the Royal Rumble in 1989 when Andre eliminated himself after Jake “The Snake” Roberts used his snake to scare Andre.

Giants hate snakes…it’s like an elephant/mouse thing I guess.

Regardless, battle royals were dominated by the big man. So a match such as this being named after him makes all the sense in the world.

Now there are new developments regarding this year’s version of the battle royal. According to Daily Wresting News, Sheamus has been rumored for a while to be involved in this match. It was uncertain if he would be, but WWE looks to be headed that direction. The original idea was to have him face Daniel Bryan, but with Bryan being added the IC Title Ladder Match, it pretty much meant WWE had to do something different with the Celtic Warrior.

The idea is to keep Sheamus off of WWE programming until WrestleMania and then have him make a surprise return there. It is said that he may very well win it to help set up a big push for him.

There is also a chance we see a couple WWE NXT stars. Bo Dallas is all but confirmed for the match as well.

It is currently unknown who WWE will use for this match from NXTw, but it is rumored that they may use Adrian Neville and/or Sami Zayn. Someone like Finn Balor or Kevin Owens are unlikely. WWE will most likely debut them down the line by themselves.

The battle royal is shaping up very nicely so far. Last year the match ran for quite a while and ended up giving us a big highlight at the end that gave Cesaro a WrestleMania moment. While we cannot know if we’ll see such a thing this time around, we’ll most likely get something interesting out of it. Again though, Sheamus looks like the winner as of now. However, WWE could always pull a 180 on us and have someone else win. You never know these days.

[IMG Credit: YouTube]

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