On RAW last night, it was announced that the King of the Ring tournament is making a comeback. This will be the first time that the tournament has been held in over 4 years. The last King of the Ring was Bad News Barrett in April of 2015. 16 competitors from RAW and SmackDown Live will compete to become wrestling royalty. The tournament will officially start next Monday night and will go on until the next PPV at Clash of Champions in Charlotte.

The superstars from RAW competing will be: Baron Corbin, Cedric Alexander, Cesaro, Drew McIntyre, The Miz, Ricochet, Sami Zayn, and Samoa Joe. SmackDown competitors include: Ali, Andrade, Apollo Crews, Buddy Murphy, Chad Gable, Elias, Kevin Owens, and Shelton Benjamin.

I personally am excited to see the King of the Ring making a return, because things like this are missing from the current content. Not this tournament particularly, but a lot potential new content to put over superstars that aren’t competing for a title has been pretty slim. All of these guys are in this boat. With the exception of The Miz and Kevin Owens, none of these competitors have had a major championship reign, but most would agree that most, if not all, of these superstars have the ability to get to that stage.

This tournament has so much history and many of the winners have either solidified their legacy or became stars fairly quickly. Stone Cold Steve Austin became an overnight hit and basically brought in a new era, Macho Man Randy Savage became the Macho King and rose to superstardom in a similar fashion. Although the majority of superstars didn’t maintain the King moniker, some famously considered themselves royalty for the rest of their careers. King Booker was one of the best heels that I’ve seen in my lifetime, but other than that my fan experience with the King of the Ring hasn’t been a very successful thing.

Hopefully there will be an added prize to this tournament, for example, a title opportunity for the winner in the future. For these competitors, a title shot would propel their careers and set them on another path to success. Judging by the entrants in this contest. It looks like RAW is loaded and it will be difficult to decipher a clear favorite. I don’t know how the tournament will be structured, but I would like to personally see a SmackDown vs. RAW final. If it is structured this way, my favorites at the moment are Baron Corbin and Kevin Owens. I think Baron Corbin will be the new King of the Ring, because it is normally a way to give heels an ego boost and this would be perfect for Baron Corbin. Drew McIntyre also makes sense here on the RAW side.

I’m thrilled to see how this thing will play out, especially because I will be in attendance for the Finale of this tournament. This will be my first WWE PPV experience and I expect it to be amazing. I’m not rooting for anyone in particular, but I’m ready to see who wins this thing in a month and becomes the new King of the Ring.

Yacs

King of the Ring is Back