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WWE News: Cruiserweight Title Match Announced For ‘Royal Rumble’

By Dave LeClair
Published on: 13:16 PST, Dec 26, 2018

WWE aired a best of 2018 episode this week, which didn’t seem like the kind of show that would feature any big news. However, the episode ended with a special announcement that current Cruiserweight champion Buddy Murphy would defend his title in a fatal four-way match against the winner against the winners of a series of matches.

The winner of each match will get to be a part of the match at the Royal Rumble PPV event. On next week’s episode of 205 Live, Kalisto will take on Lio Rush and Akira Tozawa will battle Drew Gulak. In two weeks, Cedric Alexander will face Hideo Itami in the last qualifier match.

All of those should be fantastic matches, and the fatal four-way is sure to steal the show at the Royal Rumble.

It’ll be interesting to see who the WWE decides to put into the match. Lio Rush has been receiving a pretty heavy push as of late. His opponent Kalisto has been on the main roster with the Lucha House Party, so he’s a pretty focused character.

Akira Tozawa and Drew Gulak could go either way, but Gulak has received slightly more shine on recent episodes of 205 Live.

For the last match, the WWE could decide to go either way. Having Itami win would create a new challenger for the title, but Alexander has consistently been in the title picture, and the WWE might want to keep him there going forward.

Murphy won the Cruiserweight Championship from Cedric Alexander in October in a blow-away match at the Super Show-Down event. He defended the title against Alexander at TLC and Mustafa Ali at the Survivor Series event.

The Royal Rumble takes place on January 27 at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona. Most of the card hasn’t been revealed yet, but the WWE has only about a month to move the stories forward and get the card in order.

Here’s the card as we know it so far:

  • Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman
  • Men’s Royal Rumble match
  • Women’s Royal Rumble match
  • Buddy Murphy vs. TBD vs. TBD vs. TBD for the Cruiserweight Championship

Obviously, we’d expect there to be Women’s championship matches for both brands added. We’d also expect to see Daniel Bryan defend his championship–possibly against AJ Styles again. There are also both brand’s tag team championships that will need to be defended on the show. When it’s rounded out, there should be plenty of matches to fill up the card and pre-show.

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