Opening Odds to Win 2020 Royal Rumble: Roman Reigns & Shayna Baszler Favored

• WWE Royal Rumble will take place at Minute Maid Park in Houston on January 26th
• The event will host the highly-anticipated men’s and women’s Royal Rumble matches
• Who do early odds favor reigning supreme in each Rumble before going on to WrestleMania?

The Royal Rumble is always among WWE’s most anticipated events of the year and the upcoming installment later this month (Sunday, Jan 26th) should be no exception, especially with two star-studded Royal Rumble matches on tap for the men and women.

The winners of the Rumbles will earn the opportunity to vie for a championship of their choosing at WrestleMania 36. Superstars from both SmackDown and Raw have already begun to announce their entry into the annual Battle Royal and stake their claim to the title shot.

Oddsmakers have odds to win each Rumble, but with the pay-per-view not for another two weeks, these lines are bound to change.

2020 Men’s Royal Rumble Match Odds

All odds taken January 9.

As soon as Bray Wyatt captured the Universal Championship at Crown Jewel in October, fans started to speculate that Roman Reigns winning the Royal Rumble for a second time was a strong possibility. After all, no one on the SmackDown roster poses the same type of threat to The Fiend that Reigns does, not to mention that The Big Dog is still owed a shot at the strap after being forced to vacate it back in October 2018.

Therefore, Reigns leading in the odds at +175 should come as no surprise.

Meanwhile, Brock Lesnar established himself as a likely contender to win the Rumble after declaring the number-one spot on Monday’s Raw, despite being the current reigning WWE champion.

There is a small chance Lesnar eliminates all of his opposition and chooses to either face The Fiend in a title match at WrestleMania or simply take the night off, but it’s far more likely that whoever throws him out of the ring will be the one to challenge for his WWE Championship at the Show of Shows instead.

CM Punk is an interesting choice in third at +600. He hasn’t wrestled a single match since the 2014 Rumble. While he’s closer than he’s ever been to getting back in the ring (having joined WWE Backstage in November), he has shown zero signs of returning to the physical side of wrestling at this point, and thus he shouldn’t be as heavily favored as he is.

Finally, Kevin Owens, Cain Velasquez and Drew McIntyre would all make sense to win the Rumble from a storyline standpoint and would make for fine opponents for either Lesnar or Wyatt at WrestleMania, so they’re worth keeping an eye out for as well.

Women’s Royal Rumble Match Odds

It’s very telling that the top three picks to win the women’s Royal Rumble match as of now are not currently on the main roster. Shayna Baszler leads at -150, while Ronda Rousey is a distant second at +500 and Rhea Ripley trailing close behind in third at +600.

Baszler made her main-roster debut as part of the build to Survivor Series in November and dominated at every turn. She wound up winning the main event against Becky Lynch and Bayley, which wouldn’t have happened if WWE didn’t have plans to push her on either Raw or SmackDown sometime soon.

After what we saw during Survivor Series season, Baszler is the best possible person to advance to WrestleMania to compete for Becky Lynch’s Raw Women’s Championship. The only other individual who would be as compelling of a challenger is Rousey, but her inactivity since WrestleMania 35 and desire to start a family seem to suggest that she won’t be back at any point in the foreseeable future.

Ripley is a bit of a surprising name in that she is fresh off winning the NXT Women’s Championship. Then again, she too had a strong showing at Survivor Series and has unfinished business with Lynch from their one-on-outing outing on NXT in November.

Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks and Lacey Evans, who are all active on Raw and SmackDown, are logical choices and have a reason to win the Rumble. Although Flair hasn’t been involved in anything of note lately, she is a perennial championship contender and could very well rekindle a rivalry with either Lynch or Bayley on the grandest stage of them all.

Although Evans will probably go for the gold before April, a Rumble victory for Banks could lead to her and Bayley splitting up again and fighting over her friend’s prized possession. Either way, there are a number of potential outcomes that could lay the groundwork for an exciting road to WrestleMania.