Aside from the occasional reemergence, the King of the Ring hasn’t been a regular event since 2002.
While its legacy is full of gems like Harley Race, Bret Hart, and Steve Austin and the birth of Austin 3:16, it was changed to Bad Blood and removed as one of the WWE’s big five pay-per-views (WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble being the other four).
Some of the theories as to why ranges on who you talk to. The most referred to reason being the lack of profit the 1993 one brought it, but again, it depends on who you talk to.
This year’s came as a nice surprise, but according to Dave Meltzer (mentioned on themix.net), it’s to give a real push one superstar. There are currently two that are rumored to be at the top of the list.
Baron Corbin?
It’s well known that most fans don’t like Corbin despite his ability to play up the heel role. The question here is will he be able to rise to the next level?
While he’s shown flashes of ability, whether he can put it all together has yet to be seen. If he can, he could slid into a role similar to Ted DiBiase’s as not only a threat in the ring, but the brains behind other superstars. Given how the WWE has neutered some of their best heels (Brock Lesnar, Samoa Joe — sorry, it’s not believable that Rollins could beat either of them), a different type of heel could fit in and create a good deal of havoc. Imagine what another managerial type of heel (ie brains behind the operation like Daniel Bryan) could do on Raw. It’d add a fun element that’s been missing for a while since the likes of Mr. Fuji, Bobby Heenan, and others were deemed unnecessary at ringside (a boneheaded move, to be honest).
While it’s a reach, but he could do it.
The more likely push would go to Ricochet
Ricochet has already received a couple of big pushes as one of the top three baby faces, so why stop now? With his feud with AJ Styles in neutral at the moment, facing off against Corbin or another heel could be the thing that puts him over big time and eventually leads him to the Universal title.
A possible hint as to how true this is comes from Rocochet’s pre-WWE Indie name — King Ricochet. He also still goes by it on Instagram, for those that are interested.
There’s little doubt about Ricochet’s ability, so it’s definitely plausible that he’s the one that’ll win it all and take the next step.
